{this moment} – A Friday ritual. A single photo – no words – capturing a moment from the week. A simple, special, extraordinary moment. A moment I want to pause, savor and remember. If you’re inspired to do the same, visit Soulemama to leave a link to your ‘moment’ in the comments for all to find and see.
{this moment} – A Friday ritual. A single photo – no words – capturing a moment from the week. A simple, special, extraordinary moment. A moment I want to pause, savor and remember. If you’re inspired to do the same, visit Soulemama to leave a link to your ‘moment’ in the comments for all to find and see.
Nothing beats the experience of setting up your very own sidewalk store. In my day, it was simply a cardboard sign, a table and a jug of lemonade. This week my kids took the old fashioned lemonade stand to a whole new level (and made about 10 times more than I ever did). 
It all started when I pulled out the bin of beads and the skein of yarn solely as a way to get the kids’ hands busy while I read their American History to them. Next thing I know they’ve got a whole slew of beaded necklaces ready to sell. Sell? To whom? “Well to whoever will buy them,” Joseph calmly explained to me. 
“You should set up a little store out front on the sidewalk. Maybe some neighbors will pop over and buy a necklace,” I told him and then I went about my business.
Next thing I knew, the boys were all sorting through toy bins and book shelves trying to find anything they could to sell. 
“Hey Mom,” William called, “these books out here…whatcha planning to do with them?”
“I was going to drop them off at Half Price Books,” I replied.
“No need. We’ll sell these for you at our store,” he gleefully responded as he added them to the pile of stuff for sale.
Dax pulled out the table from the schoolroom. Joseph made price tags and signs. I frantically searched the cabinets for lemonade ingredients. No such luck. But I found some Lemon Chiffon Tea, lollipops and Hershey kisses. 
Their first customer arrived. It was Grandma Nury. She tried her best to bargain with them. At first they resisted despite her protests that she should get a family discount. Then she made the comment that she really liked the rosary and was willing to pay $5 (not $6) for it. The “rosary” she was referring to was never meant to be a rosary. It was simply a necklace with a crucifix on it (although for all I know, maybe it has the correct number of beads on it…no one bothered to count). The boys looked at one another and silently seemed to communicate a message between themselves. Then they innocently looked at her and said, “Mmm, yes it is quite nice and we’ll gladly take $5 for it.” Omitting the truth for the sake of $5 or shrewd business men? I still haven’t decided, but I promised to mind my own business so I stayed out of it (although later we did have a brief discussion on the ethics of being honest and true in what you sell). 
Their first sale was a success! 
Neighbors came by…some bought their overpriced goods; others laid down 50 cents and enjoyed their cup of Lemon Chiffon Tea. With each sale, the boys grew more confident: Joseph in giving change; William in advertising their goods; Andrew in waving to the cars. 
In the end, Joseph handed over the following statistics to summarize their experience (I added the last one):
Items to sell: 10
Change in the envelope before the store opened: $5
Business owners: 3 
Investor: 1 
Customers: 8
Items sold: 9
Money made: $31
Tips received: $4
Hours spent minding the store: 2.5
Lollipops taken from the inventory to keep the little ones busy: 2
The experience of a sidewalk store: Priceless
{this moment} – A Friday ritual. A single photo – no words – capturing a moment from the week. A simple, special, extraordinary moment. A moment I want to pause, savor and remember. If you’re inspired to do the same, visit Soulemama to leave a link to your ‘moment’ in the comments for all to find and see.
Once upon a time there was a family of children who ADORED all things Lego. They begged their mom for a summer full of Legos. The mom thought and thought and came up with a plan. They’d spend the summer with a Lego Lab, and that mom, being a sneaky, but brilliant mom, would use the Lego Lab to continue with their language lessons, after all, what better way to be inspired to tell a story than to build it with Legos. School disguised as play! So, not wanting to burden herself with planning and designing lessons (after all, she needed a summer break, too), she searched high and low for something already ready to use. And eureka! She found it. Quickly, she ordered it (and winced only once at the price, rationalizing that Lego character sets could easily be just as expensive but not nearly so open-ended plus the convenience factor of having lessons already ready, Lego pieces organized beautifully and with purpose and a software program with raving reviews obliterated any second thoughts she might possibly have). She and the children waited, very impatiently, for the first day of “summer school” and voila! today you can find this mom kicking up her heels, reaping the benefits of a brilliant idea as all these little minds are engaged, active and learning. Grammar lessons disguised as a Lego Lab…seriously brilliant! 
