The Getting of Wisdom

The fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge, but fools despise wisdom and instruction.

My heart breaks for kids tonight, when I see on the news that schools are  banning  them from cartwheeling, doing the splits, high fiving and "human contact".

 HUMAN CONTACT!!!!!!   Pllllleeeeeeeeeeze.  What is this world coming to.  When I worked in a Kindy (in the olden days :-)  most of the children came from happy two parent homes and those 3 & 4 year olds still loved a cuddle from the teachers.  One of my cousins who started teaching in a 1/2 class room spent a lot of the day listening and comforting small children.  Many had not had breakfast, many were dealing with domestic stress and just needed adult reassurence. She still teaches and finds it incredible that there is a no-contact rule even if it is good contact. 
I am finding it hard to come to terms with the fact that my two eldest grandsons are heading to Kindy in the New Year.  They will be four years old and are really excited.  Mumma cannot get her head around these small boys beginning their out-of-home education so young.  The more I am hearing of the new National Curriculum the more I fear for these little guys.  Apparently Queensland has been behind the other states and now they are making high demands from children right from Prep.

If you have had experience in the public schools, perhaps you can comment on this trend which is designed to increase the literacy rate in Australia.  Most home schoolers would agree that ramming stuff into small heads which are not ready for it can be disastrous.  Though we might follow curricula  and do formal work quite early, most of us are encouraging lots of outside play.  Yes, cartwheels!  Walking the fence and climbing trees. We also dish out hugs when necessary and often when it is not!

In a generation where some children seem to fail to mature or ever grow up, it seems very sad to take real childhood and all its golden memories  and learning experiences away from our youngsters, while they really are just children.

I love that my daughters are actively encouraging their children to play with risks allowed.  They are allowing them to make judgements and weigh up the consequences.  That means they also witness them falling, scraping knees and having their pride wounded.  The built- in life lessons gained from being allowed to play.  They get a good dose of dirt too, which is helping I am sure to build up their immune systems.

 I pray they will both be fine out in the big bad   scary exciting world of learning but as a mother who did not send any of them off anywhere until they were in their teens, it holds many dangers and snares to me.  Oh, don't even let me get started about bullying!

Lord protect them.





GS 2 gave me this beautiful letter today!
xoxox



The First 600

As I sat reading through my blog reader just now, the information bar at the top of the page reminded me that I had posted 599 posts at "Mumma's Place" !  Wow!  Almost four years of scribbles here on my little part of the web!  So, this is number 600 and I wasn't actually planning a post so I don't have a lot to say.

Perhaps a lot of my posts have been like that?  Just the random mumblings of a stay-at-home mum.  I know my earlier posts came a lot more regularly and I enjoyed blogging to a loose schedule.  Theological, family, school, memories.  Now, I post only about once a week and often just to remind myself that we actually did do stuff that week.  It is a diary of sorts.

One of the things I love most about blogging is all the wonderful characters I have met out there.  Some with very similar ideas and lives and others with very different ones.  In a stage of life where I am often unable to get out and about for social things, this has been a real delight and blessing.

I saw this little plaque recently and thought it humorous:

Every visitor brings joy to this house ~
Some when they arrive
And others when they leave!







I hope there are lots of good people bringing joy into your home!  Have a great weekend everyone.  The brilliant sunshine here is Central Queensland invites us to get outside and soak it up.

I had a plan...

I've mentioned before that we are with  Groves Christian College distance education.  After doing our own thing for about fourteen years I thought it would be very restrictive to have the supervising teachers from the school overseeing our progress.  In God's good Providence the staff at Groves have been a Godsend for me and my boys.

Today our teacher visited as they do a couple of times a year and it has been a great encouragement to have her input and suggestions.  Mostly, just good to be appreciated and supported so liberally!  Words of affirmation.(My love language)

I had many hopes, dreams and goals when I began homeschooling and some of them have come to pass.  But I think we all need to face the reality that "Man makes his plans but God directs his path."   Many unforeseen circumstances have come to pass over the last twenty years and brought us to where we are today.

I still embrace delight directed learning but find it harder and harder to find the delight in each day.  I still believe that knowing the Lord and Christian character are more important that academics, but some days it is just a case of getting through the work we need to do.

I still have the goal to raise useful, Godly adults and I am seeing some results but the gains are hard won and the disappointments are great.

But God......

When push comes to shove, God has always sent an answer. 

Like today, with the friendly, encouraging visit from our teacher.

Like last Friday evening when I met with just two of the mums at our Mother's night out.  It was great that just three of us turned up because we got to actually share about what was going well, what was not and what has worked over the years. (And we ate nice food that we didn't have to cook!)  Petunia and I got a zap of enthusiasm from one of the young, energetic mothers and she, hopefully gleaned something from our experience.

I had plans too for some major house work this last weekend, but the sickness has been ongoing with several members of the family having more than one bout of it, and no one felt up to it.  Of course, then we had a mad dash around this morning before the good teacher arrived!  I know, I know, no one else has to do that!

I've been thinking a lot about the way God directs our paths.  So often we ask for an answer, a sign, a directive and when it comes it is not what we wanted or expected.  God works the trials and the everyday occurrences of our lives for our good.  I have been focusing on this.  Knowing that our God shall supply all our needs!  I feel tired, but I am not to weary in well doing for in due season we shall reap.  God's promises are a constant source of encouragement and renewal of strength.

Snippets

Here is the last week or so in pics.  I hope everyone is doing well, whatever you are doing.  Especially the hard working home schoolers.  I am not on so often these days but I don't see too many of you old friends on either and not so many posts.  Do you think our blogging days are dwindling?  We are enjoying the fabulous crisp turn of the season weather here ~ especially the littlies.




