Adorable, yes?
Gran and Pops are off on a Grand Adventure out West and I promised them some good video before they lose all touch with the modern world. So, for the grandparents, here’s a longer version of Mira dancing to the (sanitized) Thrift Store song. Check out her booty shakin’ toward the end. I have no idea where she picked that up…

Tell me that doesn’t make you wanna wiggle a little…

We jumped to our feet and ran outside. Sure enough, these two yahoos greeted me in the driveway:

Our property adjoins a pasture that is home to two horses and a donkey named Lucy. Our young neighbor rides barrel races (which I don’t understand but I can say it like I know, can’t I?) and we often see her riding one of the horses while talking on her cell phone.

Ah, modern farm life.

Anyway, our equine neighbors had broken the fence down and were calmly grazing in our front yard. I threw on some boots with my pajamas and worked on keeping them contained in our yard while Andrew went to find the owners.

I didn’t want them to leave our driveway because even though we are way back in the woods, just a few gallops off our property was a busy road. So I picked up a big stick and played Red Rover with a horse and a donkey. Fortunately, they lost interest in getting past me and turned back to the nice long grass in our front yard.

Naturally, I took pictures.

There was something pastoral about having a horse elegantly grazing in the front yard of our woodsy home.

It lost a bit of it’s quaintness when the donkey entered the picture.

Andrew reported that Lucy and Rocket’s owners weren’t home so he went in search of another neighbor who might have their cell phone number. It was about this time we discovered the other horse, Samson, holding court in our back yard.

I decided I’d better get busy rounding up the wildlife, so I cornered Rocket and attempted to put a rope around her neck.

*Cue Banjo Music*

When Andrew returned, without the much needed phone number, we walked my catch (ta-da!) down to the opening in the fence and shoved her back onto her side. Since Lucy was a donkey and acted very much like a donkey should, we opted to pull Samson out of the back yard before we tackled Lucy.

Funny thing: When Rocket noticed she was back home without her horsey boyfriend, she Lost. Her. Mind. She galloped up and down the pasture, whinnying and shaking her mane. She was a crazed lady. Samson returned her calls and trotted toward us but he got distracted by the yummy grass and slowed his progress.

His woman was Seriously Displeased.

Andrew roped Samson’s neck and put a little hitch in his giddyup. The two lovers were reunited at last. They nuzzled noses, then necks, and then gave each other a sweet horsey hug.

Meanwhile, Lucy took advantage of all this romance and inched away from the hole in the fence. Andrew had to track her down and then get a rope around her neck. Without getting kicked. Or scaring her off. He managed it by fashioning a lasso of sorts and throwing it on her head, then rushing to wrangle her into the rope before she skittered away.

Gah, I love that man.

I stood nearby with my stick, ready to… poke any wayward beasts. I’m not sure how effective my plan was, but I had my best serious eyes in place to go along with my stick. And with my fresh-out-of-bed look, I like to think I was pretty fearsome to behold.

Andrew patched the fence tightly and we went inside to “celebrate” an entire morning lost to our mini-Rodeo.

Which is why it was much less exciting when we discovered the three Lawn Mowers back in our yard after lunch. Fortunately, the owner had returned home by then and we were able to help him get the wayward animals back in the yard and the right hole in the fence patched.

Of course, the afternoon was lost to chasing Lucy through the forest and then rinsing off the poison ivy we crashed through. So I guess it’s safe to say that we actually did spend the entire day at the rodeo… and never even had to leave home!

As a young child in the early 80′s, I enjoyed the heyday of chocolate mousse as a high class dessert. I remember my mom taking me to a really fancy restaurant just so she could order me dessert or “heaven in a cup” as we called it.

From that day on, I ordered it every chance I got and have continued to do so, even after chocolate mousse became “less fashionable.” I feel no shame in ordering the sad little forgotten dessert at the bottom of the menu.

Because dark chocolate whipped into a rich and dense mousse that just melts on your tongue?

That is the peak of perfection.

So a few years ago, back when Anonymous C and the Chef joined us for dinner every week, Chef just casually whipped up a chocolate mousse one night after dinner.

I died dead on the floor.

When I woke from my swoon, I insisted he show me how he did it. And when I saw how easy it was, I died dead again.

Then I resurrected myself and typed it into Google so I would never lose it.

When the Chef visited a few weeks ago, that was my one demand: Make the mousse, man.

We tried to video it, but I’m a terrible videographer, the ice water wasn’t icy enough, and I kept making the Chef laugh at crucial moments. So while the video is good blackmail material for the future, it probably shouldn’t see the light of day here.

