At the end of May I will have been blogging for six years. This lady is just getting started “blobbing.” She’s 107 years old. I guess I’m just getting started, too. It will be interesting to see what topics are controversial 62 years from now! Maybe I’ll get a spot in the Guinness Book of World Records.

I have not yet begun to blob!

Edit: I know it’s not as fun being uncontroversial, but if you have a “blob,” why don’t you tell us how you got started blogging and how long you have been doing it. I started because my oldest son, Hans, started a blog, and when he explained to me what that was, I said, “That sounds like fun, will you make one for me?” And he did. It still looks pretty much the same, though I somehow look older. Funny how that happens.

A cacophony of coughing was shaking up our bliss,
So in Moby Pickle we embarked and to the park departed.
A picnic lunch did wonders, though hacking did persist;
Clouds dispersed and with the sunshine happy spirits were imparted.

Flowers, fishes, finding gold (not to keep), fun had by all.
Treasure is not hard to get, if you know where to assay—
Simple pleasures, not expensive or complex, but rather small;
The best remedy for our ailments—coming home at end of day.

Pictures (lots of them, so may be slow downloading) here.

This is where we went on our escape field trip today, Empire Mine State Park, site of one of the richest and longest-running gold mines in our golden state. This is the owner’s weekend cottage.

Here we are, posing on the steps of this lovely “cottage,” everyone having a nice time, except Baby Braveheart, who kept trying to escape, though we weren’t sure what he was escaping from. We think that being road schoolers today is a fun adventure.

We are very eclectic homeschoolers. We even follow many homeschooling styles in one day. Here is my hippie, unschooler look.

Next we had a few minutes of classical home education. The girls are doing their Grecian urn demonstration, like in The Music Man (add filmography to today’s curriculum).

This picture shows that we are quite adept at homeschooling with a pre-schooler, if we can find him. He keeps trying to escape.

Now we are doing Charlotte Mason, with our nature journaling. We are very bad nature journalers, but we keep trying. Our friend SRL is helping with the photography and keeping tabs on little boys who like to escape.

I’m not sure why, but the girls seem to be more adept at the nature journaling. It takes a lot of sitting in one place.

Recess…Gracie and Jo take a break in a recess in a bower, overlooking the daffodils and tulips and apple trees in bloom.

Everyone seems to like the CM nature studies the best. Here they are admiring the gold fish in the gold mine park.

This is the hands-on part of our day, exploring the entrance to the tunnel of the main shaft of the mine. There are over 300 miles of tunnels under the town, some as deep as two miles. Cars of miners went down each day, lowered by cables, where the ore cars were pulled by mules which spent almost their entire lives down in the mines.

Baby Braveheart is still doing the escape artist act. When he is older, maybe we will do a delight-directed unit study on famous escape artists: Houdini, WWII POWs, and mommies who occasionally need a day off .

If you or your daughters have had any negative responses or raised eyebrow experiences due to the serious pursuit of home life rather than college life, would you be willing to share them with me? I’m writing an article on this topic and would appreciate some other perspectives on this to either include in what I write, or just for some more background material. Thanks!

Since she is graduating this spring from our homeschool, Gracie has been asked by more than one inquiring mind what she is going to do with her life. Many well-meaning people have assumed such an articulate and talented young lady is going to college. A few have been taken aback when she tells them that she is planning on continuing her studies at home, and that she wants to prepare to be a wife and a mother.

Another young friend was helping serve at a fund-raising event, when an older woman engaged her in conversation and asked her the same question, and received the same response. The woman, who had chosen never to marry so she could pursue a career, was taken aback. She very sternly assured this young girl that she would one day change her mind!

I have been very grateful for the strong defense Pastor Tim and Pastor David Bayly have been making for the strong and vital role of godly women in the home. Tim recently posted a tribute to his mother-in-law Margaret, widow of Ken Taylor and mother of many. My husband Steve was close to Ken’s brother’s family in high school, so we enjoy reading of the influence of this godly clan which has been growing and serving the Lord faithfully in many places.

Tim says:

When young Christian women are ashamed to admit their choice of school, of major, and of method of financing their education is directly related to their commitment to be ready for marriage, bearing children, and making a home, who would deny that the Church is taking her cues from the world?

Christians ask their children, “What are you going to be when you grow up?” Pity the poor young thing who answers, “I want to be a mother like Sarah, Hannah, Elizabeth, or Mary,” because her indoctrination is about to begin.

“Yes dear, of course you will be a mother; but wouldn’t you like to be a doctor or lawyer, or to play in an orchestra, too?”

Being a wife and mother isn’t enough anymore, is it?

I am so happy that Gracie is happy to say it is enough for her, and that she knows that serving God from her home is the highest calling to which she could aspire. She will keep learning, working, and dreaming, and she will embrace with joy the freedom she finds in the life our society considers a lesser choice. It’s funny. If she had said she was going to be a teacher of other people’s children, she would be lauded for her altruism and praised for her choice. Let us not discourage our young ladies from finding fulfillment in the role of wife and mother, a job which most of them eventually will be filling and which they ought to prepare for with at least as much effort as they devote to other pursuits.

No young woman should be ashamed to say that her goal is to be a wife and mother. Christians, of all people, should be encouraging girls to look forward to those noble callings, not portraying motherhood and marriage as second best or second-rate with raised eyebrows or “what ifs.” A few are called to singleness, but marriage is the norm, and from the original command to be “fruitful and multiply” to the picture of our relationship with Christ as a marriage, culminating in the marriage feast of the Lamb (Rev. 19:7, which is really a happily ever after beginning, though it’s at The End of The Book), marriage is held in high esteem. If we wish it to be so in the church, let alone the culture, then we must not denigrate the preparation for it with our daughters, insisting they prepare for singleness instead.

Family life is not mundane. I hereby grant permission for that statement to be printed on bumper stickers and pasted on billboards, no royalties required. If we can just get the church to believe this, then we will all be much richer.

Note: I know this post will bring up the inevitable objections about the exceptions and hard cases. I am not so hard-nosed that I do not care about those people who don’t fit the norm—I happen to love dearly some who fall into that category—but I also don’t believe the standard changes to fit the exception. For more on this relating to marriage and singleness, check out this interview with Debbie Maken and Canon Press, in which my dear Miss Kyriosity participated.