I thought you might enjoy a sample of what the Lego Lab is producing. This particular lesson was focused around the fairy tale genre. We brainstormed ideas about what makes a fairy tale a fairy tale and special characteristics of fairy tales. We discussed fairy tales that they know and are familiar with and checked to see if they had all the characteristics that we had listed (they did!). Then I gave the kids an idea starter and off they went to finish the story by building in the Lego Lab. 
*Unfortunately, we’re having an issue with the StoryVisualizer software, which the Lego team is working very diligently to solve. In the meantime, we’re using good old-fashioned Word to record our stories.
The Battle of the Knight and the Princess by Joey
Once upon a time, there was an unhappy princess. She was in her castle, thinking about how to kill her enemies. She disguised herself as a bride getting married in the castle in case the bad guys broke in. Her enemies would think that she was just a bride. They would not realize she was the princess they were after.
There was a knock at the palace door. A stranger walked in and approached the princess. He gave her a chalice filled with potion and told her, “Drink this and it will make all your dreams come true.”
The stranger watched closely as the disguised princess thought about what to do with the chalice and the potion. “Will it really make my dreams come true?” thought the princess, “or will disaster strike and I will get wounded or killed?” She unsteadily drank the potion, with her hand shaking.
The empty chalice fell to the floor. The princess lay unconscious beside the chalice. 
A moment later she was awakened by a handsome knight. 
The knight said, “Get dressed in this,” and he gave her some knight armor to disguise herself.
He gave her a sword to go with the knight armor. They both went off into the shadows.
Then the two villains came to the spot where the knight and the princess were hiding. There was a short villain and one with a red hood. The one with the red hood said, “Show your faces.” 
The knight said, “I have never shown my face since I became a knight, unless you consider when I go to bed.”
The princess just said, “No.”
The villains became angry with the princess and the knight. They went to go fetch their dragon. The short villain climbed onto the front of the dragon and the red-hooded villain climbed onto the back. They soared off into the sky. 
The princess and the knight only had a little dragon, but he could fly, too. They both climbed onto their little dragon and flew away after the villains. 
The good guys used their swords and cut off the wing of the evil dragon. The dragon, with the villains on his back, spiraled to the ground. The villains climbed off. The heroes steered their dragon to the ground and then they climbed off. The red-hooded villain revealed his sword, pulling it out, but the heroes already had their swords out and were ready to fight. A battle began.
Then the knight knocked the villain down with his skilled fighting techniques. The hood fell off, revealing an angry red face. Then the princess said to the red-hooded villain, “I am the princess you were hunting down, but now I’m going to put an end to you.” She picked him up and threw him off the side of the mountain. The villain was slashing his sword wildly as he flew through the air, trying to see if he could get back up, but he swung his sword so wildly that he cut off his own head. 
Then the princess and the knight grabbed their swords and carried the other villain to the castle and put him behind bars. 
A happy ending came to the kingdom. The villains were no longer a threat and the princess and the knight got married and lived happily ever after. 
THE END
There is nowhere else on earth, aside from a cemetery, where death rests so peacefully alongside life.
Maybe it’s harder to see in some cemeteries. I imagine there are some spooky ones out there (or maybe that’s a Hollywood depiction of death and cemeteries…I personally have never found myself lost in a cemetery in the middle of the night, but I think with a wide enough imagination that could be a bit less peaceful) and I’m sure there are plenty of unkempt cemeteries, but even then there is a clear “juxtaposition of so much life and death all in the same place,” as Kerry Weber describes her visit to a cemetery in her book Mercy in the City, “I expect a kind of somber dreariness to the place, but pink budding trees are before me, and two rabbits are hopping across a fresh, green lawn.” It’s a bit of irony, isn’t it? That the dead rest surrounded by so much life.
I like visiting the cemetery. I find peace amongst the dead that often alludes me when I am amongst the living. It just feels so peaceful. And it’s not just because its inhabitants are peacefully resting. It really is decidedly peaceful. There’s an unspoken agreement here. To just accept things as they are. These people have already had their stories written in stone. There’s no going back. No changing things. No regretting mistakes. No wondering what the future holds. No worry, no strife. That, in itself, is a celebration of peace.
Or it could be that it’s just the physical quiet that makes it peaceful. Or maybe it’s a spiritual sense that makes it peaceful. Maybe it’s the acceptance that death is a certainty for each of us and it’s out of our control. We simply have to live and accept our fate. I don’t really know what it is. I just know it’s peaceful. And that feeling of peace when I wander from gravestone to gravestone is nothing like the feeling that settles in my soul when I contemplate death.
