Shrine Mont Church Retreat 2019

This year our church held its first annual parish retreat at Shrine Mont in Orkney Springs, VA. Phil and I decided it was something we'd love to participate in when the weekend was announced last fall, and we were graciously blessed with scholarship money to help to pay for the weekend through the gifts of our generous fellow parishioners. We are thankful to belong to such a wonderful church family!

Shrine Mont is only an hour and a half from our house which made it an easier trip for our gang who get pretty impatient after the half hour mark in any road trip. Of course no ride with kids takes the amount of time Google Maps says it will take, but after picking up snacks for the weekend, iced coffees, and emergency s'mores supplies at the Luray Walmart, we still made it there before dinner which was the ultimate goal.

Upon our Friday evening arrival, we checked into Harrison Cottage, unloaded our many bags into our three respective bedrooms, and then headed to dinner. Shrine Mont is a conference center and retreat of the Episcopal Diocese of Virginia set against a rustic, mountainous backdrop of the George Washington National Forest. It was a treat to be immersed in this "place apart" and among others who share our faith. We ate all of our meals family style at large tables that were set with fantastic southern-style home cooked meals. Each mealtime was announced with the nostalgic clanging of a dinner bell and a call to prayer and blessing of the food was spoken together before everyone sat at their seats to eat.

After dinner we dealt with the less-than-thrilling surprise that Shrine Mont no longer rented cribs, and drove half an hour to the nearest Walmart to buy a (much-needed anyway) new pack and play. Thankfully, the kids were in the good hands of some of our favorite St. Stephen's peeps, and played with their church friends while we were gone, so they barely noticed our absence. We did as a result miss compline prayer though which was a bummer, but Phil and I got to spend some almost-alone time on the ride (with Stephen in tow) which made the inconvenience less inconvenient in the end.

After getting back and getting Stephen to bed, we hung out on the cottage porch with several of our fellow SSEC members and enjoyed some fellowship until it was time for the rest of the kids to hit the sheets around 10:00. Everyone slept reasonably well that night, despite the fact that the cottage (and almost none of the buildings that make up Shrine Mont) are air conditioned. Box fans for the win! The next morning we dressed and headed over to Art Hall for coffee hour and conversation until breakfast was ready. After breakfast we sent the kids up to the playground with Josselin, our church's nursery worker, and participated in morning prayer in Chilton Hall.

The kids were chomping at the bit to get to the pool which was about to open, and that's where we spent the majority of our full day at Shrine Mont, only taking a break mid-day for lunch, and then shutting the pool down at dinner time. The kids had so much fun swimming with their friends from church, and it was great to get a lot of adult conversation while they splashed and swam happily nearby. One of my favorite parts of the weekend was the time spent getting to know some of the parents from our church whom I hadn't had a lot of time to talk with outside of Sunday services.

After the pool, we took a wagon ride around the Shrine Mont property, went to dinner and, played on the playground some more. Around 7 we got Stephen bathed and to bed, and then enjoyed more fellowship and some s'mores at the fire pit ring. That evening there was another mixer on the front porch of our cottage. An evening thunderstorm had cooled everything off significantly and made for good sleeping conditions overnight. Around midnight and again at two am a thunderstorm and heavy rain rolled through but no one from our family heard it except for me and Phil. The kids were all out cold!

The next morning we once again headed to Art Hall for coffee and to wait for the breakfast bell, enjoyed fantastic pancakes, sausage, and fried apples, and then headed back to the playground for more fun with friends. After a little while, Phil and I left the kids under Josselin's care and walked down to the Virginia House (an antebellum-era hotel) and checked out the gift shop. I brought back a Shrine Mont cookbook (a must-have), and a couple of magnets, then we went back to get the kids and headed to worship at the shrine which was a beautiful and Spirit-filled experience and the highlight of the weekend for me. One of my favorite parts of the service was the "Fruit of the Spirit" song sung by all of the parish kids in attendance during the offertory. I don't think anyone in attendance will have trouble listing off the fruits of the spirit in the future! So cute.

