A Pot of Tea

What to do after a tough day at school?
Bake warm cookies and serve tea.

Make it a production, complete with a teapot.

Sit and *be* while the homework gets finished
and the stresses fall away.

I'm serving a lot of tea and baking a lot of cookies these days to help Helen who is going through a bit of a rough spot at school.

Martinmas

When our children were young, we attended a lantern walk at our school in celebration of Martinmas. The children walked through the dark woods with lanterns in their hands, singing songs. Over the years they made paper lanterns, jar lanterns (my favorite for safety), tin lanterns, and balloon lanterns (my favorite for beauty).

It was a simple event, perfect for young children who don't need to think deeply about this important turning of the year, this turning to quietude, thankfulness, and giving. Rather, it provided a picture for their little souls--a spark of light, deep in the night.

At home, I read this sweet story about a little girl and an injured goose and how she had to let her own desires go in order to help the goose.

Sadly, the girls have outgrown the lantern walk, but not the need to consciously turn toward the new season which is upon us. We're doing this in a couple of ways this year--we'll be taking some time to celebrate that gesture of giving that we each have deep within us, by both actively reaching out and by speaking quietly to that spark within.

Last year, we took part in Soulemama's baby cap project for Haiti. I'm now hunting for another such project. I have just purchased this new book to share with the girls this week. Perhaps it will provide us with some inspiration.

Helen is also working on a food and clothing drive this week for our local shelter. After the kids stock shelves, the families will all be coming to our house for a Martinmas potluck and bonfire. Here are the invitations we made. They are tiny paper lanterns with the invites rolled up inside.


We'll put all our Ikea lanterns along the drive and our homemade lanterns inside. We'll have as an electricity-free evening as possible.

After we enjoy the warm food and friendship, we'll venture into the dark to watch sparks from the bonfire rise high into the sky. While we won't be singing our lantern walk songs, hopefully those sparks will touch the teens just as the little lights in the lanterns did when they were young. Take a moment this week and celebrate that spark deep within.

Simple Gifts

There are so many reasons why this video is special to me.

It is one of my favorite songs...it speaks to an ongoing theme of simplicity that we strive for in our home...it's a gift from my girls to me because playing together takes a lot of patience and practice...and it's a gift from my girls to their Grandmother who is recuperating from a knee replacement she had last week.

Enjoy

A Trio of Awards

Just when I start to wonder if people are reading my blog, the blog world responds. Over the past couple of months, I've "met" some new readers and have received some awards.

Renee, at Heirloom Seasons, has passed on the Kreative Blogger award.


Lisa, at Over the Crescent Moon, has passed on the Honest Scrap award, and


Narsingh, at Teaching Handwork, has passed on the Gorgeous Blogger award
In these awards I am to list some things about myself that my readers might not know and then to pass on the awards.

I'm going to pass these awards on to 2 bloggers whom I have recently met and 1 blogger who continues to inspire me (although there are many out there).

Probably the most exciting recent "blog moment" for me was stumbling into Catherine at In the Pantry. We discovered many connections from our mutual love of libraries, history, and historic houses, to the fact that we once lived in the same town, to the fact that she had once worked for my parents. So, to Catherine goes the Honest Scrap Award.

I have also been enjoying Nicole's blog at GardenMama. Nicole lives not too far away and I keep thinking our paths may cross one day. I do know that we were within about 50 feet of each other once! Nicole's photos continue to just stun me. I pass the Gorgeous Blog Award on to Nicole.

And finally, I pass the Kreative Blog award on to Grace at Uncommon Grace. Grace's blog is one of my great inspirations. As I think about what it means to be a Waldorf family with older children, her beautiful family life inspires me and reminds me of what I want to keep as my children enter adolescence.

Finally, a few things you might not know about me....

• I once skydived (and will never do it again).
• I am a complete Virgo neatnik person who likes everything tidy and overly organized.
• I adore the library and go more than once a week to more than one. I should have been a librarian.
• I almost got my PhD in history. Passed my exams, but a new family life and an ill child got in the way of completing. No regrets.
• I really, really love history thanks to a Mother and Father who steeped me in old New England traditions and story from the time I was very young.
• Every now and then I need an oreo.

Prepare, Aim, Fire

Yesterday was a beautiful autumn day. I looked out the window and saw this scene in the backyard. Here was Lou working on creating a sharp point at the end of a very long beech sapling.

The carving continued where she removed the bark from the center of the stick for a handgrip. I imagine you're thinking she's creating some cool Vermont hunting weapon. There are hunters in the woods now, after all.


She was making a javelin. In Waldorf fifth grade, the children study ancient cultures including Greece. In PE they prepare all year for a 2-day pentathlon where children from several schools in VT and NY gather, divide into city-states, and then compete in javelin, discus, long jump, wrestling, and running.

Lou's class has just begun the javelin and she loves it so much, she decided to make her own at home. Of course, in school it's a real javelin. She wanted to share how to throw the javelin. The form of how one prepares to throw is judged as much as how far the javelin is thrown.

Take your stand!

Look behind!

Aim!

Kiss for luck!
Do you think the Greeks did that?

Fire!

Here is a picture of Helen in a toga at her Greek Olympiad

It seems a little early.....

.....for snow.

Eating Local on the Weekend

One of our favorite ways to spend an October Sunday afternoon is up at the fire pit in the woods.

Hot cider, bread and cheese today. We had fingerling potatoes and apples to roast, but ended up keeping it simple.

Lou enjoyed hanging out in one of the various forts the girls have built.

I took out a stack of magazines, put my feet up, and kept an eye on the fire. It was a little tricky dodging all the acorns that kept raining from the sky.

Time to go back and warm up.

I confess to one non-local ingredient to our afternoon.

Brother Tom....we wish you all were with us today!