Summer is flying by, August is whisking me awake to the coming reality of fall. Summer really is coming to an end, and all too soon.  Decisions are piling up: what time will music lessons be, which classes should we take, should I join the co-op that is over 20 miles away, how should we re-organize the school-room, etc.

Most of the curriculum is chosen, we’ve made a four-year high school plan (subject to change, of course), with still many questions unanswered. Here is where I need another veteran home-educator to answer some questions for me, so I’ll be pulling out the list of people I know and calling for advice. I have yet to order the curriculum– that will be accomplished this week. The kids are chomping at the bit to get started, which is a good thing. I just hope the same gusto is still there (for all of us) come February!  🙂

My weekly thank-you’s:

347. submitting 4H projects for the county fair
348. a day swimming outside at the water park
349. making a four year high school plan; planning ahead
350. one of my boys is taller than me (oh, how quickly that happened)
351. hearing airplanes in the sky… for the annual air and water show at the Milwaukee lakefront. I admit, I don’t understand what types of airplanes flew, I know little of airplanes. I do know what a spectacular show this is, and I just marvel that… God allows man to fly, and to turn flips and fly in formation and dip and circle and dive.  And survive doing so. Amaaaazing.
352. a day spent hiking and swimming at a state park
353. time alone. eating a little bit of chocolate. getting caught up on blog reading and just plain thinking.
354. eggplant, tons of zucchini and cucumbers and ripened tomatoes from the vine
355. words like this, from Isaiah 21, that make me ponder their mystery:

18 I will make rivers flow on barren heights,
and springs within the valleys.
I will turn the desert into pools of water,
and the parched ground into springs.
19 I will put in the desert
the cedar and the acacia, the myrtle and the olive.
I will set pines in the wasteland,
the fir and the cypress together,
20 so that people may see and know,
may consider and understand,
that the hand of the LORD has done this,
that the Holy One of Israel has created it.

356. An answer to the question: “What is the purpose of art?”, by Luci Shaw:

“… poetry, and any art, says something in a way that nothing else can…”

“It’s my soul crying out to your soul: This is what I see and how I feel. Can you see it? Can  you feel it too?” – Luci Shaw

357. And the answer to this question “Does beauty matter? Why? How?

“It [beauty] is to the spirit what food is to the flesh. It fills an emptiness in you that nothing else under the sun can.” — Frederick Buechner

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Linking with others opening their eyes to bits of beauty around, at one of the most inspiring, beautiful places on the web, A Holy Experience: