Procrastination

As a wise man once said..."Procrastination is the art of keeping up with yesterday"...or in my case with the last year and a half!

So what does one do when one is so far behind?  I'm not sure I know, but I guess I'm just going to jump in where we are, and let what can catch up...

Lucky enough!

If you're lucky enough to have a 10 year old boy, well then you're lucky enough.  

But if that 10 year old loves to make a fire every night in September while you're watching the sunset, and bring s'mores to you--well, that's simply a little heaven on earth!

Class of 2014

At our house, the class of 2014 is Rachel.  

Quite literally, a class of 1. 

A class of her own?  

The classiest one?  

I guess, as a homeschooled student, you get to be all of the above.

Rachel can hold her own in a much larger class however. She has taken classes at the local high school for the past two years and has exercised her competitive side all the way to the top of every class she has taken there.

I honestly figured that Rachel would pursue studies in some creative field, or perhaps in writing (she did have an almost perfect SAT in that particular subject after all), but--after a lifetime of providing her with art supplies,crafting hobbies, and endless notebooks for her writing rather than toys to play with--she discovered a previously well-hidden interest in mathematics. She has been accepted into the Engineering program at the University of Maine in Orono to follow that interest.  In fact, her academic ability has landed her a very nice merit scholarship from the University.

Rachel will spend the next two years in an integrated engineering program which UMO began a couple of years ago and has a limited enrollment of 25 students.  We are particularly happy about that since that means we get to keep Rachel with us for a couple more years before she has to move away to complete her program.  We aren't quite ready to part with her yet.  She is only 17 after all, and is a lot of fun to have around with her quick wit and kindness to her siblings.  And besides that, who would keep me up to date with what is hip and stylish?

While I can't say that Rachel is perfect, or even nearly perfect in every way-- she takes after her parents that way-- it has been an amazing experience to see how God's grace has been infused into her life.  It makes me very thankful.

I'll leave you with this short mystery that Rachel wrote for her Creative Writing class last semester.  I thought it was a unique twist on the assignment, and cleverly done.  And also this little peek into her photography project this semester:  https://sites.google.com/a/hs.rsu5.org/rachel-hollen/photography

I press my face against the edge of the world and look out at what doesn't exist. Blurry shapes move back and forth just out of sight. The only thing that is always in sight is just outside the barrier and down, so I have to crane my neck to see. I look at it often, but all I can make out is a black number nine. I pull away and start back to town.  As I pass the "Welcome to Maine" sign, it starts to snow. It's silly that we even have a sign- there are no visitors here.

    Multicolored flakes settle on the water, held up by the surface tension till my fish drags them under. I sprinkle in more and wonder if he can see or recognize me. Maybe, through the glass, all he can see is blurry movements. Maybe his understanding is confined to the bowl that holds his world. I think of when the local loony ran around screaming that we lived in a globe. Everyone knows you can walk straight from barrier to barrier without so much as a rise in the ground. It never occurs to me to question my own world.

   The next day, as with yesterday and the day before that, I'm sitting at the edge again, back pressed against the hard wall of the world. I zip up my coat as snow begins to fall. It has snowed every day of every year that I've been alive- of every day of every year that anyone's been alive. But today something is going to change. The world grows dark and then the sky cracks. The snow flies out of the barrier as if it had been imprisoned. Drops of blood the size of buckets rain down from the broken sky instead of the fluffy white flakes of earlier. The wall of the world falls away and I take my chance. As I run, I realize that for all of my existence, I haven't really known where I was.

That's our Rachel, and we love her! Oh, and we're a little bit proud of her too.

How did we get here already?

February!

And here I am with unposted baseball stories still rattling around in the back of my head.  

The irony of this season of life that I attempt some record of here, is that so often it keeps me so busy that the recording of it gets lost in the shuffle.

After changing my farm house cover photo to a more seasonal one, ahem, I will move on to catching up on some of the happenings of life here.

In the meantime, a family photo from a Mt. Abram ski trip last month.

skool

"Wiy dose Math half to be so konfoosing?"

I don't know, Gus, but spelling is pretty hard too.

Something Completed

Since this summer has been so busy with so few visible results for the busyness, I decided to paint the front door.

Although, the front door wasn't the most obvious of visible things to paint around here since everyone uses the kitchen door.  

But it has been on the "to-do" list for 3 years or so...

and it felt good to get it done...

also, it felt good to get that box of door hardware out of the mud-room and onto the door!

Sometimes it's the little things, meaning something that lasts longer than the next load of laundry, that keep me motivated.


In other summer activity:

And I'll have to catch up on the rest of summer--later.

Baseball and a Birthday

I'm half-way late with this post.  The birthday is long past, but baseball season is on-going.  And somehow, the fact that the birthday falls in baseball season is gratifyingly appropriate.

This year between the SeaDogs game, the family celebration, and the trip to Summit Adventures with some friends, the birthday celebration seemed to last a season, rather than a day.  I think one of the first things Gus could articulate was his birth date, and it has since remained a

Very Important Event. 

The other very important event in Gus's life right now is baseball.  He is playing Little League again this year, and is not only playing a league up from his age group, but actually contributing to the team as well.  He is quite proud of that and as a consequence of that has heard Proverbs 27:2 from us several times this spring.  You know the one, "Let another man praise thee, and not thine own mouth..."  

ahh, it's hard to be humble!

This group of kids has seen the benefit of some very excellent coaching this year.  They've come together with some great teamwork, and are *almost* undefeated!

Here he is, stealing home.  Another second, and I'd have had a shot of him sliding home.  

One of Gus's favorite positions...catcher!
Gus has made some new friends on this team that he's really enjoyed connecting with off the field as well. And apparently, word in the elementary school is that THIS is the team to beat.