In my mind I'm goin' to Carolina...

We had a really great weekend in Asheville. We stayed at a nice little cottage which the girls LOVED!

We ate great food - Rosetta's, The Lucky Otter, Diggables - went to great parks with friends, and attended Sunday servcies at Holy Trinity Orthodox Church. That was the first Greek Orthodox service either of the girls has been to, and Nutmeg in particular really loved it. She said it was the most beautiful servcie she had attended. Their liturgy and ours are so similar that even without knowing Greek, we felt right at home. An elderly lady sat near me, and frequently turned to smile and pat the girls. We all look forward to visiting that parish when we can get back to Asheville.

My little Chipmunk is really growing up. She will be 5 in less than 2 months. I am officially changing her blog name to Buttercup - Princess Buttercup. She is the only little blond in the family, and she loves placing a buttercup under someone's chin to see if they like butter. (If there is a yellow reflection under your chin, it means you like butter!) She also can quote most of the movie The Princess Bride! So, Gentle Readers, I give you - Princess Buttercup!

Weekly Report

We did academics this week. We did swimming. We did ballet. Well. actually they were supposed to come in ballet and tap costumes for pictures, and I had forgotten. We were able to borrow some costumes! We did all the usual school-week things including some pine-pollen filled nature walks.
What I want the world to know, is that my dear children, aged 4 and 8, went to a production of Romeo and Juliet this week at a local college. It was 2 1/2 hours without the intermission. The rest of the audience were high school students. My kids and Lizzie's were MUCH better behaved. I will admit that in the last 30 minutes I gave Chipmunk some cards and a pencil. But otherwise, they were engaged for the whole production. Did they understand every word? (Would I want them to in that play?) No, but they actually have attention spans! Nutmeg and I went over some of the puns beforehand and will continue to do so (not all of them of course! not until she is married! ;) ) My kids love word plays, so they enjoyed that aspect. My girls have been raised in an Anglo-Catholic church which uses an "Elizabethan" translation of the Latin Mass. When your liturgy uses the word "holpen," Shakespeare can't scare you!

*Garden* *Flowers*

Wish me luck as I continue my cross stitch rotation. I am really starting to see the beauty of this system: always something new, always something close to being finished. I don't know about you, but I always manage to find "hard parts" in a design. It could be a million queen stitches, or a lot of counting or thread changes. With the three day rotation, I can always tell myself, "It's just 3 days! Just stitch one length of floss, and call it a day!" With Garden Flowers by Stone and Thread, this time 'round things did not look so "hard," and I have a new finish to share! Yeah!

This is my progress on Adam Alone. The "hard parts" here are all the one-over-one words! I hate one-over-one, but it looks so good!

Here are a few more flowers. These are "Posy Pins" from the The Pleated Poppy. They came in the mail yesterday, and I wore two of them on this blue shirt. My girls loved them. The Pleated Poppy also sells Posy Headbands and Flip Flops.

This weekend, I intend to get my hands dirty outside. I have hundreds (this is not an exageration) of baby plants waiting to go outside. It is not time yet, but I need to finish up the beds. I have been saving all my egg shells, grinding them up into a fine powder and spreading them on the garden. I'm sure a bag of lime would do a quicker job, but using the eggshells makes me feel good! ;)

U N Convention on the Rights of the Child

Are you kidding me? Do Americans really need a non-elected-by-by-the-people, international body telling us how to parent our children? Barbara Boxer and Hillary Clinton, among others, think so.

Under Article 13, any attempts to prevent their children from interacting with material parents deem unacceptable is forbidden. Children are vested with a “ freedom of expression” right, which is virtually absolute. No allowance is made for parental guidance. Section 1 declares a child’s right to “seek, receive and impart information and ideas of all kinds, regardless of frontiers, either orally, in writing or in print, in the form of art, or through any other media of the child’s choice.”

In Article 14, children are guaranteed “ freedom of thought, conscience and religion.” Children have a legal right to object to all religious training. Alternatively, children may assert their right against parental objection to participate in the occult.

Article 15 declares “the right of the child to freedom of association.” Parents could be prevented from forbidding their child to associate with people deemed to be objectionable companions. Under Article 15, children could claim a “fundamental” right to join gangs, cults, and racist organizations over parental objection.