I tend to view death as an overwhelming thought, wondering what will happen to those I leave behind. Knowing life will go on, but wondering if I will have left a deep enough mark. I contemplate the physicality of it…will it hurt? Will it be quick? Will I teeter on the edge of consciousness, not understanding the process? I also consider the spirituality of it. How will I be judged? Did I do enough, say enough, love enough, forgive enough, pray enough? Will I be welcomed at the banquet of Heaven? I know it’s a matter of faith, but it’s also a matter of being human. The need to question and contemplate. The need to understand.
But see, that’s where I’m wrong. Death isn’t meant to be understood. And it isn’t about me or what I leave behind. It’s a mystery. A great unknown. The only thing we know about it is that God wills it and therefore, we must accept it. Death isn’t what’s meant to be contemplated…it’s the living that’s meant to be. Because in contemplating the living, we find peace in accepting the dying. 
As adults, we grasp the finality of death but sometimes lose sight of the spiritual freedom it entails. Children, on the other hand, as in all things they do, grasp it without trying to understand it. They accept it. They embrace it for exactly what we have taught them to believe it is…the beginning of eternity.
I am Catholic, however, I do not profess to be a perfect Catholic, maybe not even a good Catholic. But I try. And I believe. I trust and hope in eternal life. It makes me wonder how depressing it must be to a nonbeliever. How incredibly pointless this life must seem. I find peace in my faith. I am grateful to believe in something greater than myself. To have hope in a life beyond this one.
The Church, while focusing on the living and teaching those of us here how to live to achieve eternal life, never forgets those that have gone on before us. It is first mentioned in Maccabees, when Judas calls his soldiers to pray for the souls of the soldiers who had died wearing amulets taken from pagan temples. 
Remembering the dead is a prevalent practice today in the Church. One of the Corporal Works of Mercy in the Catholic Church is to bury the dead. It is a recurrent theme throughout the Bible, beginning most notably with Abraham purchasing a field in which to bury his wife. A bit impractical for those of us today who are confined by city ordinances and laws about burial grounds and hard to practice for those of us who are not grave diggers. We do not even follow early Christian traditions (at least in America), as cultural norms do not allow for us to prepare the body for burial with spices and oils. While we cannot physically be tasked with actually burying the dead, the Church does ask that when we lose a loved one, we follow Church protocol for burying the body on sacred ground. We can attend wakes and funerals and we can pray rosaries for the souls of those we have lost. But also, as with all the works of mercy, it is about showing compassion and mercy for our fellow man and treating everyone we encounter, dead or alive, with the respect and dignity due simply to the fact that we are each created in God’s image.
A more practical work of mercy for most of us is one of the Spiritual Works of Mercy in which the Church calls us to pray for the dead. This I can easily do. And it makes me feel like I’m doing something with regards to death. Perhaps I’m saving a soul from Purgatory. Perhaps my simple prayer, offered for the soul of the grave I pass in the cemetery, helps free that soul from the clutches of the devil.
Or maybe it’s not even about the spirituality. Maybe, again, it’s about showing respect for those around us, simply by reflecting on a life lived. I pass a gravestone and I let the deceased’s name settle on my tongue, imagining that they, too, lived a life probably much like mine. A life of monotony, with bits of excitement thrown in occasionally. A life marked by joy and happiness, grief and sorrow, hope and regrets. We’re all really so much the same. Our stories differ, but the themes behind our stories are all the same. Each of us is just passing the time until we accept our fate to die. For those of us who believe in Jesus, we can accept that fate a little more easily, as we are promised an eternal life. 
I may not be able to bury the dead and I may not be able to understand the great mystery of death, but I can visit the cemetery and pray for the souls of the bodies buried there. I want to imagine that someday, someone will do the same for my soul when my body is buried beneath the ground. I delight in taking my children along with me. I don’t want them to fear death. I want them embrace it as the ultimate goal and destination of a dedicated Christian. I want them to pray and wonder and contemplate. I want them to walk amidst the gravestones, reflecting on the lives lived, the stories untold, the hope of these souls living in eternal bliss. I want the peace of the cemetery to consume them. So that when death is at their door, they embrace it with open arms.
{A Week of Gratitude (in pictures)}:the chance to visually reflect on my daily blessings; an opportunity to let the good in my life soak deep in my memory; a moment to appreciate the happiness that surrounds me; a chance to acknowledge how incredibly beautiful this life really is
Sunday: A Mother’s Day bike ride with my most favorite people.
Monday: An indoor “picnic” prepared lovingly by Katie.
Tuesday: Practicing mama.
Wednesday: A nice game of Doggy, Doggy, Where’s Your Bone? Andrew, oh excuse me, I mean Spot, giggled and giggled with excitement!
Thursday: Art. Messy, beautiful art.
Friday: Concocting tea with my favorite little herbalist.
