Next year I have Great Books 4 with Mr. Callihan and Latin 3 with Mrs. Wells to look forward to! And man, am I looking forward to it!  I do so hope that my classmates from this year will still be my classmates next year. Please y'all, take GB4 and Latin 3. Oh, and I should mention that I'm in GB4B instead of A because my younger brother is taking GB1 with Mr. Wells and GB4A with Mr. Callihan is at the same time as GB1 with Mr. Wells. So no more hectic Tuesday mornings for me.

This year in GB3 we read books from the Middle Ages including St. Benedict, Bede, Gregory of Tours, Einhard and Notker, The Song of Roland, Anselm, Geoffrey of Monmouth, Villehardouin, Joinville, Thomas Aquinas, Jacobus de Voragine, Dante, Geoffrey Chaucer, and Sir John Mandeville. Read all of those and then try and call the Middle Ages dark. Ha! The worst of it is that I simply cannot decide which is my favorite. I think I probably enjoyed Geoffrey Chaucer's Canterbury Tales, especially the one about the rooster called Chanticleer. Chaucer's Knight's Tale was pretty good too. He also has a tale that is kind of like Jacobus de Voragine's Golden Legend. I really enjoyed The Golden Legend too. Some people might think it's too gruesome, but for my part I really enjoyed the stories of saints. It shows that God really is everywhere and He does care about His people. He works through His people in amazing ways. One of my favorite stories was one where a bad king is trying to defile a young virgin and when his men try to move her, she is so heavy that they can't! It was hilarious. A bunch of fully grown and armed men unable to make a young girl budge. I think the king got so made and stomped so hard he went through the floor. (I might have added that on though, hehe!) I don't think I would probably believe half the stories in the Golden Legend but they are really good stories nevertheless. The Travels of Sir John Mandeville were really good too. He was very talented at telling stories that capture you. His book is a 14th century account of his journeys in the East, and like the Golden Legend, some of the stories that he tells about certain places are hard to believe but very fun to read. I can't skip Dante either. I say it's the best poetry that I have ever read. I only understood about 1/4 of it even after Mr. Callihan took us by the hand and led us through all the cool allegorical symbolism. It was a great poem though, and I learned quite a bit from it. It would be ridiculous to try and explain all that right now, so I'll pass on to my next favorite. Let's see, Anselm and Aquinas were the toughest to read and understand, and like Dante, I only understood about 1/3 of them. Geoffrey of Monmouth was great! So were Einhard and Notker. I enjoyed the Song of Roland because it was great poetry and it's basically a little tragedy overblown. It was things like people blowing their brains out with a horn and mass faintings. lol! Wonderful stuff, all of it. I can't wait to get my hands on the books for GB4!!!

My Agenda for this Summer

~Ride Nicki everyday (yay!)
~Work in the garden (DIE WEEDS DIE!!!)
~Read lot's of books (I'll read Dante over again. Somebody suggest something to me)
~Bake lot's of goodies (like oatmeal cookies, and then eat them all)
~Go to Trinity Fest and visit Idaho property
~Eat (peanut butter & chocolate), drink (milk) and be merry (all the time)
~Make my friends at church give me dance lessons every Sunday
~Anything else I can think of or somebody suggests to me

Oh...I forgot math. I have decided to take a vacation from everything but math. I. Will. Not. Be. A. Dunce. At. Math. If there is one thing in all the world that I will be good at, it will be math. If I can achieve one thing, it will be math. If there is one thing that you cannot convince me to take a vacation from, it is math. Then again, I might not take a vacation at all. I don't think I could live without reading Biology, as for the other things that I'm studying, well, they're too good to just take a vacation from. Y'all go to Hawaii, I'll stay in my closet and think about how much fun you're missing.

Let me make this clear...we have no plans to move. Get it? If you've got it, good! No immediate plans, anyway. The fraction of Idaho that we have just purchased is simply an investment and vacation property. We're going to get to know it and start going to Idaho more often and using it for our campsite. It's our Idaho Head Quarters. Years from now, provided we like it well enough, we want to start moving there. But, like I said, we do not have plans to move there. It just an undefined sort of grafting ourselves to Idaho. It doesn't really solve the immediate problem that our car is falling apart from driving three hours to church every sunday, but it's not going to drastically change anything and practically nobody will notice anything. So don't start having heart attacks...yet. In any case, we're going to hold onto our property here in Washington as long as we can. Probably Freddy is going to inherit it when we're moved to Idaho. It'll be a good place for him to start a family.

Here's my personal opinion. I haven't the slightest clue whether I want to move to Idaho or not. At this point, I'm perfectly content where I am with what I'm doing. Except that when I'm older it's going to be pretty hard to find Prince Charming if I'm so far from church and community. That's where I'd be happy to move to Idaho because we'd be much closer to church. Not to mention that being closer to church will be easier on my dad and our car. But as far as I'm concerned, God will send someone for me if He wills it, and He'll use whatever means He wants, even if that means moving to Idaho. Again, I'm content where I am and I'm sure I'll be happy whatever we do. It's all in God's hands and my vain stupid little life is going to disappear like a squirt from a misting bottle. sssssst Gone! Now I haven't any clue why I'm worrying about it. I can't comprehend what it the world God is doing in the world and He doesn't happen to want me to know how or why.

On to something easier to talk about...we went to church today. Praise God! We actually made it to church today! :) My brothers came home from college last saturday and the only thing that has changed is that there is a weird guy around here who talks Latin all the time. Jeremy's a lot better at Latin than any of us and he's totally conflusticating my younger siblings. Last Saturday I also weeded two 20'x3' patches of strawberries and a long 5' strip in the garden with my bare hands because I was to lazy to try and find gloves. I hate using gloves anyway because they impede the movement of my fingers. That's makes weeding a lot harder. I'd rather just go at the weeds like a maniac and repent later. That's what I did, and actually, I'm not sorry that my hands are still bleeding cause it was fun and productive. Now I have a whole lot more space to plant vegetables and flowers in! :) On monday I'm going to start planting. Oh, and I also got a big patch of the garden tilled with Moe (that's our backhoe). At least I didn't need to use gloves for that. Wasn't going to anyway. I'm going to put pumpkins, yellow zukes, cucumber, carrots and probably other stuff in that section. Maybe sunflowers too. That's another thing about Idaho and especially the property that we bought...it's overrun with deer, moose and elk which will provide good hunting but they'll be flocking to guess what! My gardens. Just see if I try and grow gardens in Idaho... Ah well, I'm battling weeds and little beasts here, so I'll battle weeds and big beasts there!

We're going to Trinity Fest!!! dances if I knew how to dance... Oh dear, I think I'm going to cry. cries Sorry, I'm acting like a baby. sits up and wipes eyes

...convice my dad to go ahead and buy the property! The suspense is killing me. He's bemoaning the loss of the river that we would have if we were able to buy the bigger property with the Palouse going through it. The 40 acre piece only has a creek on it and he doesn't think that is sufficient. Somebody convince him!!!