Old Stones and New

Kept our promise to take the kids back to the Roman ruins at Wall, near Lichfield. Love how Zion, especially, is so interested in it all - how it was, what destroyed it, why they took communal baths... Paul was off work, so he came too.

The heat drove us to shelter in the shady churchyard above, where we looked at almost all the gravestones. What was interesting was how many told the person's occupation: dairy farmer (that was a woman), sheriff, journeyman, and so on. Zion's question was why a lot of them said the person "fell asleep"... leading to interesting theological discussions. He also wanted to know what sort of stone each one was made of. 

On the way to the car, we identified and sampled wheat at the cheesy stage, and examined various insects. I read Charlotte's Web to them in the car on the way there and back. Good quote from when Charlotte, the grey spider, is saying that people can sort of weave webs and gives the example of the Queensborough Bridge, p82:

'What do people catch in the Queensborough Bridge - bugs?' asked Wilbur (the pig).
'No,' said Charlotte. 'They don't catch anything. They just keep trotting back and forth across the bridge thinking there is something better on the other side. If they'd hang head down at the top of the thing and wait quietly, maybe something good would come along. But no - with men it's rush, rush, rush, every minute. I'm glad I'm a sedentary spider.'
(Boom! Exactly the message in several grown-up books I've been reading.)

Our homeschool might not have been very orthodox, but you couldn't accuse it of having been limited in scope.

Gratefuls:
- the ginormous privilege of having been able to input to our grandkids' lives in these three and a half months
- finding a solution to the shower curtain that I bought being too short - paper clips!
- Friday night homemade curry, with mango for dessert