The Wide Horizon

In this second installment of the Texas Panhandle saga, Loula Grace Erdman tells the story of the middle girl, timid, artistic Katie.

Melinda is recently married and living in Amarillo 30 miles away with Dennis Kennedy, a name familiar to those who have read the first in this series, The Wind Blows Free. Before Katie can quite accustom herself to life without Melinda, word comes that grandmother has been seriously injured in a fall, and mama must go back to East Texas to care for her. This leaves Katie in charge, Katie, who had always relied on these two for initiative and now must take the lead. Keeping house for papa, her two older brothers and her younger sister, is not an easy task. And besides this arrangment has delayed Katie's entrance into the highschool back in East Texas, the school that will perfectly fit her interests. But despite these difficulties, the year progresses, and so does Katie's ability. Overcoming her baking troubles with the help of her younger sister, taking care of two small children in addition to her own family and fighting her way through a fierce blizzard are but a few of the difficulties Katie must try her hand at. But, like her older sister Melinda, Katie doesn't give up and finally conquers her fears and inablilities in this story of pioneer life in the Texas Panhandle.

Frank's recorder

Thanks to the tenor recorder I'm borrowing, and the recorder lessons that Terri and Bernie have started recently, the dulcet (and sometimes very squeaky) tones of recorders have been echoing through the house. Just now upstairs, I was playing Danny Boy with music spread around me, and Frank, who had just got out of the bath, plopped down beside me and began to "play" on a water recorder, with his eyes firmly fixed on his "music", a.k.a. a Cherokee clothes tag.

Fabre's Book of Insects

After an approximately year long endeavor, I finally finished reading Fabre's Book of Insects. Jean Henri Fabre chronicles the lives and adventures of a number of different types of insects. His reader will become acquainted with the scarab beetle who rolls his one and only kind of fare in a perfectly shaped ball before him as he traverses difficult terrain then stores it in his lair. The reader will follow out most learned and interesting guide into the nests of bees of numerous descriptions and into the wonderfully crafted, and actually used home of the locust. He will explorethe secrets of the lives of murderous parasites and the mysterious burrowings of Capricorn grub. These and many more adventures await he who reads Fabre's Book of Insects.
Written by a French Catholic Naturalist, I found this book rather slow, but still very interesting.

Sunset Light

Frank

A Simplified Timeline

Of my summer, and also my excuse for exactly twelve posts over the course of three months.

JUNE:
Finishing up school
ChesterCon
Love2Learn reunion is SD

JULY:
Short notice trip to Springfield IL
A retreat at Schoenstatt
Left for Oklahoma

AUGUST:
Spent a few days with 19 cousins, 3 aunts, 3 uncles, grandparents and hundreds of animals on hundreds of acres in Oklahoma
A very brief visit with a friend from SD
Saying farewell to a very dear friend who is now at WCC
Had a whole family of South Dakotians visit for a week, which included a visit to Six Flags Great America

SEPTEMBER:
A Labor Day party yesterday
Back to School tomorrow

And this doesn't even include all of the parties, discussions etc. with people who, luckily, don't live so far away.
Perhaps I'll have a few (or maybe a lot) of pics to share later, we shall see... What an incredible summer!!!!!

One more...

... then I really, really, really want to go read this so no elaborate, or even relatively lengthy descriptions of this one, I will only say that I did this at the same time and from the same book, listening to the same CD as the other one.

Abraham Lincoln

From "Draw Real People", the office floor, The Shadow of the Bear audiobook and some spare time comes... Abraham Lincoln! (and another face to follow very shortly).

BTW I haven't stopped doing artwork, I just joined this blog, and have had a ridiculously full, yet incredibly fun summer. And maybe, if my schoolyear doesn't turn out to be as crazy as my summer was, I will have a chance to post on some of the goings-on which have so sadly deprived this blog of posts.