Just a Little Sister Time

Kiara in yellow, Brigid in purple

 They were gibbering through the whole time.

Brigid does a little combing here.

 Takes a bite of popcorn.

 

 They were discussing Alaska at this point.

 Pouring a little popcorn into a new container.

 I wish this wasn't blurry, but it is so adorable and worth keeping.

Brigid was sharing a bite with Kiara.

 A little more combing.

 Taking a break to do a little monocle looking.

 Oh, they spotted Mom taking pictures.

Love you, girls!!!

For the Love of a Sister

I can tell Gianna's brothers love her very, VERY much.

 They decided to have lunch downstairs on Friday.

They ate popcorn, apples, and a few other things.

 Then those sweet, loving brothers let Gianna watch the movie she got in the mail.  It was a Barbie movie.  It was a girl movie.  It was not their first pick, ever.

Stephen was begging me not to put the picture proof of him watching a girl movie. Ha ha

Rex told me would take out the messy diapers for one month if I didn't put the pictures up on Facebook.  Not a problem, Rex.  I can guarantee you that next time he will include the blog in his list of social sites not to post pictures on.  ha ha ha

I love these boys.  Such great big brothers!!

Park Day

Last Friday we had an hour to wait for Rex's reading tutoring class so we went to the park with some friends.  It was a quick hour, but fun for all of us!

 Lookin' good, Brech!

 What a good big brother.

 Blase's friend Isaiah was friendless since Blase was in South Dakota.

Just smile, Isaiah! 

 That's better!

 Way to try hard, Stephen! 

 This is our favorite Zeb of all time.

 He's a ham just like Brech.

I Miss, I Hurt, I Love

Dear Mark ~

 I miss your hugs.

 I miss your love for others.

 I miss your smile.

 I miss your enthusiasm for life.

 I miss your voice.

I miss you being in the family picture.

I miss you.

I still hurt when I watch a movie where someone dies.  The pains I felt from your death come racing back into my mind like wild horses.  They go this way and that way, completely out of control.  Some overwhelm me, some scare me, some are more intense than others, but always there to remind me you are not here with us anymore.

After seven years I still want to scream at God, "WHY?! Why didn't You show Mark more of Your love?"

I want to scream at Mom and Dad, "Why didn't you protect him?"

But mostly I want to yell at myself, "Why didn't you call Mark more often?" "Why didn't you care more?"  "Why didn't you love more?"  "Why did you fail him, Karen?"

Then I stop and I chase those stupid wild thoughts of my head.  I refuse to let the devil use your death to hurt me anymore.  I refuse to blame anyone for this.  I refuse to be destroyed.

Instead....

I love.

I love my life.

I love my husband and kids.

I love my parents.

I love my family.

I love my friends.

I love my enemies.

I pray for everyone who has hurt me.

I pray for those I have hurt.

I pray for those who have dealt with suicide.

I love unreserved.

I remind myself that after seven years without you, Mark, I still wouldn't ask God for you back.  I count the numerous times that your death has made me a better person.  

I never look at a teenage boy without praying for him.  I see now how the weight of the world bears down on them more than I ever saw before your death.  

I look at my bad days and realize they aren't that bad.  

I see the sunset with grateful eyes for day well-spent. 

I watch the birds in our yard with greater appreciation for God's beauty in creation.  

I listen to the rain with the understanding that God takes care of all of us, from the holiest person to the lowly plant. 

 I will always attribute these moments to the fact that your death shook my very being into a more observant and compassionate person.

I treasure the moments we've had as a family more than ever in the last seven years.  We've grown closer together, though still have our problems as all families do.  I like to think that you, Mark, inspired our family to love more, forgive often, and give of ourselves unselfishly.  That is a precious gift.

I marvel at what our family has created at the Mark Park.  How they share it with so many without thinking twice.  How they take time out of their lives to make other people's lives matter.  How they help keep memories alive and dreams come true.

This is Papa on July 4th just after 5:30 AM.  It is a picture of him under the casket flag of Great Uncle Leo Bestgen.  It has not been displayed or flown since his funeral in 1943. Our family (and some amazing cousins) made this memorial happen at your park, Mark.  The park we wouldn't have created without your death.  The park that brings others such joy and happiness.  Where loved ones are remembered, the scars of pain are healed, and happy memories are built.

So while I want to scream all those things above, I also want to quietly say....

"Thank you, God, for Your love and healing grace."

"Thank you, Mom, for giving Mark life, raising him, and for trusting in God when Mark died."

"Thank you, Dad, for holding our family together, for never giving up, for being a rock (ha ha) to lean on, for the hugs and God bless you's, for the example that no matter what crosses God gives us we can carry it and become better people because of it."

"Thank you, me, for being honest with yourself.  Now, forgive yourself, wipe the tears away, and face today like every other day."

Mark - pray for us.

Love and falling tears,

Your big sister

Fully Alive

It is so hard to leave with such adorable peoples waving goodbye.  I thought about staying for all of 3 seconds and then pulled out of the driveway on my way to the Living Education Retreat 2015.  I left on Thursday, July 16th and returned late Saturday, July 18th.

