What we brought from the MN Conference

Besides finding a few good used books, we shopped at St. George's Books and found new color pencils on sale, CDs (one a Jim Weiss CD) and more.

We also bought presents for the girls from Illuminated Ink:

Blank books, Marian apparition coloring cards, and Grotto kits to be made and given as gifts.

I stopped at WCC's booth and talked to the representative students, who obviously love their college and knew all of the kids from our homeschool group who attend it!

And finally I chatted with the friends at Adoremus Books and he said I can post their conference discount code which expires on June 14: MINN10

MN Conference

Another great Catholic Homeschool Conference in St. Paul! I enjoyed every minute of it! Husband took some pictures of my talk on Giussani's The Risk Of Education, and my other two sessions also went very well! Had great conversations at the Speakers' dinner with Maureen and Walter of Homeschool Connections! The Campus was very pleasant and the last picture shows our dorm.

For Good Measure by Ken Robbins

For Good Measure: The Ways We Say How Much, How Far, How Heavy, How Big, How Old by Ken Robbins, Roaring Book Press, New York, 2o10

Do you know why a pound is abbreviated lb? Or how long is a fathom? Or a furlong? Where do their names come from? What about how many acres does a section cover? How about how heavy is a dram? Or how long does an eon last?

Our eleven year old loved this interesting and clever new picture book, and so did I. It is illustrated with very nice photographs.

Also, it does talk about that international system Americans have become allergic to, and purposely ignore, and yet will eventually have to come terms with: the Metric System. But only briefly, since an explanation of the metric is, to the customary system, as the distance from the earth to the moon is when compared to the distance from the earth to the sun.

Just had to say that. The Brazilian (and metric) side of me.

Homeschool Ballet!

Numbers Six and Seven and friends...

Outside

In order: Squash planted in rows, first picture of 2010 garden, first daisies, first rose!

Finishing up my talk...

See you there!

Number Two in Lyons!

She looks so... French! Godsister Urszula and she spent the weekend together, and I hear it was a great one!

Downtown with Grandma and Number One

We celebrated Number One's birthday with a Sculpture Walk, great burgers at Hammers' Bros and milkshakes at Phillips Avenue Diner, aka the shiny diner.

Irises!

Thanks to Tammy M. who invited us homeschool moms to come and dig her landscape flowers last year when she had her house on the market! And to Number Five for taking the photos.

Number Three's Graduation Speech

Graduation ceremonies went wonderfully well, thanks be to God! We couldn't be prouder of our Gus, who spoke so well of our homeschool group and of his appreciation and gratitude to so many. I was a couple minutes late starting to tape it, his first couple of sentences being setting up the theme of "What I learned from homeschooling".

SMF 2010 Graduation

The Mass and music were beautiful, and the second picture shows L. K. offering flowers in honor of Mary, representing the three seniors devotion to Our Lady.

Mater & Magistra Blog Offer!

Check it out out at the magazine's companion blog!

Everyhitng is ready!

For Number Three's Graduation Open House!

...and a few more.

The top right one refers to his progress in Speech Therapy at almost 3 years old. He did not speak at 2 and half years old!

Little Number Three

We have been going through old photo albums to collect some for his graduation video...

New article

Read it here...

Lilac

Please pray with us for our dear stepfather-in-law Tom Whelan to get well soon!

Crabapples

They have not been this beautiful since we moved to the country!

I love very-early mornings...

My Second Grade class

I took some pictures of Mother's family picture albums while I was in Brazil... will post them periodically.

Try to find me... hint: I was a good student. The school was started by German Benedictines in Rio.

Sunday update with a further hint (since this task sees to be dumbfounding all readers): Good students received medals each month. Mother Superior would come in the class, we would all rise, and a special tablecloth would cover the teacher's desk. She would give each girl her grades in alphabetical order, and only the perfect-grade students would receive a medal, which we were supposed to wear daily as part of the uniform. (We did tuck it in the collar when we were running). In this meantime I found the site of the German Motherhouse of the Benedictine Missionaries of Tutzing, where the sister originally came from. They seem to have schools in Africa, South Korea, the Philippines, and... Nebraska and MN as well.

What is it?

There is something bright and warm in the sky... I have a vague memory of seeing it before... but can't quite remember what it is called.