HOWEVAH… I’ve decided you all need to experience the chocolatey wonder for yourselves. Plus, it’s a handy dessert option for last minute dinners.

So, here’s how to make the easiest, bestest, chocolatiest mousse ever.

Chocolate Mousse

Chop two chocolate bars (the darker the better in my opinion) into 200 mL of water in a sauce pan.

Stir the mixture over low heat until it’s all incorporated.

Turn the heat up and bring it just to a boil.

(Or, you can bring the water to boil and then drop in the chocolate and remove it from the heat immediately. Whatevs.)

Yank it off the stove and plunge the saucepan, the more violently the better, into an ice bath. (Hint, prepare your ice bath ahead of time rather than just tossing three ice cubes in some water at the last minute. A “friend” did that one time with abysmal results.)

Whip it, whip it good. 

It takes awhile and your arms get tired, but eventually, you will see it start to thicken. When it is so thick it doesn’t drip off the whisk any more, you’re done.

Put it into a cup or eat it straight out of the bowl. 

Die dead.

Resurrect and repeat.

Try it this weekend. Then come back and tell me how much you love me.

So Grampaw and all of his crew met up with all of our crew and Grano and Pappo at our church. And I know this picture is just a bunch of heads to y’all, but that’s some of my favorite people, all together in one spot, worshipping. It gives me chills.

After church, there was a bunch of clothes changing and then we were all decked out to go to the state park. We had a picnic lunch and  set out on a hike to some nearby falls.

If you would please all take a moment to appreciate that I wore Finn on my back and Andrew wore Mira while we hiked straight down to the bottom of the falls.

*moment of silence*

Ok, so people had to hold my hand a lot so I didn’t do something ungraceful, but still… I made it to the bottom with His Beefiness on my back.

Ta-da!

At the falls, the kids just wanted to “stick their feet in” which inevitably led to several dunkings and general soakedness from the waist down.

While the grown-ups mostly sat on the side and thought deep thoughts…

Grampaw

Or rested their weary feet…

Sweet Sis-In-Law

Meme (who is also a grown-up, but has never let that keep her from having fun) took my girls wading since I still had Finn strapped to my back and couldn’t risk that sort of catastrophe.

Willa wobbling around with her skirt hiked up was hilarious…

…until she fell in. Then there was wailing and gnashing of teeth. Andrew took off his outer shirt and gave it to her to wear. Can you handle the cute?

It was about this time that I noticed Andrew was sporting a rip in the seat of his jeans. I noticed because, well, it’s my job. But also because he was wearing his Handsome Pants (from being at church) and I was enjoying them. Until, suddenly, they were marred. Apparently all the straight down hiking we did and having Mira on his back kept him from protecting his pants properly and they were ripped.

We all had a good giggle (well, ok, I laughed the hardest) and then attempted to wrangle up all the shoes, socks, and stray kids we’d brought with us.

The climb up from the falls was even steeper and more difficult because our direction was UP. Aunt Bob had stolen Finn from my back but Andrew was still carrying Mira, mostly to cover his backside. Which is probably how come after a vertical rock climb, he announced, “Uh, I’m not sure I’m going to have any pants left at the end of this hike. I think I ripped them again.”

Oh boy, had he ever. From the top of his rump to the bottom he had a nice long tear.

I could barely breathe and it had nothing to do with the extreme hiking. Once I picked my giggly self up from the path, we discussed strategy. Sadly, there was little he could do to hide it and there were other hikers coming at us from behind.

*Snort.* No pun intended.

Grampaw gamely pulled off his outer shirt (remember Willa was wearing Andrew’s?) and gave it to Andrew to cover his hindquarters. It was a short-sleeved polo, so it looked more like a low-riding cape than any sort of intentional fashion choice, but it was better than being all breezy.

I don’t have a picture of Andrew because, while he’ll suffer through me telling this story on the Internet, it was simply too much to ask for a photo at the time, you know? So just enjoy the falls for a moment.

Even though our hike was technically a short one, it was very steep and therefore I deemed it twice as calorie burning. We had a fab time and our kids slept soundly that night.

Thanks for the memories, Gang! We’ll do it again soon. Only with less fashionable (but more functional) pants.

p.s. Andrew’s Handsome Pants were brand new and the nice people at the store let us exchange the ripped version for new More Handsome Pants. Wasn’t that nice? Andrew promises never to wear them hiking again. But I may make him promise to wear them all the other times.