Did we learn nothing from N@zi Germany? When the government took away parental rights?

"Yea, Christ my hope is arisen."

"'Welcome, happy morning!" age to age shall say: Hell today is vanquished, heav'n is won today!"

"Lo, the fair beauty of earth, from the death of the winter arising! Ev'ry good gift of the year now with its Master returns!"

"Maker and Redeemer, life and health of all, Thou from heav'n beholding human nature's fall, Of the Father's Godhead, true and only Son, Manhood to deliver, manhood didst put on."

"Sing we to our God above, Alleluia! Praise eternal as his love; Alleluia! Praise him, all ye heav'nly host, Alleluia! Father, Son, and Holy Ghost. Alleluia! Amen."

I hope you all had a blessed Easter Day! (We celebrate Easter for forty days to commemorate the 40 days Jesus was with his disciples between the Resurrection and Ascension.)

The Week in Stitches

I am blogging to take my mind off the watery abyss that is my basement. It's not quite a flood, but it is wet. I expect the plumber any moment, but I won't be holding my breath!

I have wanted to stitch the Cross-Eyed Cricket design above for years. I finally started and finished it this week. My husband does not approve. When we were dating and he discovered I was an avid cross stitcher, he was not pleased. It was not that he was worried I would be stitching and never clean the house (that IS what he should have worried about), he was apparently scarred in the 80's by visions of cross stitched geese with blue ribbons around their necks advertising mottos such as "Backdoor guests are best." I had to solemnly promise to love, cherish and never cross stitch geese. Well, lucky for him my tastes are not 1980s. They are more like 1680s, 1780s and 1880s! He divides designs into two categories: "nice" and "goofy crap." The above design he deems "goofy crap." Too bad for him! I like it!

I also started the above Brighneedle design. I think it is called Windy Hill. We live on Windy Hill! I call our hill Wuthering Heights. Our house faces the mountains, and the wind roars down the mountains at break-neck speed for our house! I cannot have windchimes on my front porch, I soon discovered.

I also started this week ;) "Fishes and Bait by Plum Street Samplers. I love Paulette's designs and her sense of humour. There is a pair of mer-people in the traditional "Adam and Eve" sampler pose. The verse reads, "Fishes and Bait, Fishes and Bait, When a Woman marries then trouble's her fate."

Weekly Report

I write this post bleary-eyed; I stayed up until 3 am watching the weather reports last night!

We stayed home from most of our afternoon activities this week. It is amazing how much pressure that relieves! I should probably make a note of that. ;)

The Chipmunk and I have been reading Papa Piccolo for our Five in a Row studies. What a sweet story! She is also working steadily in Explode the Code 1 and the Rod & Staff preschool series.

Nutmeg is doing school as I write this. She is really working well this morning- no whining, no complaining. She is working so well that I hate to give her the weekend off! Surely it would be smoother on Monday morning if we don't forget good habits over the weekend!

I am not confidant about my writing abilities or writing teaching abilities. That is one reason I like the Writing With Ease series. I feel as though SWB is holding my hand! But this week I branched out and combined history and writing. Nutmeg has chosen a different Revolutionary War heroine each day from a book we have. The stories are usually three pages. We then follow the same outline from the WWE workbooks, and she writes a paragraph. I feel so very clever for combining two subjects!

We have been using the Homeschool in the Woods Revolutionary War cd. It is great; I love it, but I think I would have condensed some lessons for this age. It is very detailed!

This week we are also studying droughts and monsoons. Because of the torrential rains we were unable to build a moisture trap, but we should be able to see some saturated ground on our walk this afternoon!

Semi/Retired Designers - I Beg You....

Please make digital copies of all your retired patterns available! I was reading Vonna's post this morning about searching for retired patterns. I would think a designer would rather make some money off a digital download than watch while someone else makes big bucks off of their used patterns. Now I was very happy once to make $30 on an old Sheepish Designs pattern, but I would much rather Dawn Bradford would make all her retired patterns available.

Mary Beale's older patterns are available as digital downloads on her site. Let me just tell you: I used birthday money and Christmas money, and I bought every single pattern!!!! I love them all. Before I go to bed, or when I am super-stressed, I look through the ginormous binder full of Mary Beale patterns I downloaded (legally downloaded!). Please, please, please, Dawn Bradford, let me throw my money at you! ;)