This year's retreat theme was Fully Alive.

It was from a quote by St. Irenaeus, "The glory of God is man fully alive."

I have only attended a LER once before I was pregnant with the twins and knew I was in store for a wonderful time.  This year's retreat was moved to a new location a bit further away.

We all gathered at Villa Maria Retreat Center  near Lake Pepin and Frontenac State Park.

Villa Maria was originally established as a girl's academy and boarding school in 1891 by the Ursuline sisters.  In 1969 a fire destroyed the original building that housed the school.  As a result of that loss, the sisters closed the school and opened a retreat center.  It was a beautiful  area and very relaxing. I think they made a wise choice.

The following three pictures are examples of some of the students whose parents use the Charlotte Mason educational style.  They were inspiring and made me wish I could go back to school and do it all again.  

I am hoping I can take a few of these ideas and work them into our school year.

The lovely ladies who plan LER every year gave everyone a coffee mug this year.  It also came with a lovely welcome note and a tea bag.  I just love the quote they had with the welcome note. "The question is not, --how much does the youth know? when he has finished his education -- but how much does he care? and about how many orders of things does he care? In fact, how large is the room in which he finds his feet set? and, therefore, how full is the life he has before him?" Charlotte Mason

During the retreat I attended all the plenary sessions as well as the workshops.

The plenary session talk that inspired me the most was Art Middlekauff's The Sacrament of Education. To sum it up in very simply and no where near the beautiful words needed to give it justice - the sacrament of education is an outward and visible sign of an inward and spiritual grace given to us by Christ through a real operation of God and with the right disposition of the receiver will all combine into an instrumental unity that feeds the heart and soul of the child or adult.

If you have a chance to listen to Art Middlekauff speak - put down your broom, put aside that book, find a babysitter, and RUN to his talk.  He is a very inspiring speaker that you will not regret making time for.

Of the four workshops I attended, I was most inspired by the talk given by my friend Marcia and her husband Steve called Enduring Threads of Formation.  During this workshop Steve would give a little information on a Rule of St. Benedict and how to implement that into our family life while Marcia would give a corresponding Charlotte Mason habit suggestion that would beautifully complement that particular Rule of St. Benedict. I felt like our family had for the golden ticket that was going to bring about some balance and peace.  So it has been a month since I returned from the LER and I have yet to put any of this into action.  Soon.

Marcia also gave a great workshop on habits that I enjoyed.  I especially enjoyed her concept of industry that she requires of her children.  It is a great idea I plan to do with my own kids and have done to some extent already.  You can find her blog post on Industry on her blog I Wonder Why.

I also attended a workshop on what living books are.  I know what living books are so why would I go to that workshop?  I wanted to be inspired to read outloud to my kids again.  I left that workshop remembering how wonderful it was to share a story with my kids.  To want them asking for one more chapter and reading it to them instead of folding that load of laundry calling my name.

The other workshop was about teaching high school science using living books. I was glad to have the chance to look through TONS of living science books and get a feel for them.  There are few that on my wish for sure. The one key statement I took away from the workshop was this: We want scholars who love math, science, etc., not engineers or scientists.  We can't make them into scientists. There was a reference to Charlotte Mason's Volume 6 that said if you focus on examinations (fact, tests) you lose the wonder and awe.  I believe that wholeheartedly.  I really think I've allowed our homeschooling atmosphere to lose too much of the wonder and awe.  I wish I could really refocus our vision to include more rabbit trails, more wonder, more awe, more fun.

The highlight of the retreat is always the bookstore.  Jan from Books of Yesterday faithfully brings her best of the best books from her online store to the retreat.  I was the third person into the store when it opened.  I was so excited to find a few treasures including the following:

 So this book was the first one of this series I had ever seen.  I ended up buying it and reading it that day.  There was only one problem with that - (besides the fact that I plowed through 170some pages) I made up my mind I was NOT going back into the bookstore because I wasn't going to blow the whole budget on books.  Well, after reading this book I went back into the bookstore and bought the rest of the books she had from that series.  What a great book!  I loved it!!

I was happy to find a hard cover version of this book!

 The boys are BIG into the World Wars so I bought a few books with that time period of history in mind.  Blase read Thirty Seconds over Tokyo in two days.  I haven't asked if they have read any of the others.

 This is by far my most favorite purchase of the weekend.

It takes the reader through the life of Beatrix Potter in the form of a scrapbook.

Most of the pages have her illustrations on them as well as text that would have been from her point of view at the time. 

A few of the pages have neat things to open like the above photo album.

Or this envelope that had a letter she wrote to someone in it that you could take out and read.  It was the start of the Peter Rabbit story.

It also came with a game board.

I was hoping this book would encourage my kids to start their own scrapbooks.  I know Rex has spent hours reading and rereading this book, looking at the pictures, and talking about her stories.

I am so glad I took the time to go to this retreat.  I came home filled up and renewed!  I was inspired with statements like, "living life in a state of rest," and "live to learn, learn to live," and finally a simple, "Enjoy the journey!"

I AM
I CAN
I OUGHT
I WILL