Teaching phonics pretty much always makes me want to gouge out my eyeballs with a spoon. And it seems that, for the next decade or so, I will have at least one, if not two, phonics students under my tutelage. I believe this is what is known as “refiner’s fire.”

We’re finishing up our core curriculum (Tapestry of Grace Year 3) and moving on to a lighter summer schedule with more science focus for the twins and phonics focus for Adam and Ellen. Probably because any morning that got out of hand this year, phonics was what I gleefully punted in favor of other things.

There. I said it. Confession is good for the soul, right?

I remembered recently that I never fully explained the difference between All About Spelling (AAS) and All About Reading (AAR).

If you have a better memory than I do, you may recall that I switched Sam and Ian to AAS a few years ago and it was the catalyst that made Sam a great reader today and helped me to only get the spoon as far as my eyelashes. I taught Adam to read with AAS Level 1 (my review here) but when All About Reading came out, I decided to make the switch for he and Ellen.

Clear as mud, right?

Anyway, I told you that I liked All About Reading but I never said why.

• It moves at a much slower pace and, despite my own impatience, that’s actually a good thing.
• I had no problem dividing the AAS lessons into pieces, but this breaks them down even more and reinforces each lesson better.
• There’s a section for review, a teaching section (like in AAS, it’s all scripted for you so your brain power isn’t required), but then there’s a game section, and a chance for fluency practice.

• There are more stories to read in the high-quality readers (if you have the old books, you can send them in and exchange them for new ones) and more activities and comprehension questions provided for each story (something I wish I’d had for the twins now that they are doing more reading on their own.)
• The system still relies on the letter tiles, the word and letter cards, and a progress chart but now there’s an activity book to go along with it. It holds games and activities you cut out of the book as well as extra words and sentences to practice with before you move to the actual story in a reader.

Ellen and Adam both responded well to this system. At first, Adam really got into the games and since he’s so tactile, he loved cutting out the pieces and playing with them. As he’s gotten older and we’re further into the curriculum, sometimes he’ll tell me, “Mommy, just let me read the words.”

And I do.

Ellen eats it all up. She wants to cut everything out, play every game, revel in every story. She’s been doing AAR since the Pre-K level (my review is here) and has taken to reading like a duck to water. Although I would normally never think a pre-reading program would be necessary, I will admit that Ellen was far better prepared to start stringing syllables together than the boys were. And I’ll definitely be using it with Willa soon.

If you’ve already invested in All About Spelling will your child suffer? Absolutely not. It worked great for my twins and I think it’s a fantastic method to teach reading. All About Reading is simply a bit more eye-catching and appealing to the younger set. If you’ve got an older reader who is struggling, skip AAR and go straight to AAS.

(And for the record, I want you to know how diligently I’ve worked to make sure the abbreviation for All About Spelling is indeed spelled correctly.)

It’s a relief to know that I’ve found a system that works for my kids no matter what their preferred style of learning or how their enthusiasm ebbs and flows. As always, I love the snatches of one on one time it gives me with my middle kids these days. And while I may still keep a spoon in my pocket during every lesson, I don’t feel in any danger of needing to use it.

High praise, indeed.

What else do you want to know? Did I cover all of your deepest, darkest Reading-related questions???

p.s. Opinions all my own. Affiliate links included because I really like it that much. If you decide you want to purchase, it would help a sister out if you would use that pretty link over in my sidebar. All the proceeds go back into the blog to make it a happier, healthier, safer place for all us. Or maybe they just buy me a mocha. Either way, this blog is fueled by your generous support.

We spent Friday afternoon at the boys’ piano recital. I was a bit nervous because last year, Adam cried and pitched a fit and refused to play. This year, the crowd would be twice as big. He seemed fine about it, though, even cheerful. And he happily played his two pieces, his sweet little feet dangling off the piano bench in rhythm to his song. Such a difference a year makes!

What? Oh, stop it, I didn’t cry. I simply had damp oculars. I’m sure it was allergies.

We celebrated the event with popsicles and take-out dinner eaten on our patio. When I was a kid, my mom always wanted to eat outside and I never understood why when there was perfectly good air conditioning inside that door. But now I know: she didn’t want to clean up the floors after I ate.

Which is why this little moment made me particularly happy. Because at the end of a long week, we would throw all the plates in the trash and leave the crumbs to the critters who roam at night.

