Merry Christmas!

A happy and blessed Christmas to everyone 💖

And the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us, (and we beheld his glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father,) full of grace and truth. John 1:14

Godzilla cat destroys Christmas village!

Christmas is coming!

We decorated, finally, for Christmas! Yay!

Happy nearly Christmas!

Foggy mysterious wonder

I made the girls go for a walk with me before breakfast so I could get moody fog pictures!

It was just beautiful, and mysterious, as foggy weather always is.

We were dripping wet afterwards, but it was worth it!

Sunset walk

Got my gorgeous girls to come out for a walk in the early evening.

Just beautiful out there.

Getting out into the fresh air and into nature really lifts my spirit.

New kitchen - progress pictures

Hubby has been doing a great job renovating our rather old fashioned kitchen.

We had minor flood which caused some damage, for which we got a tiny amount of insurance money.  A very kind person blessed us with the rest of the money to get a completely new kitchen.

A friend helping hubby find the right plumbing equipment

The best bit has to be ripping out the old kitchen!

The hard work begins!

Taking shape!

The cupboards were so hard to fit - we could have done with asking another man to help!

Looking good

Lest we forget

For the Granddad I never met, because his body lies in a field in the Netherlands and has lain there since the 25th November 1944...for Walter Harrison I may never have met you but I will never forget you.

Move him into the sun—
Gently its touch awoke him once,
At home, whispering of fields half-sown.
Always it woke him, even in France,
Until this morning and this snow.
If anything might rouse him now
The kind old sun will know.

Think how it wakes the seeds—
Woke once the clays of a cold star.
Are limbs, so dear-achieved, are sides
Full-nerved, still warm, too hard to stir?
Was it for this the clay grew tall?
—O what made fatuous sunbeams toil
To break earth's sleep at all?
by Wilfred Owen

Kitty stink-eye

When your cat is giving you stink eye because she knows you're going to attempt to reclaim your spot on the settee...

A thoughtful post from my friend

A heartfelt and thoughtful post from my friend: Young People with Anxiety a Personal and Academic Perspective

I too have suffered with anxiety and depression multiple times on and off over the years, had/has panic attacks (fortunately very rare these days), and suffers with social anxiety. Never ever crush the weak just because you are strong. Equally, don't assume the weak can never be strong.

Be kind. Be thoughtful. If someone is struggling, support them in whatever way they are comfortable with, but don't *assume* that they are always struggling. If in doubt find out. Communicate.

Local air show

We really enjoyed our day together at a local seaside air show.

Such fun!

It rained a little but stayed dry enough.  Sadly the fly-by by the Battle of Britain vintage aircraft had to be cancelled due to bad weather at the airfield they were setting off from.

The Red Arrows were as amazing as ever!

The Haunted Hotel - Wilkie Collins - Book Review

4 stars

I rather enjoyed this book. It rather reminded me of a Sherlock Holmes mystery. It certainly kept me guessing to the end. I found it easier to read than the other Wilkie Collins book that I've read, The Moonstone, although I don't think it was quite as high quality of writing.



It certainly had a very creepy aspect to it.  The Victorians loved a good ghost story.

Agnes Grey - Anne Brontë - Book Review

4 stars

A very enjoyable read, despite the customary Bronte bleakness.

It's obviously a commentary on parenthood and marriage. Basically: Money, status, and comfort don't buy you happiness; and, overindulging your children (and not instilling good morals in them) is detrimental to their happiness and the happiness of anyone who has the misfortune to come across them. This is the general theme of the book.

*POSSIBLE SPOILERS NEXT*
The children depicted in the book were terrible - oh my, the son in the first family was pretty much a psychopath! And the 'lovely' Rosalie in the second family was selfishness personified. We worry about 'the youth of today', well, as this book is apparently partly autobiographical, it appears the youth of the 19th Century were pretty awful too.

The gentle romance was lovely though.

All in all a good book, very enjoyable.

Mansfield Park - Jane Austen - Book Review

5 stars
This is the only Jane Austen book I hadn't read before...or at least I don't remember reading it! Which is strange, I suppose, as I love Austen.

Being on holiday, and having plenty of time on my hands, and already having it stored on my Kindle, I thought I'd give it a go.

I loved it. Slightly reminded me, in tone, of The Tenant of Wildfell Hall by Anne Bronte. Fanny Price is a great heroine, quiet, unassuming but with strength of character.

Definitely a page turner for me as I waited for the Crawfords to get their comeuppance.

Well recommended.

Westward Ho!

Westward Ho! beach on 'dramatic' setting on my camera.

The girls love the sea, and I do too.

B photographing the sea and the surfers

L loves to paddle

One Beautiful Dream - Jennifer Fulwiler - Book Review

5 stars
This book is just brilliant. I read it in under 24 hours...I'm on holiday, so why not! It is both funny and moving.

I found it particularly moving because it answered inner questions I mull over often about decisions we have made as a family.

I love her thoughts about the 'blue flame' - the passion that ignites a fire within you. About 'wholeness of vision' - that we cannot control the now, but to see what our choices now will look like in the future. About the fear of asking for help because you don't want people to see your mess. The advice from Father George: "Where there is no unity, there is no God. God is always calling us to connection, to unity, and if we don't have that, we are not walking with God...We always think like individuals, like the work that we do has nothing to do with anyone else. God wants us to see what we do as just one small part of something greater..." These and other snippets have given me a lot to think about.