After church, we headed back to the dining room for our last meal at Shrine Mont (the famous fried chicken lunch) and then went back to our cottage to pack up while the kids got in one last playground and sandbox session with friends. They were all so bummed to leave, but I'm thankful for the sweet friendships that blossomed during the weekend and can't wait to see them grow in the months and years to come. We're all very much looking forward to the next parish retreat weekend at Shrine Mont!

Homeschooling... Year 5

It's pretty hard to believe we are about to begin our fifth year of homeschooling around here. Although I never really had plans to change my mind once I made the decision to keep Philip home, it still makes me proud to acknowledge how far we've made it, despite the doubts and fears that plagued me in the early days of teaching my child at home.

This definitely isn't for everyone.

I never know how to respond to the comments I get from non-homeschooling parents. Things like, "Oh, I could never do that; I'm not patient enough," or "my kids wouldn't listen to me." Really, what can you say to that without coming off as boastful or self-deprecating (I err on the latter). I haven't figured it out.

Maybe I just need to start accepting it as a compliment. Perhaps I am made of sterner stuff.

Year five is about to help me find out.

This year we are embarking upon our third year of Classical Conversations with me at the helm of my own classroom. I'll be tutoring the 7-8 year old classroom of which Andrew will be a member. I'm excited and also apprehensive. Part of me wishes I had waited another year, another part of me is eager to get my feet wet in the world of tutoring, a path I hope to see through all the way into Challenge directing.

I'm so excited to be on the path of learning with my children, even on the hard days. Redeeming my own education has been an unexpected benefit of homeschooling, one I didn't include in my list of pros and cons when I was wrestling with the decision to embark upon this journey four years ago.  With each year that passes, I am more confident in our choice to provide a home-centered education for our kids, and less anxious with thoughts of inadequacy and deprivation.

Homeschooling has given us all a space in which to blossom.

Facing reality: I don't have the discipline to blog

So it's been about 11 months since I began writing here again in an effort to resuscitate this blog and "catch up" on everything that happened in the six months since my last brief post. Promises, promises. But it was a strong October. Maybe it has to do with the fact that October re-energizes my enthusiasm for life in general...

But, really, I think I just need to come to terms with the fact that I don't have the discipline for a weekly, monthly, or twice a year post. I so admire the bloggers I know who have that discipline (many of whom also hold down jobs and raise children AND take care of homes... I read their weekly updates and think, really, what DO I do all day?)

There's much to be documented though and while I probably can't remember half of it, I am going to try to make a few posts touching on the highlights:

• I should probably talk more about the baby I had 19 months ago what she's like just so she doesn't look back at this one day and think, "what the hell, all I got was a one sentence mention three months after I was born?" 
• Andrew had another birthday
• Philip is about to turn 6, no matter how hard I try to stop it from happening
• I've been at home full time with the kids for one year already... and still can't keep a blog up to date
• We are homeschooling this year, which will either be motivation to blog more or another reason to not blog at all
• A yet-to-be-announced surprise 

There. Maybe now that I have some ideas for future blog posts, I'll follow through on writing them. Maybe. Hopefully. 

But don't hold your breath.

Gratitude

My family is healthy. My children are thriving. My husband and I love and support one another. We are journeying through this life together.

We are fed, clothed, and sheltered. Phil has a good job that provides us with what we need.

There is nothing more to want.

The beauty of this life I have been blessed with is overwhelming at times.

You are steadfast and loyal. Your love never falters.  Oh, how you love us.

Thank you, Lord.

Andrew at age 3

Andrew turned three years old in August. The transition in that span of time from age two to three surprised me again. There's such a shift from toddler to little kid in those twelve months. Maybe the fact that he became a big brother midway through the year accentuated the changes, too.

His vocabulary has really grown and his ability to communicate and express himself has increased exponentially in the last few months. I think starting preschool this fall has contributed to that quite a bit. It's fun to hear him have conversations with Philip and I like listening to him tell me about the kids in his class or what he did at school. Lately when he is playing alone with his cars he makes them talk to each other and it's neat hearing what dialogue he comes up with.

He's just learning how to differentiate between people who's name he can't remember but he does it by referring to that person as "the second guy" or "the second girl." Similarly, Philip referred to people he didn't know by the color they were wearing, i.e., "that blue girl."