On Saturday, we had Yard Work to do. With capital letters. Since Andrew chopped down a bunch of trees, we discovered that the difficulty doesn’t lie in knocking trees down, it’s what to do with them after. We now have more firewood than we could ever possibly use in five years and there are still 4 trees that need dissecting. Meanwhile, our yard is littered with sticks and stumps and sawdust, oh my!

So we tackled the sticks. The kids and I hauled a brush pile from one part of the yard to another part of the yard, which seems a little pointless unless you understand that the county law prohibits us from burning a brush pile until October and I wasn’t particularly pleased with the location of said brush pile and didn’t want to stare at it until fall.

So we moved it to another location where Andrew broke the limbs down into something that we can burn in our fire pit. And even if we eat roasted hot dogs and marshmallows every night this summer, we will still never burn all those branches.

Anyway, it would have helped if I had some sort of picture documentation so you could at least see a before and after, but I was too busy playing a giant game of Pick-Up Sticks.

At the end of the day, my back gave out and I spent the evening on some mighty fine pain-killers.

Mother’s Day morning, I got to sleep in, which was handy since I needed to sleep off the muscle relaxers. Only my back was no less angry, so I stayed in bed most of the day and, gasp, read a book! I also read to the kids, which is why the reading selection on my bed looked like this:

I told Andrew the one thing I wanted for Mother’s day was to be completely free of responsibility for meals. I did not want to think about the question, “What are we gonna eat?”

Best. Present. Ever.

Andrew stepped up to the plate and hit a home run with homemade donuts for breakfast, a spinach salad with bacon vinaigrette for lunch, and Five Guys for dinner. And since he threw a salad in the mix, the other two meals don’t count, right?

We are home from church now and Andrew is whisking up the best chocolate mousse ever. I’ll show you how to make it soon. But first, I’m gonna eat some in the name of “research.”

I so enjoyed my people this weekend. They make every day, whether we’re schooling, celebrating, yard working, or eating, such an adventure.

I’d also like to take a minute to recognize this man, without whom I would never have received the title: Mother. Thanks for the Mother’s Day of my dreams, babe.

Finally, Happy Mother’s Day to women everywhere, because no matter where or who we are, we will always find somebody to nurture.

And glory to Him who sets the lonely in families. (Psalm 68:6)

Today’s question: How do you build “respect for our stuff” into your kids? Anybody else feel like they are out to systematically destroy not only everything they own, but our house, our cars, and every thing WE own, too? Tell me how you combat this…

Come on. Surely some of you veterans have advice to offer????? I’d love some practical suggestions, as well as ways to get to the real heart issue behind it. Help?

I was getting an MRI done on a pituitary tumor I’ve had since my teens. It’s not a big deal, just something they repeat every few years. And I tried to tell myself that lying very still for an hour is what every mother dreams of.

But anyone who has had an MRI knows, lying in that tiny tube with your head held in place and a jack hammer in your ear is sometimes nothing short of panic inducing.

I took long deep breaths and focused on the tiny mirror in front of my eyes, my only window to Outside. My brain hunted desperately for something to do besides scream when I realized I could pray… uninterrupted but for the cacophany of the magnet whirling around me.

So I started in on my list, lifting up my people from oldest to youngest. I thought on their individual verses and prayed for the things I knew they struggled with.

And that sounds really spiritual and lovely, but you need to know that I wasn’t two people into my list before my head was a swirling vortex of anxiety and guilt as the Spirit convicted me of all the ways I’d goofed up loving my people that day. My heart clenched at all the problems I wanted desperately to fix, to make better. I blinked frantically and tried not to swallow or move my head while I wrested my focus back to the tiny mirror to Outside.

Another slow, careful breath (but not so big that it made me move) and I started over, praying deliberately.

And the cycle repeated. I didn’t have to get very far to realize my own sins and failures against my kids. The ways I let them down. I began to worry anew about some crisis or another and then would claw my way back up the rabbit hole of anxiety by begging Jesus to make right what I couldn’t.

And I may have had a bit of Church right there in that big ol’ magnet, if I could have only lifted my hand in praise.

Because though I was very still, in my head I had my hands wide open, full of questions, full of surrender, empty of myself. And I had them aimed right at the Only One with any answers.

The longer I had to be still, the tougher it got. I began begging God to keep me from anxiety. “Why, God, do I go to the dark places, the hard places, when I am still? Isn’t this what you want, all of us still before you? So why is it so terrifying?”

