Fall

Fall is here, but the colors haven't begun to change yet.  Right now we have warm days and then very chilly evenings and nights.  Hopefully that will mean pretty autumn colors.  I have tried to take my camera out and catch some of the natural sights of a waning summer season, but there just aren't always enough hours in the day.  My memories will need to suffice.

I put up our fall decorations with Robert this past week.  I am not a big fan of all the Halloween stuff, my children love it all, but it often feels like another holiday hijacked by commercialism.  I also have things that I have now been taking out year after year.  A sign that goes by the door saying welcome Autumn and some little pumpkin decorations and a scarecrow (which is a rather pathetic little thing, but one of those things my Mom gave me in the year or so before she died and so from fond memories rather than from a recognition of it's material worth, I find a place of honor for it).  We add to these little things with mums by the door and eventually we will get pumpkins, but as I told the boys, if we get them now it would just be to feed the squirrels and they are already fat enough.

The boys are currently very interested in video games.  It is a new thing in our house.  They have been around, but now they are more interesting.  Harry is pretty good at them and Robert is starting to catch on now too, especially on the ones on the iPad or iPhone.  I find myself encouraging them to go outside.  Once outside they usually easily find ways to entertain themselves and are quite happy to be there, but it does take some encouragement.  I suppose the battle is just beginning, but we have always tried to limit screen time and so I hope that the lessons we have taught since early on will hold up.  It is always a bit of a struggle to find the balance in life and so we will muddle along and take this as our chance to teach our children about finding balance too.

These two pictures at the beginning and end of my post are from our visit to Sturbridge a few weeks ago.  We took a short boat ride and that is the pond we were on and Harry found this little woolly caterpillar wandering along the path and we moved him to a fence so he wouldn't get trodden.  Then I took his picture. That is an aspect of my Harry which is a bit contradictory right now.  He loves the idea of guns and fighting and battles right now, but he would literally not hurt a fly.  He objects strongly when I hurt one too.  I just don't tell him about my very effective ant bait poison that I mix up a couple of times a summer, when the ants come in.  This always gives me hope that the "battle" stage of boyhood is one that will eventually we overpowered by his sense of the sanctity of life and the worth of all living things.  We all come to compromises in our minds about what violence is necessary in life and where we must draw the lines in the use of force.  For me that has been the killing of ants and dandelions and so I feel very blessed that my dilemmas are not stronger.  I hope that it will be a similar path for my boys, but I recognize that it is an uncertain world and so I must just pray that God will guide him and keep strong within him his sense of the worthiness of life for all living creatures.