He seems more mature and interested in bigger boy things than Philip was at age three but that's just par for the course when you have an older sibling, I'm sure. He always wants to do what Philip is doing and works to be included in the games the big boys are playing. He does his best to hang with them physically when it comes to games outside but it does pain me to see him excluded when Philip's best buddy is around and when it become more obvious that Andrew is the little guy. I need to work harder on finding Andrew friends his own age who are just his own. I have been too lax in letting him just play with Philip and his friends instead of helping him to develop friendships of his own.

I am hoping too that preschool is playing a role in developing Andrew's ability to form friendships and to socialize and get along with children his own age. And, speaking of school, he likes school, but he's still having a hard time with drop off. Most mornings he tells me he doesn't want to go before he's even had breakfast and he likes to ask me at nighttime if he has school the next day. I am surprised by this because by the end of the year last year he was so desperate to stay in Philip's classroom he would sometimes tell me to go home. LOL. But I am chalking it up to him being young right now. Philip was the same way his first year, he just wasn't as vocal about it. And of course now, in his third year, he does great each morning. I had hoped Andrew wouldn't have the same separation anxiety Philip suffered with but I guess it shouldn't be too shocking seeing as they are from the same gene pool. At least I can be more confident he will overcome it as time goes on this time around. And, regardless of the bumpy start to the morning, he always tells me had fun at school when I pick him up and that he likes school. Because he has such a hard time when I leave though, I haven't spent as much time in his classroom as I would like to. I am hopeful that will change as the year goes on.

I think the fact that I often leave with his little sister in tow and not him makes it harder on him, too. Andrew loves Lydia and is a great big brother (albeit I have to watch him around her quite a bit as he can sometimes get too rough with her) but the effects of his transition to the middle child have only recently started to make themselves known. He has taken a penchant for talking like a baby recently. I think he is mimicking his younger cousin more than Lydia as Lydia doesn't talk yet and on a few occasions he has out of the blue demanded his crib back which he has been out of for months. I think this can all be traced back to him no longer being the baby of the house.

Being the middle child has to be tough. He's caught in between wanting to be older like Philip and then wanting to be the baby like Lydia. I know he's not sure where it leaves him and honestly I feel like I need help figuring it out too. I know he thrives off of individual attention and time spent just with mom and dad without either sibling around is almost always the recipe for better behavior. But as soon as one of the siblings comes back into the picture, the mentality returns to any kind of attention is good attention, even if it's for doing something bad. I am still struggling to figure out how to deal with this and it weighs on my mind every day as I find myself feeling like I am falling short as a parent in this department. Parenting three children who are each in their own very separate stage of development yet who each need you just as much but in different ways is hard. Instead of getting easier as time goes on, in that respect, being a mom of three is harder than it was nine months ago.

Andrew has a special place in our family as our middle child and I am working on ways to honor that place and to help him realize his place as the second child is just as precious and valuable as the place of either of his siblings. But while I know Philip faces his own struggles as the oldest (being an oldest child myself) and that Lydia will face her own challenges as the youngest, I think Andrew's role as the "middle" will prove the trickiest for me to respond to and the one I have the most to learn about.

In the meantime, I am reminding myself to focus on the ways in which Andrew is an individual and special in his own way, and try not to compare him to how Philip was at his age or worry too much about the ways in which Andrew challenges me. He is sweet and a good friend. He's a good student and a helper in his class. He loves to be cuddled and he loves to play with mom and dad. He loves playing outside and anything that involves physical activity: running, jumping, playing "hike" with Phil. He likes proving himself in that way. He likes to express himself in free form way through art. He likes watching movies and playing the Wii (maybe a little too much although we do curb the video games quite a bit). He also loves being read to and "reading" his books on his own. He's always helpful when I ask him to get me a diaper for the baby or to throw something away and he likes feeling important and necessary in that way. Patience and sharing are not his favorite things but I think most three year olds (and probably adults) feel the same way.

Our irreplaceable little "Duder" is growing and changing so much and I am grateful for the ways I am being challenged to grow as a parent right along with him. He is my living proof in God's unceasing faith in me as a mother.