7-Quick Takes

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This content uses referral links. Read our disclosure policy for more info. This means if you make a purchase, I get a little change to keep up my Diet Coke habit. It’s a win/win.

1. Today is the feast day for Zelie Martin and her husband Louis. They were a 19th century married French couple, known for their piety and devotion to God and for raising a Godly family. Five of their daughters became nuns, the most famous of which is St. Therese, the Little Flower.

Zelie was remarkable in her own right. She gave birth to nine children, but went through the heartbreak of losing four. When Baby Therese was born, she was afraid that she did not have enough milk to nurse her, and fearing that she might die too, she sent her off to live with another woman who agreed to nurse the baby until she could be weaned.

Zelie also realized that she would leave her family as she slowly died from breast cancer. I read some of the letters that she wrote about her sorrow in leaving her family behind.

But I think what I most admire about the Martins is that they were a simple couple, who endeavored to serve God with their lives on a daily basis. And because of those simple things, their marriage mattered greatly. I think all marriages matter greatly if they just follow that same recipe!

2. I had two big posts up this week.

The first one was an outline of the British Literature Course Rosie is going to tackle in our homeschool this year. I tried to be as thorough as I could about the resources we will be using.

The second was about my 6-year anniversary coming up of being completely grain and gluten free. I also talked about the tools and books I used to help me make that lifestyle change.

If those are of interest to you, please feel free to check them out.

3. So today, when I logged into my Instagram, this photo was front and center on one of my favorite accounts to follow. It was also hashtagged to death with things like # transfamily, transbirth, forallpeople. etc.

I was disappointed. This was one of my favorite places to get my birth fix and I admired how honest, and raw their Instagram account was on the topic of Birth. But now it was morphing into something else, and the administrators are even going gender-neutral in the name of exclusivity, using terms like “Birthing people” instead of “Mothers.”

I noticed something else today too. Although the site administrator is also an author and boasts a community of millions, she had some push back today. A lot of people were writing “unfollow.” in the comments. I did too. And now I’m blocked and the comments are disabled and unavailable for reading. I don’t think you would have seen that kind of open dissent before 2016. I’m glad to see it now.

4. Congratulations to the Women’s Soccer Team on their win last week. Too bad they haven’t mastered the art of gracious humility or thankfulness yet. In the all the clips I watched I’ve seen a lot of crowing and a lot of complaining, some flag dropping, but not a lot of “Thanks Mom and Dad for dragging us around to soccer practice for almost two decades so we could get to this level.”

But the whole women’s sports thing could be mute in a few years anyway.

5. I’m going to write a post next week about the whacky brand of Christianity preached by the current Bachelorette Hannah Brown. She said this to say a few weeks ago:

“Regardless of anything that I’ve done, I can do whatever, I sin daily and Jesus still loves me. It’s all washed and if the Lord doesn’t judge me and it’s all forgiven, then no other man, woman … anything can judge me,”

By “Judge” she means to tell her that she’s setting a bad example as a Christian. But I’ll wait until the big episode they’ve been teasing for weeks finally airs next Monday night.

6. Rosie is going to cantor for the first time this weekend with Mr. Pete. They’ve been practicing and I think she’ll do fine. Then in two weeks, she will try going solo. She has a beautiful voice, and I think this will give her a lot of confidence for plays and public speaking.

To add to that as well as her daily running schedule, she is also going to Shakespeare camp in a few weeks! It’s a busy summer.

7. With so many years of homeschooling and under my belt and lots of curriculum tucked away, I sometimes forget what I have already purchased and what’s available to me! Back when Rosie was in first grade I purchased The Wand from Bravewriter. I loved the idea of teaching phonics, spelling, word origin, grammar, capitalization, punctuation and vocabulary with REAL books. And the neat thing is I already had it on my computer and just have to print it out for Miss C.

Here are the real books they use, many of them I already have but I’m sure I can get most of the rest from the local library.

• Hop on Pop
• Fox in Socks
• A Kiss for Little Bear
• Danny the Dinosaur (Syd Hof)
• Mr. Putter and Tabby Pour the Tea (Cynthia Rylant)
• Mr. Putter and Tabby Pick the Pears
• Frog and Toad are Friends (Arnold Lobel)
• Frog and Toad Together
• Harry and the Lady Next Door (Gene Zion)
• Owl Moon (Jane Yolen)
• Chicken Soup with Rice (Maurice Sendak))
• Big Max: The Worlds Greatest Detective (Kin Platt)
• Harold and the Purple Crayon (Crockett Johnson)
• Olivia Goes to Venice (Ian Falconer)
• The Golly Sisters Go West (Betsy Byars and Sue Truesdell)
• The Story about Ping (Marjorie Flack and Kurt Wiese)
• Zack’s Alligator (Shirley Mozelle)
• Curious George (H.A. Rey)
• Amelia Bedelia and the Baby (Peggy Parish)
• The Relatives Came (Cynthia Rylant)