–1–

To the person who found me by typing “can you pray one decade at a-time” into the search, I reply, YES! YOU CAN! (I hope they found this old post or this article link or even my review of one of my favorite books of all time.  But just in case they didn’t, I’m going to say a little prayer for them when I’m praying my rosary.)

–2–

Tuesday (September is the feast of the nativity of Mary, or, in language I can understand, Mary’s birthday (Marymas?). Who better to host a giveaway, and what better giveaway to get, than Ginny Moyer, author of one of my other favorite books, Mary and Me (which I reviewed here).  Win your own copy by leaving a comment at this post over at Ginny’s place.  Good luck!

–3–

I’m back to work this week, and we’ve started homeschooling (two weeks early!). However, it’s going well this week.  Better than I expected. I never would have thought that typing that first sentence, I would follow it with this one: I’m laughing a lot.  There’s nothing like a pair of four-year-olds punctuating their time with “School RULES!” and “Can we keep doing school?” to motivate the rest of my day.  I mean, work makes school possible, right now, and school makes certain other mentalities possible…so it’s really feeling like God’s plan.  I’m glad I had eight weeks of rest to prepare for this, though.

–4–

I’m still digesting all that I’ve learned in the last eight weeks, from my seven sabbatical lessons to my daily bread. I am pretty sure there’s going to be something about life in the present moment and how multitasking is overrated.  (With links, because these aren’t necessarily my thoughts, just things I learned over the summer.)

–5–

Our Jack Russell Terror has an inborn talent for finding critters. It’s an endearing trait.  Really.  On a farm, you need a critter dog and he’s really good at it.

Except with possums.

It’s the nature of possums to be the kind of critter he should like, to get into the barns, to go after the dog food and any number of other garbage-y stuff.  They are worse than raccoons (which is saying something!), in part because JRT can’t kill them.  They play dead.

It’s pretty interesting to watch, and the girls and I happened to be outside playing and bug hunting the other day, when JRT brought us his possum catch.  I told my four-year-old, she of the Never-ending Curiosity, that even though JRT was carrying the possum around and it looked dead.

“It’s dead!” my four-year-old insisted.

“Well,” I told her, “let’s walk down to the barn and see if the possum is here when we come back.”  (This also gave me a chance to teach her an important farm lesson: if you see a possum or coon during the day, stay away and get an adult.)

When we came back, the possum was on his feet, the dog was long gone (having showed us, been admonished to “KILL! IT!,” accepted that as praise, and moved on to the next critter), and my four-year-old was fascinated.  I called the dog over, and he did what he always does with possums — he gave me a confused look, then noticed the possum moving, pounced on it, looked up at me triumphantly, thinking it dead again.

My husband, the Chief-in-charge of Critter Control around here, didn’t get home until we went into the house and the possum made his escape.  He heard the tale, though, from our excited four-year-old, and I think maybe that took some of the sting out of his late hours.

–6–

Speaking of farm life, it’s breeding season for the sheep. That means we have a ram out with the ewes, and the ewes are sporting colored patches on their back ends.  That’s a good sign; it means the ram is doing his work.  It’s also a chance to explain the natural order of things to that child who is asking all the questions around here.  It also means that Shepherd D will have lambs come January (and, actually, he should have fall lambs soon, so we’re going to have some science time in his barn later this month).  I just love lambs (and the photo opps).

–7–

We went to the library three times this week. My four-year-old found the section of horse books.  Guess what we’ve been reading all week?  (No complaints from me or my husband!)

Jen invented and hosts our Quick Takes fun every week, so go give her a visit at Conversion Diary.