Dear Mom, tonight we will go to Starbucks.

Posted June 27th, 2011 by Jen in family life, features
7 Comments »

She smiled a toothless grin, eyes sparkling as she handed me the note, carefully written in her ever improving handwriting but still lopsided and multicolored. “Dear Mom, tonight we will go to Starbucks and I will pay. We will leave at 5:00 and you can bring a friend.”

Not only had she stolen my heart, she set up a play-date for me. Her own money, her own kind heart, her…just her. She really melts me. A tear escaped later at Starbucks as she paid for my coffee, along with our friend Julia’s latté and her own hot cocoa, and I fought the strong urge to pay myself. No, I had to let her do this. This gift was hers to give and her eternal blessing.

::love letters from my children::dates with daughters::connections with sons::a faithful dog::a broken egg, found and treasured::Vacation Bible School::crème brûlée and the way it makes me all happy when seven little girls say it’s the best dessert ever and thank you for making it::friends who bless::so many good books::summer swims::counting my blessings today.

{Counting One Thousand Gifts~#21-30}

Technorati Tags: Central Oregon, childhood, counting blessings, country life, One Thousand Gifts

Missing Front Teeth

Posted June 20th, 2011 by Jen in family life, features
3 Comments »

::missing front teeth::sisters::learning to ride::a horse to love::finding expression for your passion::sketching by the lake because your grandma sketches and you’ve inherited her gift::being six and finding a butter knife washed up on shore, treasuring it like you’re in Ancient Egypt and you discovered a king’s tomb::reflections in the water::learning to sense which way the wind’s blowing::cat and dog curled side by side::counting my blessings today.

{Counting One Thousand Gifts~#11-20}

Technorati Tags: Central Oregon, childhood, counting blessings, country life, family life, One Thousand Gifts

Freckles and Big Ears

Posted June 13th, 2011 by Jen in family life, features
8 Comments »

::freckles and big ears on my boy, and his home-made fishing pole::strawberries growing plump in my garden::noses buried in books::fish taco night::surprise meeting with an old friend::wildflowers thrust through the window for me by her small hands::their joy at discovering a quail’s nest::the bright blue butterfly that followed me around::frogs that let small girls catch them::picnic on the front lawn with all their little book club friends:: counting my blessings today.

{Counting One Thousand Gifts~#1-10}

Technorati Tags: childhood, counting blessings, country life, family life, One Thousand Gifts

A Package from England!

Posted June 12th, 2011 by Jen in book reviews, education, france/french
3 Comments »

I really was like a kid at Christmas yesterday! My friend Anita Mathias, a writer and blogger from Oxford, sent me the movie Être et Avoir, an award-winning French film that we’d discussed, and it being difficult to procure here in the states, she generously mailed me her very own copy.

It was with huge surprise that I opened the mailbox yesterday, expecting some bills and ads perhaps, but not a package from England! I knew Anita was sending me the movie, but so quickly? She’s a professional!

The movie intrigued me first of all because it’s a French film, a genre I love, and more importantly, because it’s on the subject of education – in particular a one-room schoolhouse in rural France in modern times, not some century-old school. I honestly didn’t know this institution existed in France, but apparently there are quite a number of such little village schools.

Être et Avoir (2002) is a documentary by the celebrated French film-maker Nicolas Philibert that chronicles one full school year in the life of teacher Monsieur Lopez and his 12 students aged four to eleven in a French village in the Auvergne. It’s been called a movie that every teacher and parent should see, and it’s been said that M. Lopez has an extraordinary talent for teaching. For those of you (like me) who are engaged in multi-age teaching of small groups, I think Être et Avoir will be incredibly enlightening. My review will follow shortly.

And Anita intrigues me just as much. Her background is colorful and varied–born and raised in India, she tells a fascinating story of her conversion and her work with Mother Teresa in Calcutta. Anita goes on to live in America for a season, teaching at the College of William and Mary in Virginia, and writing two books, Wandering Between Two Worlds and The Church That Had Too Much. She is happily now back in Oxford, raising two girls and a garden with her husband and business partner, Roy, oh, and running a publishing company. My kind of woman!

You can visit Anita at her blog, Dreaming Beneath the Spires, where you will be inspired and educated at every turn. And maybe you’ll end up with a free movie, too, someday.

{I’m saving my Royal Mail stamp, Anita.}

Technorati Tags: Etre et Avoir, education, France, French films, Anita Mathias, multi-age teaching

Just a Wednesday in June

Posted June 8th, 2011 by Jen in family life
2 Comments »

Just wanted to drop a pin on the map. I’m here.

The kids are all finished with school tomorrow; three have been done for two weeks, and the fourth had the tough job of continuing on for those extra days whilst the siblings played.

I’m regrouping my homeschool kids tomorrow for a play time and to give them their first summer book club book: The Penderwicks: A Summer Tale of Four Sisters, Two Rabbits, and a Very Interesting Boy by Jeanne Birdsall. It’s the first in a wonderful, witty, charming, sort of old-fashioned series of books, and we’ll read them all this summer. I have to say that I was completely inspired when I discovered that the author, Ms. Birdsall of Massachusetts, didn’t begin the book publishing business until age 41 or 42. See, life does begin at 40.

It feels like change is in the air. All senses are alert; I’m listening hard, hoping to have keen ears and a wise heart, wide eyes, sensitive soul.

Technorati Tags: Central Oregon, family life, book club, homeschool ing, Jeanne Birdsall, The Penderwicks

D-Day in Color

Posted June 6th, 2011 by Jen in france/french, history, politics/world news
0 Comments

D-Day in color.

By the numbers:

160,000 Allied troops, supported by more than 5,000 ships and 13,000 aircraft, landed along a 50-mile stretch of French coastline. While the Allies sustained major casualties–9,000 killed or wounded–more than 100,000 troops would go on to march across the Continent to defeat Hitler.

Their finest hour, as Churchill said on June 18, 1940.

But if we fail, then the whole world, including the United States, including all that we have known and cared for, will sink into the abyss of a new Dark Age made more sinister, and perhaps more protracted, by the lights of perverted science. Let us therefore brace ourselves to our duties, and so bear ourselves that, if the British Empire and its Commonwealth last for a thousand years, men will still say, “This was their finest hour.”

Remembering Normandy.

Tags: Allies, D-Day, France, Normandy, World War II

Weekend Links

Posted June 3rd, 2011 by Jen in blog stuff
2 Comments »

First week of June!

1. This is nauseating. For real? I’ll have a Coke.
2. Business 101 on ideas, money, greed, and enough.
3. $500 million of YOUR money to get a 5 year old to sit still? I could do it for free with a good book.
4. I am new.
5. The food pyramid is out. Dairy is off the plate.

Have a great weekend!