Enduring Summer

Kudos to Adele' who took this lovely shot

Summer Bible Reading Challenge is done-
I started a few weeks late which goes to show you- you don't need to worry about being behind. The mantra is... if you read today, you are NOT behind. 

I love that.

If you want to be on the same page, reading the Word with many thousands of other Christians, I invite you to partcipate in the To The Word bible reading challenge!  I am going to read only the Old Testament readings for this challenge as the summer reading program is all New Testament readings.  Both Old and New Testament at once is a bit too intensive and time consuming for me.  But, with both summer and fall/winter readings completed, I still read the entire Bible in a year.  And that makes me happy.

Cats have no respect for art.

Like father, like son

Can you see the difference between the red potatoes and the dusty potatoes in the large bushel basket?  That is the difference between planting potatoes in dirt or in hay.  Hay grown potatoes are SO CLEAN and pretty!  I hope we can do all our potatoes in hay next year.

We have yet to start homeschooling which is not terribly unusual since I am usually canning like a crazy woman right now, but with the absence of abundant crops, I don't have that excuse.  Frankly, I think that my head is just not in the game.  I don't feel ready to begin.  I haven't done all (any) of the necessary preliminary work that is required before starting a new school year (at least one in which I feel somewhat prepared).  

Instead, I have had an overwhelming need to reorganize and restructure my life totally outside the realm of schooling.   Each day I find some thing to organize that has just gotten out of control.  The sad part is that these are all things that no one notices... the bookshelves.  The school shelves.  The filing cabinet.  The toybox.  The cubby at the top of the stairs.  The places that you just close the door on or drop the lid on when you are done and the transformation from pandemonium to pristine is totally unnoticed by everyone other than myself.  Basically, zero satisfaction or WOW factor.    

I am working each day...and yet, things don't really look any different on the surface.  I wonder what Matt thinks I do all day. Now that I went through all the school books and old papers from last year and the house seems less overwhelmingly disheveled in all the hidden places, I am hopeful that I can put my time and attention on the new school year.  Meanwhile, I hear no children complaining.  ;-)

The corn is dead and brown in the garden waiting to be gathered for porch decorations, there is a certain crispness in the air, pumpkins are piled up in roadside stands and among mottled leaves in our yard, leaves are beginning to dance and blush and everyone seems to be getting in the spirit of things.

 Except me.

I will embrace fall with all that I am and have once the frost kills everything dead.  Give me candles and cornstalks and pumpkins and browns and golds and oranges then.

But as long as I have colorful zinnias swaying in the garden,  it is still very much summer.

Surreal

It is a surreal feeling, to be taking senior pictures of my baby girl.  

But here I am doing it!

She is confident, she is smart, she is wise, she is good.  She is clever, she is witty, she is kind.

An all around beauty.

I won't think about how quickly these last 18 years have gone.  

I won't think about how old I am to have a graduate on my hands.  

I won't think about all I have to do for her graduation party this weekend.  

I won't think about how fast the days of her being at home will slip through my fingers...

I won't think about anything except how proud I am of who she is and how grateful I am that God gave her to us.

One of the things I love most...

She can be elegant.  She can be artsy.

She can be good 'ole country girl and also a little bit ghetto.

One thing she can't be...is put in a box.

Even the rejects are magical