jael on any given morning

brushing up on “how to be a lady.”

i hope the book mentioned that ladies don’t swear like sailors or train daily for a future appearance on wwf.  if not, i need to find that book.

since we know we can’t dance

we all decided to try anyways.  i was pretty impressed at our being  so gutsy.  look at sharla here, going for broke.  (now that randy knows what he’s been missing he will take that girl out more often.)  this was a bit of a last minute thing for me.  like i said, we were being brave.  i think only about half of my yes rsvp’s showed up; sickness, sprained ankles, etc.  my ballroom instructor got a sinus infection even.  and on top of that the weather was just plain rude.  but it was still a perfect evening.  it was.  i loved it.

the babies even had their own party.  we gave them crackers, which they passed around pre-moistened, left to right, in the height of baby civility.  (also, did i mention i stacked a lot of firewood?)

i tried to grab a shot of every couple, starting with my new neighbors down the street, kristen and justin.

the lovely cummings family.  what would we do without them?

nathan and marc.  i asked nathan to go stand beside his wife and smile and this is what i got.  as you can tell, they are trouble.

amy looked marvelous.

mr. and mrs. otto, slightly bedraggled.

tundra and her daughter chloe.  a fellow soccer mom with decidedly pleasant children.

the incomparable habbie-snackers!

brian and mari, our usual partners in crime for everything.

and the neighbors in back.  ron and betty.  just very nice people and they haven’t turned us into the cops once.

and here i had to assemble the stunning proof that having babies doesn’t make you fat.  it’s true.  mary and amy popped out their kids two months ago.  i think they should turn professional.  it’s taken my 9 months to loose that 30 pounds.

our feeble attempts.

kimberly doubled as our dance instructor.  if you didn’t know, she is good at everything.  what we did discover is that we all liked it.  it was marvelous fun and i could dance with my man all evening.  if i knew how, fortunately he’s much better.  the unanimous vote is that we are doing it again.  shooting for new years eve if you want to come.

i think i am going to find some youtube tutorials and work on it through the fall/winter.  not only is it fun, but i love all the philosophy behind it.  i love the idea of a family based dancing/celebrating/feasting culture to bring children up into.  someday, when they meet boys and girls, this is where they will bring them.  into the circle and not off in their car, away from it.  i love all the old ballroom scenes where the floor was practically demarcated by the chairs of dowagers.  how many grandma’s are at proms nowadays?  i love the rules, the defined space, the attention to detail, the chivalry, and the easy context for boys to relate to girls.  i find it strange that in victorian times it wasn’t proper for a lady to dance with her own husband.  yet today we would find it weird if we had to dance with someone else’s.  but it just shows how thoroughly victorian dance had been armored in etiquette and form.  modern dance, on the other hand, is lucky if it’s wearing panties, not to mention a corset.   something worth bringing back.

look at brian even.  that’s what i call shaping up.

i especially enjoyed eying the kids.  beck had a little bit of a melt down when his sister wouldn’t dance with him.  which was rather cute, “hold my hands, hold my hands!”  jael and hadley were off romping by themselves.  and i am dying to learn a country dance that we could all learn to do together.  like some giant ring around the rosie.

the other thing i really appreciated was how lovely the girls looked.  and we weren’t even trying that hard.  but just give us half a chance and we’d knock your socks off.  i’m sure.  i think it is a bit of a shame that there isn’t really anything to dress up for.  there are chances to dress fashionably and nicely, and if you happen to be driving down town on a saturday night you will see plenty of occasions of people dressing provocatively – but not very often do you see examples of people dressing “up.”  which just isn’t any fun.  there should be more occasions for whipping out our best and giving this good life it’s due.  i heard it said once that no one should party like christians.  and i would like to think that our parties should be characterized by our favorite china – theirs by those awful red plastic cups.  ha.  i think it’s so funny when my husband tries mocking my vintage glassware.  i get all up in arms and deliver him a sermon on the meaning of life and everything.  he thinks i’m insane.  i do try.  which all reminds me of this good quote over on femina about our “fighting gear“:

The point of the sermon was speaking about rejoicing in the evil day, and how our days are just as evil (or almost) as the evil days Paul was speaking of in Ephesians 5:16 where we are exhorted to redeem the time (verse 16). The verses following (in this context of evil days) include verse 19 where we are told to sing and make melody in our hearts to the Lord, “Giving thanks always for all things unto God and the Father in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ” (verse 20).

So when our president and our congress are doing evil things (which they are) and we see our country circling the drain (which it is), and we wonder what we are supposed to do in such evil times, then here are our marching orders: throw a big party to thank Him for all things.

My husband pointed out that we are not to fight for Thanksgiving but with Thanksgiving. He said something like this: Pull your thanksgiving out of the scabbard and start fighting with it.

all the good things are worth doing with gusto.  and in a world made and redeemed by a good god, there are a lot of good things.  incidentally, they all belong to us.

ball

i seriously would blog, but i accidentally deleted all the pictures on the camera.  and then i lost the camera.  plus, i’m kind of busy unearthing my backyard from under heaps of firewood for this:

it’s been on my mind for a while so i decided to just go for it.  if it’s not a horrible and gut-wrenching experience i hope to do it annually.  which sounds really fun.  although what would be even better is if i got my friends to have them too.  then you would have to stack all your firewood and hose off your patios.  nothing like incentive.  and maybe eventually i would learn how to dance.

am i supposed to update this needy little beast?

blogging.  gah.

school has started around here.  i have yet to surface.

not to mention the poor little kids.  their binders are bigger than they are.  i had to tease jehu mercilessly to get this smile.  fortunately he cracked or you would have thought my children were all sullen.

this year i decided to drill holes in everything and avoid the explosive school box ritual.  so far we really like it.  if they want to they can take their pages out to work on.  the binders lay flat and leave a large writing pad on one end.  works dandy.

jael loves it.  she wishes i could hang out with her all day and show her how to write her name and count apples and absolutely refuses to go play.  which means she sits there with incessant demands and complains about the inferior level of education she’s receiving.  well tough cookie princess.  wait until you turn five, i’m not a machine.

gideon and jehu, on the other hand, have their work cut out for them.  between homeschooling,  classical conversations, a few ambitious reading lists, choir practice, chores, catechism, soccer three times a week, and awanas – we’re pretty much booked.  i’m also going to try and start running with the boys now that it is too dark to go in the morning by myself.  my goal is to never hear them say they are bored, ever again.  we’ll see who dies first.  it’s not over ’til it’s over!

all hail

how do you have a clean floor when you feed zoo animals, three times a day, in a confined space?  it’s called genius.

seriously.  this little number is a microfiber cloth spray mop by leifheit.  it squirts a solution of two ounces don aslett’s “clean and brite” mixed with one court of water.  my guess is that i could get 8 uses out of one tank.  that’s like cheaper than the dirt i’m mopping up.  it’s ever ready, grab and go.  light, beautiful, no batteries, the solution is ph neutral with optical brighteners and no residue – which makes my floors looks fab.  i am so happy.  after all these years.

the trick, of course, is to mop every night.  otherwise it’s out-manned.  but if you keep on top of it you have a perpetually clean kitchen floor.  which is all i ask.  and it seriously takes less than two minutes.  some people don’t have to worry about it so much if they have very forgiving linoleum.  but mine doesn’t.  forgive.  ever.

victory.