fish we found today

Today after much effort Hannah was able to capture 4 little pond fish to bring home for observation. Only 3 would show up for this photography session. I guess the other one was camera shy. The pond we took them from had tons of these in all sizes. The babies were easier to get at because they were really close to the shore. This particular pond is teeming with trout, so I am fairly certain they are baby trout. We used an aquarium fish net from Walmart and a 1 gallon tupperware container with a lid from Walmart.

First Nature outing for 2009 school year!

Today we had our first "official" nature study outing. It was fabulous. We went to Bethany Lakes Park in Allen by our the neighborhood we used to live in.

First we spotted many turtles and ducks. They were incessantly begging for food, so we crossed the street to Kroger and bought day old bread. This did the trick to get them close enough for pictures. We were quickly surrounded by about a dozen turtles and a few ducks.

While feeding the eager pond creatures, we spotted a beautiful white Egret that was hunting for food. We also found a marshy area with schools of little fish. They too devoured the bread, but were very hard to catch. We used a small aquarium net and 1 gallon clear plastic container with a lid. We filled our container with the pond water and desperately wanted to catch a few fish to take home for further study. Hannah was the successor in capturing some tiny fish. We now have 4 tiny fish ( minnows?) that we will take home and add to our pond snails. Pictures will post later.

Starting to blog again

It has been 9 months since I posted. I wish I could say this is because for the past nine months have been pregnant and too sick to blog. However, my excuses are really good. We had an estate sale and sold 80% of our belongings, we moved and we started over and had to buy all new stuff. I HATE shopping. It is such a chore and shopping for a new "look" ( we went from victorian to contemporary) was quite an undertaking.

We are settled in our 1400 SF apartment and thanks to IKEA and apartment sized furnishings, we fit quite nicely. We love it here.

In November, Brian started a new job selling and consulting for a CPA firm that sells, supports and installs accounting software for non-profits. His new job is only 7 miles from the apartment.

My newest "pleasure" reading book is a trilogy called The Hawk and The Dove by Penelope Wilcox. I LOVE it. I heartily recommend it. It is very interesting and follows the lives of several monks in the 1400s. The first 3 chapters were hard to get through. I am glad I did. I have a hard time putting it down now now. I am nearly finished with the 2nd book.

Here is what Amazon's product descrition had to say about this book: "Rich with imagery and emotion, this collection of captivating tales of a 13th century community reflect the timeless human drama of people learning to love and to accept God's grace. Though they belonged to another century, their struggles are our own--finding our niche; coping with failure; overcoming pride and anger, pain and insecurity; determining who we are before God. In their daily rhythm of work and worship, they discover that the whole of life is a love story about a tender and passionate God. "

Currently, Hannah and I are reading the Golden Goblet. I LOVE this book. I read it to Calvin and Lydia 4 years ago. It is great historical fiction for Egypt. It makes the history come alive. This is one of my favotire read-a-loud adventure historical fictions. GREAT for boys!!!!!

Hannah and I are just finishing TODAY a WONDERFUL MUST READ to children book. Last year we saw the family film and loved the movie so much, I knew we had to read the book. The movie was spot on too. We are getting the movie in the mail from Netflix today and will be watching it again tonight. PLEASE READ this book to your kids. It is so excellent. the Treasures of the Snow by Patricia St. John is about mistakes, revenge, and forgiveness. I cannot begin to express how good this story is. I tear up everyday when I am reading to Hannah.

I hope to post more regularly. I love books, and my purpose for this blog is to share my thoughts about books that I am currently reading. I carefully choose my books, so I hope that I can heartily recommend all the books that I post on this blog.

Livin in JOY,

Adrienne

finished Lilith

I finished Lilith. WOW. This is the most amazing fantasy book. Brian is reading it now. He agrees that it is a crazy tale. George MacDonald has an amazing imagination.

The twists and turns are strange and interesting, but it all comes together at the end.

To read Lilith on-line in its entirety you can go to this cool website. It also lists tons of other writings, non-fiction, poems, sermons, fiction, etc written by MacDonald

http://www.george-macdonald.com/etexts.htm

Elizabeth is reading one of his children's books called The Princess and The Goblin. This can be read on the etext website too.

update on reading Lilith

I must say that since I am on about page 100 Lilith is not for kids. It is very deep spiritually and very abstract. Children under age 12 would probably get very confused.

It is EXELLENT. I keep telling my husband...this is such a good book. You have to read it.

I recommend it to all who liked Lord of The Rings. It has a strangeness to it that Tolkien had. It is stranger though. It is so deep spiritually. I get to all kinds of golden nuggets and stop and ponder. He writes in such a beautiful style. I am trying to figure out where the story is going...which is why I cant put it down.