Saturday: Access to clean water (I never seem to appreciate water until the city is under a boil advisory and I realize how much I take access to clean water for granted!)
{this moment} – A Friday ritual. A single photo – no words – capturing a moment from the week. A simple, special, extraordinary moment. A moment I want to pause, savor and remember. If you’re inspired to do the same, visit Soulemama to leave a link to your ‘moment’ in the comments for all to find and see.
Outside my window…I look out and see this kid sitting, relaxing, while reading the Penny Saver. I’d be willing to give a penny for his thoughts.
I am remembering…our old kitchen and playroom (I was looking through old pictures to find one of Joseph when he was little but I ran across this instead)…my goodness, I forgot about the wood paneled walls! And those bar stools…where in the world did we get those? Oh and the random door! And the mint green formica…be still my beating heart! (The bar stools are missing in the renovation pictures, but just in case you’re worried…we did update those, too!)
I am thankful for…a little girl who likes pink. Even if that’s all she likes.
I am watching…Downton Abbey with Dax at night. I’m feeling quite British these days as I’m also listening to The Lake House by Kate Merton (read by a British narrator) and I just finished The Summer Before the War (which took place in England) and Me Before You (another book that took place in England). Right. I’ve got to go for tea now. No really. Herbal infusion though not black tea. Does that count?
I am listening…to some little person pecking away at the piano keys.
I am wondering…where the time went! Look at how tall Belle is getting! I swear she went from this…
to this overnight!
I am laughing…about William’s reaction to my new Eddie Bauer capri pants that I had on the other day. I asked him if he liked them and I could tell he was really struggling to come up with an appropriate response. Finally, he said, very slowly, “Yeeesss, I like them, but aren’t they, well, aren’t they a little short for you?” Welcome to the world of fashion where the laws of reason don’t always apply.
I am reflecting…on this thought from Me Before You…”Just a few weeks away from home could rub the familiarity right off someone. I felt like she was on the path to being someone I wasn’t quite sure of. I felt, weirdly, as if I were being left behind.” I wonder if this is how I’ll feel someday when my kids grow up and travel without me. I wonder if anyone ever felt this way about me when I began traveling.
In the schoolroom…we are wrapping up our school year. This is our last week! Then it’s a week off before our summer plans begin. Summer plans are all done and ready to go…a few of our upcoming favorites are our United States history and geography (these plans are full of great literature, copywork and narration opportunities!) and Lego StoryStarter (for Language Arts) plans.
Around the house…sorting through loads of toys and stuffed animals. The birthday marathon is about to begin and with it a dozen new toys will need to find a place to be stored, so it’s out with the old and in with the new, I suppose.
In the kitchen…all kinds of herbal remedies…Valerian Tincture, St. John’s Wort oil, a Buckwheat pillow with lavender (that I sewed myself…amazing, quite honestly!).
I am wearing…a black skirt and a sleeveless top that’s white with the outline of flowers in black and gray…gosh, I am terrible at describing things. It might be easier to just show you…
We are preparing for…summer. It’s already getting quite hot. We were playing with Belle and Joe the other day and Belle asked if I minded if the kids got a drop or two of water on their clothes…clearly, Belle and I view “a drop of two of water” a bit differently! The kids had a blast, though, and Lori was kind enough to let us borrow dry clothes for the ride home. 
Someday I am going to miss…watching MacGyver in the middle of the night while I rub Katie’s growing pains with Roo tucked closely into my side.
I am re-reading…To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee in preparation for reading Go Set a Watchman.
One of my favorite things…these two.
A peek into my day…out for a walk around the neighborhood.
Please visit The Simple Woman’s Daybook for more daybook entries.
{A Week of Gratitude (in pictures)}: the chance to visually reflect on my daily blessings; an opportunity to let the good in my life soak deep in my memory; a moment to appreciate the happiness that surrounds me; a chance to acknowledge how incredibly beautiful this life really is
Sunday: A tree to climb, a place to explore
Monday: Finishing our school work early so I could finish my book club book (and a beautiful day to do it!)
Tuesday: The arrival of the much anticipated Thirty-One bags. Loving this new purse.
Wednesday: A beautiful day, a walk to the grocery store and a quick produce scavenger hunt. A spontaneous plus to homeschooling.
Thursday: I honestly have no idea what they are doing, but the fact that for once they are all laughing together makes my heart sing songs of joy.
Friday: A playdate with dear friends and watching the expression on Joe’s face as he grabbed that hose!
Saturday: Watching Andrew as he invents. First he nailed the two pieces together, then he tied a rope around them. Total joy as he ran around the yard dragging his “airplane” behind him.
With Every Intention 