Tuesday's big excitement!




Not much makes it into the oven ;-)



The Groves Workshop

Students learn a song in German

Tuesday nights

The boys cook!

My cousin lays a poppy on our Uncle's plaque at

the Victory in the Pacific Memorial

Last weekend



The other daughter and family
holidayed in Cairns.

Photogenic aren't they?




A precious bundle of cuteness!

   The weeks are flying by and our busy household have all been sick :-(
As with most large families it has taken a while to get around us all but hopefully we are back on the mend.

The boys attended the Groves workshop today which centred around Geography and Language.  We all had a good time.  The teachers put in a huge effort to make these workshops educational and fun and a good day for parents to discuss the students programs and our concerns.  I find them especially encouraging with both our academic battles as well as health and family concerns.

Good night all.

You may say I'm a dreamer...

The rollicking barefoot kids!

Over the years as I have written posts about My Golden Childhood I have wondered whether I seemed to you, my readers, as one who lives in LaLa Land!  I know I have tended to see things in a shiny light and have at times down played the hard times.  But truly, my childhood was golden.  It was pure and clean and filled with love and the very special people that God bonded into our family.

You know we have this celebration in September to mark the 100 hundred years since my grandfather's arrival at Jooro.(Once a railway siding and district name, now one of my brothers property names)  One hundred years of blood, sweat and tears.  One hundred years of joyful births and marriages and welcoming new members into the fold.  One hundred years........

On the day of the Reunion we will be planting a grove of Moreton Bay Ash in the place where once stood the original little shack that Grandad and Grandma lived in and brought their babies home to. The trees will represent Michael and Lily and the ten children (one stillborn) and hence our families.  One of my cousins has penned a beautiful verse entitled "Our Song" which will be erected on a plaque in the grove.

She warmed my heart when replying to my recent email about the Reunion and I thought "I'm not the only one!"  I have quoted from her return email:

"I am very relieved to hear that you and S......  both wept tears of love when you read 'Our Song'.  When writing it I felt myself being emotionally propelled back into that wonderfully loving and warm place known as childhood, with Grandma and Grandad there, and their boys toiling away, the wives creating a domestic haven whilst we, the barefooted kids, all rollicked our way through imagined wondrous worlds created in the gullies and bauhinia scrubs.  I am looking forward to being with the family for this momentous occasion. "

Oh those wondrous worlds!  

Here it is:

Our Song

May these "Guarding Gums"

Represent us all

Dear ones who've passed

And dear ones yet to come.

May these Graceful Gums

Flourish on this black soil plain

Proudly bending and bowing

To life's burdens and strain.

May their leaves whisper on gentle breeze

Words of love, tears and yes-ter-year

May their branches span through time

And bind us together, one family, one kind.

Grow, O Silver Gum grow!

Stand tall and stout and strong

And may forever God bless the Clair descendants

Many voices......Michael and Lily's Song.

(To commemorate the 100th Anniversary of the Clair Family of Jooro 1912-2012)

The guarding gums is a reference to a poem written by this cousin's father who passed away about eight years ago.  He was a deep thinker and poet and many of his poems were too lofty for most of us to comprehend. :-)

You may grow weary of hearing about my family and all our doings over the next month or two.  Don't give up on me! Okay?

Ponderings...

I have a lot of ideas and thoughts floating around in my head this week. (Always dangerous!)  Of life and death.  Of family and the ties which bind us.  Of loved ones who have been the strongest influences in our lives and  old friends who have come into our life for a short time and perhaps are never heard of again ~ or the ones who you providentially run into along the way. Of the Church, the Body of Christ, and how when one member (part) suffers the whole body suffers.

My dad will be eighty-eight at the end of the month.  He is in hospital again with similar problems to the last stint, but medication is working and he is loosing the fluid, slowly, from his chest and the rest of his body. He was much chirpier today which is always a good sign.

My mother, who will soon be eighty-three, is coping well with lots of attention and care in the home and quite a few family visitors.

But the reality is....they are getting old and will not be with us forever.
It makes you realise the huge responsibility we have as parents ourselves, to raise and teach our children in the small amount of time we are given with them. The opportunity we have to influence them for good is enormous. 

A few weeks ago, our Pastor resigned due to his chronic ill health.  I may write about this at some later time but for now it is enough to say that at a very spiritually arid time in my life this has come as a great blow.  We are a very small and formally close knit group and we are suffering, grieving.  It may be that our little congregation will not survive as a group?  I don't know.  What I do know is that God will supply all our needs.  He has never failed to do so before.  Our former Pastor and his large family need a lot of prayer too as they explore life out of the ministry.

Also  a few weeks ago I posted about the alarming number of marriage break ups we were hearing of among family and friends.  Only days after that post I received a phone call from a friend in Canberra saying he would not be coming up as planned because his wife had left him.  We were gob smacked.  Totally shocked.  A christian couple we had met many years ago when all our children were small and both families had taken on the great challenge of home schooling.  They lived round the block from us.  We minded their house when they were on holidays, they came over for meals.  Years later after they had been gone south for nearly ten years their son came back to work and we had the pleasure of his company here for many meals and fun times with us.  Each year when they travelled back to visit family we would see them and each year they would try to convince us to trek to Canberra.  Good friends, great people.  This has been so sad to hear of.

I know I do not need to share so much on the blog, but it is therapeutic to write some of these thoughts and share them with you bloggy friends. 

Proverbs 18:10

The name of the LORD is a strong tower:

the righteous runneth into it, and is safe.