Here is an example where theology is being spoken in the story:

" 'How then am I to make use of your hospitality?' I asked. 'By accepting it to the full'. He answered. ' I do not understand.' ' In this house no wakes of himself'. 'Why?' 'Because no one anywhere ever wakes of himself. You can wake yourself no more than you can make yourself'."

My comment on this quote:
This is acually quite true. The only one who can wake us out of our spiritual deadness is the Lord. He beckons us to accept his hospitatlity and come rest in him. But, so often we are afraid and reject his invitation to come out of our wretched state of death dwelling! In the story, this appears to be exactly what the main character is wrestling with. It is so well written. I hope you will buy the book and read it.

Adrienne

For the Love of George MacDonald

I love his books. His imagination and ability to write amazes me.

I just bought Lilith by George MacDonald from Amazon. I started it today and can't put it down. It is kind of scary and I think it would be a great Steven Speilberg movie. Anyhow..have any of you read it?

It has a forward by CS Lewis that is an exerpt from his book called: George Macdonald: An Anthology : 365 Readings.

Lewis says of George MacDonald's writing " It arouses the sensations we have never had before, never anticipated having, as though we had broken out of our normal mode of consciuosness and possessed joys not promised to our birth. It gets under our skin, hits us at a level deeper than our thougths or even our passions, troubles oldest certainties till all questions are opened and in general shocks us more fully awake than we are for most of our lives".

I am at chapter 5 and currently, I am seeing where CS Lewis may have gotten his idea for the wardrobe in The Narnia series. If you look at the cover of Lilith there is a mirror on the front page that transports the protagonist into another world.

Fabulous (must read) Read-A-Louds:

ALL books by Kate DiCamillo... GREAT for reading a-loud. We LOVED The Miraculous Journey of Edward Tulane and TheTale of Desperaux. http://www.katedicamillo.com/

Dr. Doolittle series

Series of Unfortunate Events GREAT read-alouds. Very well written and not scary. Kids did not want me to stop reading. We read the first book in one night!

The Cricket on Times Square

Detectives in Togas and Mystery of the Roman Ransom by Henry Winterfield ( I don't remember which books is first) They are fun and teach Roman life through a GREAT mystery for kids.


The Child's Story Bible by Catherine Vos (This is the BEST Child's Bible in existence...you need to own this)

The Lost Princess: A Double Story by George MacDonald ...especially good to read to girls

At The Back of The North Wind by George MacDonald

Wind in the Willows

All books by Beatrix Potter

The House At Pooh Corner

Charlotte's Web

The Jungle Book by Rudyard Kipling

Just So Stories by Rudyard Kipling

The Story of Holly and Ivy by Rumer Godden (my favorite picture book)

Stranger in the Woods by Carl J. Samms III and Jean Stoick ( fabulous photographs set to a darling story)

James Herriot's Treasury For Children ( short stories about his adventure with animals as a veterinarian)

The Runaway by Patricia St. John ( Moody) Out of print... buy it if you can find it. You will want to read this to the kids at some point....especially around Easter. FABULOUSLY makes the story of Jesus healing the demon possesed girl come to life.

Vinegar Boy ( another Easter story)

Roald Dahl books are so fun to read aloud. His style lends itself to being read out loud. He has lots of short stories and many of his longer ones are made into terrible movies that I hated. His style of writing is so fun to read to the kids. I loved The Twits.

Island of the Blue Dolphins

From The Mixed up Files of Mrs. Basil E Frankweiler

Anna of Byzantium by Tracy Barrett

The Golden Goblet by Eloise Jarvis McGraw

I have a BLOG!

Calvin created a Blog for me. This is fun. FYI: HSF MOM is my blog name. Can you guess what it means?
Home
School
Frea(k)s
Mom

We call our selves this as a fun joke in our family. My kids came up with this for my blog name.

I look forward to using this to post my favorite books and movies, since those are my favorite hobbies.

Currently, I am reading The Sunday Philosophy Club by Alexander McCall-Smith. My mom, my sister and I are all reading it together. This will be a good place for us to comment to each other about the book.

I am reading BOY by Roald Dahl aloud to the kids for fun. I also am reading various James Herriot Stories a-loud to the kids. Hannah and I are doing shared reading out loud the Lion the Witch and The Wardrobe.

The kids and I are getting a kick out of watching The Alfred Hitchcock Presents OLD episodes on our Netflix "Watch it now" on the computer. They have to finish all their school to get to watch them.

We are also watching All Creatures Great and Small (to go with the James Herriot books) series from the library. It is quite amazing how well the books match the lines that they act in the show. They did a great job on this film series.