Down but not Out

Here we are the middle of March and 2/3 of our family is on antibiotics, four weeks into a strep event. It's been a little demoralizing for Kevin and me as we are both on our second rounds of antibiotic for a stubborn strep-A bacteria. Both boys have strep on the other ends of their bodies. If you want to know details, email me and I'll give you the heads up on detecting an often-misdiagnosed condition.

Despite feeling generally cruddy and lethargic, and visiting the doctor 4 of the 4 days of this week, we have pressed on with school and actually had an "aha!" moment. Yesterday Lydia was studying a familiar Aesop's Fable and we were reviewing the biographical information on Aesop. Did you know that in 564BC he was tossed off a cliff by the kind folks at Delphi for having delivered them some perhaps "too close to home" morals in his fables? Anyway, he was. I noted that this happened 100 years before Nehemiah was working at rebuilding the walls of Jerusalem (what we're studying in Bible right now). We figured out that Aesop was around at about the time of Daniel. Both girls looked at me and said, "Oh, wow! So you mean...so the Bible...so Aesop...all at the same time?!" "YES!" The realization that while we study one segment of history, it didn't happen in isolation, was just amazing! I know that that's what my curriculum is supposed to be getting them to understand, but you know how it is--sometimes you hear something but it didn't make any sense until you were ready to hear it. I was in, oh, about 10th grade before I realized that literature happened at the same time as history--so I feel like some progress is being made in this next generation!