And the image of her climbing in and out of the car window due to a broken door was hilarious.

Well recommended.

How to be Free - Tom Hodgkinson - Book Review

2 stars

So wanted to like this. I have a fairly libertarian outlook and am rather suspicious of big government and the nanny state. I agree that there are so many stupid rules about this and that, these days, that we are all slaves to the machine (although I am in no way an anarchist, like he claims to be).

I totally agreed with his points about the unfairness of these huge companies who will chase you with threats if you are a day late with a payment but who feel it is OK to give you the runaround when they owe you money.

I too would love to avoid mortgage, pension, etc. But I really don't want to live in a commune or a squat.

I agree that the Puritans sucked a great deal of fun out of life [by banning Christmas, etc.] and wrecked a lot of beautiful religious art, etc...though I am not at all convinced by his obsession that if we had just all stayed Catholics then we would all just be such a happy bunch of peasants; nor by his constant claims that the medieval era was one of fairness and fun for all.

Some of his statements are just downright annoying. For example, his 'yay me for driving without insurance what a rebel I am'. No you're just an idiot with no concern about the poor person you might just crash into. And of course, every woman wants to get rid of her washing machine and instead wash her clothes in the river with all the other women (while the men are at the pub practicing their chivalry and dandy manners)! Yes we all like to wash laundry by hand whilst our husbands get drunk. Not. Oh and, apparently, even slaves could become freemen, so yay for slavery. Ah, the good old days...NOT!

And yes, I agree, big pharma are ripping us off (via the NHS) and we probably don't need to be as medicated as many of us are, however, I would suggest that developments in medicine and medical care has improved our lives greatly and we in England now don't often die in childbirth, from the flu, from an infection, from cholera, from smallpox...unlike the middle ages.

So, good premise, badly executed and spoiled by stupid statements.

So dry!

It's been so dry here for a while, which is unusual.  We live up in the Pennines and its main feature is drizzle, year-round drizzle.

But now the streams are drying up, the moorlands are suffering terrible fires and the wildlife are starting to suffer.

If you don't have a pond or any other water feature in your garden, in particularly hot and dry weather think about putting a bowl or tub of water out in your garden for passing wildlife and birds.

One very hot, dry year mum had a hedgehog drowned in her drain as it tried to get to water and got stuck facedown.

We put a shallow tub of water in the garden for any thirsty creatures and we've just had a frog wetting it's skin in the tub I put in the garden (with a stone added to help him hop out) being amphibians, they need to keep their skin moist.

Homemade salsa, plantain and curly fries

L has been cooking again...mmmmmm

The Heart of the Family - Elizabeth Goudge - Book Review

4 stars

This book is a lot more introspective than the other books in this series. It deals gently with the darker side of personality and experience. Because of this, it isn't an easy read. You have to really concentrate to follow the philosophical wonderings of each character, and so it isn't a book to read when you are tired. I kept having to re-read sections to grasp what was being said. Therefore, it isn't as 'enjoyable' but certainly worth it.

We need trees

So, my love of trees is two-fold.

1. God created trees to be the lungs of the world, we need them for life on this planet.
2. The writers of the scriptures regularly use trees as a metaphor represent the life of God in the Bible.

So here is an article from National Geographic, which contains a video that is just astounding:

The Earth has Lungs Watch them Breathe

First you see NASA's video showing carbon dioxide emissions, from various Western countries, swirling in the air.

But the moment June hits...

"That’s the month when trillions upon trillions of leaves are opening, growing, and starting to breathe, and what you will see in the video is their collective breath literally cleaning the sky. This video begins in January, but keep watching till we hit June (then July, then August). It’s like the world’s northern forests become a giant vacuum cleaner, scouring the air, sucking down the CO2 till around November."

*eye roll*

From: Jooleeah_stahkey - Flickr

I made the mistake of looking up what people were saying about a particular topic on Twitter...big mistake. There's a lot of hate and nastiness and weird conspiracy rumours out there. Yuk. It makes me so cross, but also looking at some of the arguments made against reasonable evidence you just think, "Why bother?"

As Winston Churchill said, "A lie gets halfway around the world before the truth has a chance to get its pants on." and the irony about that quote is that it probably wasn't made by Winston but the internet said it did.

I think I'll just go look at kitten videos for a bit and make some tea.

L has been cooking up a treat!

Amazing homemade tortilla chips and salsa both made by L. Yummy!! And spicy! *phew*

Another of the joys of home education is that children can learn so many different life skills that they would never pick up at school.  Oh they do 'food technology' (what?) at school but they could never just choose something they wanted to learn to make and then make it.

Rainy day walk

L and I had a lovely soggy, rainy day walk out on the hills today.

This is one of the joys of home education.  Freedom to enjoy the wonders around us!

Froggy was not impressed that we nearly stood on her frogspawn!  This was in a big puddle in one of the fields we crossed.

Almost to the top of our wellies!

You're never too old to splash in puddles!

Beauty all around

Beautiful beach sunset

We decided last minute to visit a local(ish) beach to watch the sun set.

It was certainly worth it.

The beauty of creation.

Snow!

Oh my goodness, I just love snow.

L calls the snow drifts - 'snow dunes', hahaha.

We had to pop out to the shop as there was a dire emergency!  We'd run out of coffee!!  The horror!