Finding Contentment

The doctors said my SIL, Alisha's, right lung is improving greatly, but the left lung is still very damaged. She took a turn for the worse Tuesday night and have to have a blood transfusion, but was a little better Wednesday.

But good news:  They say that because she is young, she is improving much more rapidly than others might. If she continues to improve, they will be able to take her off the ventilator in the next couple of days.

Thanks so much for everyone's prayers.

On another note, my children's lives have been disrupted so much lately that I didn't want to cancel our field trip that we have been looking forward to. So yesterday we headed out to Homeschool Day at the historic Latta Plantation. Everyone had a great time. My friend Nancy and her homeschooled son also went with us. The boys loved learning how start a fire the colonial way (without matches or lighters) and how to use the long one-shot muskets the colonials used.

On the left is Alli, then Nancy's son, Mitchell. On the wheel is my son, Justin. I couldn't get my 4-year-old, Adam, to pose in the photo, so I included a photo of him sitting on the well.

We are using the Colonial Life unit study by Homeschooling in the Woods. We just love this unit study, and the trip to the Latta Plantation went right along with it. We loved the tour of the colonial home. Here are some volunteers in the kitchen, which was typcially in a completely different building from the home itself. They were doing some open-hearth cooking, and it smelled great in there!

It was a great day, and a good time to get away from all the stresses of life. I love our modern conveniences, but being out there where I couldn't get a signal on my cell phone and where there were no restaurants or shopping centers made me envy the colonials.

There lives were actually very hard, and they didn't have good hospitals like my sister-in-law is in, but their simple life also meant they didn't have people pulling them in a hundred different directions.

I struggle to remember my family's goal:  To find contentment living a very simple life whereever we are planted.