School Days and Treasured Friends

It's the last day of the second week of school. We are having such a good time. It beats last year by miles. This year we went back to My Father's World and chose their Exploring Countries and Cultures curriculum. God has been working an excitement in Fidget and me about people all over the world and how the Gospel is for them as well as us. I love that the curriculum is all about this.

Here is an Inuit- inspired carving, a dove out of Ivory... soap, that is. Fidget made it last week. The first two weeks of the curriculum were introductory, and didn't direct us to study any particular countries, so she and I did a little research and study on our own. We looked at Botswana (setting of the No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency series by Alexander McCall Smith- these are grown up books but so charming, I have been reading them to Fidget the past few months), India, and North American Indians, particularly Seminoles, who came from Creeks, who we are ancestors of; and including the Inuits of the far North and their amazing carvings.

I love how there is time to follow our interests and study other things in this curriculum. It is Charlotte Mason-inspired, that is, scheduled studying in the morning, leaving the afternoons free. We don't always finish by lunch, but we're not in a hurry either, and we have been running first thing in the morning. Fidget earns a dollar a mile. It's gotten expensive lately, but that's a good thing.

After all our diligence these 2 weeks, it was lovely to get a call that a friend wanted to bring her kids to visit us in our tiny train-rattled apartment. She said she didn't mind any of the inconveniences, including what turned out to be an hour drive just to get to us.

I made these peanut butter cookies for their arrival. Fidget, who hates jelly no matter what, did not like these with the blackberry jam. But I left the jam off some and she didn't want to stop eating those. 

Ahh, tea and cookies with a friend. A perfect way to end the week.
It is such a blessing to have a friend dear enough, who loves you enough to go way out of their way for you. A good friend is a treasure to keep.

Happy Sunday!

Today my inlaws are on their way. All the talking and planning and cleaning up are over. They're really coming! Fig and I have a list a mile long of things we want to do with them. The topiary garden, the water, bike riding, the gelato shop, the knitting shop,the cliff walk,  the mansion tours... We can't wait! I hope to get some great pictures over the next couple of weeks.

The Pres ordered an underwater camera too, so I hope to have fun shots of all the things he finds for us. When I go down looking I realized I can't see well through the mask or goggles because I leave my glasses at home. But he is a good sport. He brings up lots of unusual things like sea stars and urchins, the other day he found a live conch, and he has salvaged useful things like a Razor scooter for Fidget.

There are several hours left til the folks come. The house is vacuumed, the laundry is clean, the bread just came out of the oven. Maybe there's still time to finish Mumsy's knitted birthday gift before they arrive. It's a toss-up though; I'm also reading Alexander Mccall Smith's The Saturday Big Tent Wedding Party, the latest in the No.1 Ladies Detective Agency series. It's so hard to pull away from a good book!

These days I am enjoying Alexander McCall Smith's No.1 Ladies' Detective Agency series. In The Good Husband of Zebra Drive, the main character, Mma Ramotswe, thinks about all the bad in the world. It can be overwhelming, but what is there to combat it? "...small acts of helping others, if one could; small ways of making one’s own life better: acts of love, acts of tea, acts of laughter. Clever people might laugh at such simplicity, but, she asked herself, what was their own solution?" 

In the series Mma Ramotswe seems to be a Christian, yet that is not what the books are about. Whether Christian or not, we all want to make the world better. This quote struck me because it got me thinking about what we can each do. Making our own lives better, ironically, comes from doing things not for ourselves but for others. Christ came and showed us the way to do this. He showed us there is no one insignificant, no one not worth His time. In my quiet house at dawn it is hard for me to imagine having a big impact on people. But the little things we do to help, to encourage others really can make a difference.