Week 10 and Break Week Reflections and Intentions for Week 11

So, the week before our break kind of went … and we didn’t make it through anything except the bare basics for my younger kids and about half the assignments for my Freshman. And I just went with it. We did some other projects: shopped for prizes for Laps for Little Ones to help our friends at the Little Light House and completed some cultural studies with friends.

I suppose the good news about that is that we will cover the stuff I planned for last week this week. My Freshman will play catch-up and also accomplish this week’s work (including debate prep). However, I am pretty tired from our trip, and I hope for some time on the couch with books and discussion and maybe a nap.

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We spent our break week on the front range of the Rockies with my brother and his family. We soaked up the mountains and streams and relaxation. We shopped and fished and walked and slept and just hung out together. And we ate a lot of really tasty stuff like pot roast at home and ice cream at Lik’s. Yum. Yum.

Now we are home, and we miss my brother’s laugh and my nephew’s giggle and my sister-in-law’s quiet presence. But we’ll see them at Christmas. Until them, it is back to schoolwork and tutoring and cooking and cleaning and Mt. St. Laundry.

During the twenty-four hours we spent in the van coming and going, I finished up four books that were just for me (several of which I had been reading bits of here and there forever), and that was fabulous. The first one, I had laid aside two years ago (The Lost Pearle), and like all Lamplighter books, it turned a good tale. Pearle was forced to marry an evil man, and she worked her way out of that and back to a good one. I read a new release that started out interesting, but had a ridiculous ending, and I am not even linking it (Everything, Everything). I finished up The Gifts of Imperfection by Brene Brown, which spoke to me, a recovering perfectionist, about being worthy of love and acceptance in spite of my mistakes and brokenness.

I also completed a review copy of Ann Voskamp’s The Broken Way, which was a poetic read about how our brokenness is healed not through holing up and waiting for God to heal it, but by continually giving hope to others in His name. We are all our own form of broken, and as we serve others, God uses that very brokenness to help them find healing. He heals us in the process. While I wish this book pointed the reader even more to Scripture for these facts, I have experienced these truths in my life.

I also started Alan Bradley’s new Flavia De Luce release, Thrice the Brindled Cat Hath Mew’d, which is a rollicking good time. I’m looking forward to our Drop Everything And Read moment today, because I’ll get to see what happens next. (If you haven’t met Flavia, you should. She’s a twelve-year-old chemical genius with a knack for discovering dead bodies and for solving their murders. She has a quirky and macabre wit that I find highly entertaining.)That was our Fall Break. Now it is over, and we are getting back to normal. (I hope.)

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