I pondered that awhile and then realized that my prayers in utter stillness… they beget more prayer. And that really is the point. Prayers in the quiet, when our hands aren’t busy and our eyes aren’t roving, they lay us open and bare before our Maker. They humble us, make us see how weak and helpless we are. And in turn, we reach out for God more.

But I’m busy. Sometimes I like to think I’m doing ok as I muddle through the day. That I’m holding up, managing All The Things, tossing up prayers as I go. But if I’m really still and lay my heart before God, I realize where I fail, where I am weak, and where He must be strong.

And that makes me lean into Him all the more.

But stillness is scary. I’ve gotten better at the discipline of prayer, but the stillness? Not so much. Because it’s scary. It makes me stare the Brokenness in the face. Yet it’s in the face of all the brokenness that He Who Heals is glorified, that His strength carries me.

But I have my pride. Being a parent, being a wife, being a daughter, being a friend… all these thing drive me to my knees regularly.  But sometimes I don’t think I stay there long enough to let the bottom fall out, to open my arms wide and free fall into the strong arms of Christ. I’d rather dance around the ledge just long enough to ask for help and then lean back against my boulder-sized pride in myself for safety.

Now that I’ve laid in the stillness and felt the fall, felt utterly weak and utterly held, I know to seek the stillness more. (And preferably more often than my regularly scheduled MRI.) Today I keep returning to the feeling I had when I prayed in the tube, the leaning into the whirl, the utter surrender of my pride and freedom.

I don’t know how to achieve Ultimate Stillness every day. It feels impossible for this mother of seven.

But I know I need to reach for it more, to schedule an hour of no multi-tasking into my weeks. And to keep leaning into He Who Comes In Stillness until at last He comes in Thunder and I can face Him with arms raised in praise, unbroken and properly focused at last.

“Be still, and know that I am God. I will be exalted among the nations, I will be exalted in the earth!”

-Psalm 46:10

Hark, how Sam personified the hamburger and captured the digestive tract in poetic motion:

Allow me to translate his genius for you:

(Remember, he’s writing like he’s a hamburger being eaten.)

As I went down the tunnel of doom

Through the month of June,

I went down stomach

I thought I was in public.

I was chomped and lomped as I went down to the ground.

Then I was squooshed and mooshed to my surprise.

I went through somethin’

It was disgustin’.

Oh, Shakespeare?

Eat your heart out, dude.

And then digest it.

To the ground…

Which is why it was very good timing that I received a package in the mail from Jackie at Lilla Rose. It was a flexi-clip that was supposed to hold even my thick mane in place.

I scoffed at the possibility.

Behold, the tresses that make hair clips and scrunchees run in fear:

I’m not kidding, y’all. I’ve broken every hair clip, even the big bear claw they sell at the pharmacy. And this is my slightly thinned hair since having Finn.

The only thing I knew about the flexi-clip was that I’d seen them at homeschooling conventions. So, um, that made me nervous. But I found a perfectly simple clip that would match my denim jumper or my sassy skinny jeans. (And I left that chocolate wrapper in the picture just so you would know it was me.)

I admit, I was impressed. I was able to twist my slightly damp hair up and hold it in place for an entire evening of outside play with the kids.

It also makes a great option when I don’t want to wear my boring black scrunchee for a ponytail and want to dress things up a bit. I’d show you a picture, but I asked Andrew to take it which means I have an excellent shot of my butt and three very bad pictures of my pony tail. I’ve spared you from those.

You’re welcome.

I’m now a firm believer that we curly, thick-headed types should definitely have this in our Hair Arsenal. It doesn’t tear or damage the hair (something my curls appreciate) and yet will still hold rock solid, even during a work-out.

Jackie has generously offered to send one of you your very own flexi-clip. Keep reading for instructions on how to enter.

Speaking of hair, I have a giveaway for all of you adoptive parents out there. Dr Brooke Jackson, M.D., an adoptive mom herself, sent me a copy of her book Child of Mine: Caring for the Skin and Hair of Your Adopted Child to share with you. I read it and it’s a good basic lay-out of all the different skin and hair types God made and how they each have unique needs.

If you haven’t got anybody to ask, this book is a great place to start.

Now, I know not everybody who wants a hair clip will want a book, so we’re gonna do two giveaways in one. Can you handle it?

First, if you plan to enter either giveaway, leave me a comment telling me your latest hair disaster story and then enter in the rafflecopter. That’s a required entry.

Second, you can enter both giveaways if you want, just click on each rafflecopter and follow the instructions. I’ll pick a winner on Wednesday night.

Are you ready?

Get set…

Go!
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