{This and That}

First, the lovely Leah Boden invited me to contribute to her My Living Books Life series.  She was extremely patient with me while I handled the retreat, the end of our school year, and a nasty cold, but I finally got my little memoir to her and she has it up today!

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Cate received her First Communion on Pentecost.  She was one of five girls to receive at our Traditional Latin Mass community, and it was a blessed day.

and there's vincent there in the front row of altarboys!

The week before, we had a May Crowning, and this year, all four of my girls were old enough to participate as flower girls.  Love.

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We also had a few birthdays: Drew turned two and Justin turned six months.  I have a post coming later this week with their birthday books.

I just posted a video yesterday over on Instagram of Justin's "crawl," which is really more like a cross between inching-like-an-inchworm and doing a butterfly stroke.  He is more efficient than the video suggests when he has somewhere to be, but mostly, that's how he has gotten around for the past couple months. However, he just pulled himself up on the sofa to stand for the first time on his own yesterday, which he was extremely pleased about and I was...not.  So I think his days as a crawler are limited!

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I've started Year 5 planning, which at this point means that I'm collecting pretty books into shelves and piles and staring at them excitedly.

But I'm hoping to get around to actually planning things this week!  First up: I'm going to figure out how I'm combining my Year 2 and Year 1 kids next year.  Wish me luck because that has been feeling like the sticking point for me.  (I'm considering something like Virginia Lee's Form I rotation but modified for our family.)

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A lot of exciting opportunities have popped up lately in the Charlotte Mason videochat world!  It started, I think, with Amber's recent interview on Schole Sisters, in which she discussed finding community online--not just through type- or photo-based formats (like forums or Facebook, which are also great for building relationships with like-minded moms) but also through live video and voice discussions. I've tuned into webinars, (Peri-)scopes, and hosted video events for years, but live formats that allow for back-and-forth communication like an in-person discussion really have an advantage in lots of ways.

And now there are now a bunch of options in that vein available!  The lovely ladies at Mater Amabilis have started working through Mind to Mind in a monthly videochat, Jen is leading a live discussion on Circe Institute's Restful Teaching series, and I popped into Ashley's first Online Scriptorium last week.

And the opportunity I really wanted to share with you: Amber is also putting together some groups to go through Brandy's "Start Here" study guide over the next year through monthly live video-and-voice discussions. So if you have always wanted to join a Charlotte Mason study group but don't have interested moms close by or can't get out of the house for meetings, now is your chance!

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The CM West Facebook page is getting busier!  West Coast friends, are you following?  I posted about wildflowers last week, and Amber shared her thoughts on our recent retreat.  I'm excited for the big plans we have in store for the West Coast CM community, including the Northern California Conference in the works for next February here in the Bay Area.  (You can bet I will be talking a lot about that in the coming months, and I'm hoping I'll see you there...maybe?)

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A bit of late spring color on the ground and in the sky...

our wildflower bouquet after nature study

on my early-morning group run

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Keeping Company is a bit quiet this month on the blog, but it's hopping over on Instagram!  If you'd like to participate, click around to read, link up, or tag.  I always enjoy what you ladies have to share!

This week I'll be sharing our Summer School plans.  We are already a third of the way through our "summer" break, so it's overdue! :)