Chesterton Quote of the Day

"Women have a thirst for order and beauty as for something physical; there is a strange female power of hating ugliness and waste as good men can only hate sin and bad men virtue." - Chesterton on Dickens
(courtesy of chesterton.org)

This explains why some women (ahem) are so neurotic about certain violations against good housekeeping, like dirty socks rolled up into balls all over the house.

Mini-picturefest

Here are a couple windows into our life:

Hmmmm, I wonder where the girls could be?


RRR!! I am a baby of might!


Miriam entertaining Joseph with her rendition of "I am surfing with the Spirit," courtesy of Vacation Bible School. He is entranced.

In the background you can see our school table, moved upstairs from the basement. A friend advised me to do school work wherever there is the most light, because you will naturally gravitate towards there anyway. Now there's no doubt that when you walk into our home, you can see that we are a homeschooling family!


Just plain awwwwwww.


St. Catherine of Siena. When she saw herself in the mirror, she said, "I don't look like Katie any more!"

We're off to the alma mater tomorrow for a weekend of family fun, medieval-style! We'll be back with more pictures to share!

Happy 50th, NASA!

NASA: 50 Years in Pictures

Poetry Friday!

One of the things I want to do for school this year is lots of poetry memorization. The goal is for Miriam to learn a new poem every week-ish, so I can post something on this blog and you can all see what a talented, dramatic genius my daughter is and how she's guaranteed stardom when she gets her big break.

Here's the latest recitation:

Has it really been that long?

Ooh! Ooh! I wannit! I wannit!

Quotable Quotes

"I opened the cupboard, and the chocolate powder was just sitting there, looking at me with puppy-dog eyes."
--Mr. Pickles justifying why he had to make brownies one night
(pssht, like I need justification!)

Quick Prayer Request -- UPDATED

Please keep my Grampa B. in your prayers. I just found out he's in the hospital with pneumonia. He's almost 99.
Thanks.

----------
UPDATE 9/17

Thanks for all your prayers -- Grampa's going home today! From my dad:

He was hospitalized for a Pneumonia infection, and possibly a small kidney infection. Treatment with broad-spectrum antibiotics seems to have worked, and so they are releasing him. Many thanks to my sister, M.E. & her husband for being great care givers! (There was no heart attack, as was first feared.) I guess they made them tough in 1910!

My mom also said:

The doctor was amazed that Grampa doesn’t take any medication except for a low-dose aspirin and a vitamin daily. When he asked if Grampa smokes, Aunt M.E. told him, “Not any more. He started smoking when he was 9, but quit when he was 12.”

And yes, he was a character and a half -- still is! Oh, the stories. Perhaps the secret to longevity is mischievousness. :)

Meet Our New Family Members!

I can't believe I haven't written about this yet! One of my pseudo-birthday presents to myself was gerbils! A friend of mine bought what she THOUGHT was two males from the pet store, until they had six babies. They do best in pairs, so my friend offered us two of them.

So now, meet Peter:


and Paul:

Miriam suggested the names, and I applied them. Paul used to be golden, and then changed into this browny mix -- he had a conversion, you might say. (yuk yuk yuk) He's the more social and exploratory of the two. Peter is a little more skittish. They're both very sweet.

So, what are gerbils, you ask? They're little rodents, between mice and rats in size. They have long hairy tails with little tufts on the end. They love digging (which is why they live in an aquarium instead of a wire cage) and chewing.

You should see this wooden house now -- all the openings have been somewhat enlarged, and the corners rounded. For toys we give them toilet paper tubes, and cardboard boxes for houses. (Amazon makes the PERFECT sized boxes.) They used to have a wheel, but chewed it into little bits in less than a week.

They're extremely social animals, which is what makes them such great pets for kids -- they don't bite (at least on purpose -- we've experienced a couple exploratory nibbles, though). They love sleeping in little furry heaps.


The girls take care of them every day -- Miriam is in charge of the water bottle, and Katie is in charge of food. I change their litter about once a week. (Another advantage -- they don't really have an odor -- you have to get up right next to their cage before you can even smell their little animally smell.) They've been a lot of fun -- very cute, very low maintenance. The ideal first pet! Their lifespan is about 2-3 years I think, so maybe when the Peter & Paul era is at an end, after a decent mourning period we can graduate to bigger game (like a bunny! ...please?).

Yet another childhood fantasy goes fffffffft.

I recently finished reading this book to the girls, "Half Magic" by Edward Eager. It's the most hilarious book. (and one of many I pilfer-- I mean, borrowed from the parents' library) Yesterday while the girls were playing in the basement and I was otherwise occupied with Joseph in the living room, Katie came upstairs, found Miriam's wallet, and brought it down. I heard coins clanking on the table downstairs for a while. After a time Miriam came upstairs, sighed heavily, and said, "It just didn't work."
"What didn't work?" I asked.
"Well," she replied, "I wanted to be a baby again, so I got all my coins and tried wishing on them but none of them worked."
"Ah," I said. "No magic talismans in your wallet then?"
"Nope," she said, and sighed again.

Today, she asked me, "Are there any fairies in this world?"
I felt like a murderer when I admitted, "Probably not." (Since you KNOW every time a child says it doesn't believe in fairies anymore, somewhere a fairy drops down dead.)
"Because," with a shy smile, "it would be nice if we had some fairy dust so we could fly."
I felt terrible for killing her hope.
I suppose there's always parasailing. Or hang gliding.

When I'm dead, of course.

One Big Happy

The girls really love their baby brother. So much so that I often find myself breaking up fights over who gets to play with him and make him smile. I can't blame them, though. Isn't he scrumptious?