The Scoop on Granny

Name:
Cathi

Status:
Dreaming of the mountains...


Who is Granny?

I'm the incredibly blessed mother of 9, "Granny" to 16, and wife of "The Papa," the knight-in-shining-armor whose loving support has made it possible for me to stay home and give my life to mothering, homemaking, and 26 years of homeschooling. Life at Granny's House is full of laughter, friendship, books, music, lively debate, writing, and good things to eat. My days are made even more meaningful by coming alongside other moms, giving them the support and encouragement that I lacked as a young mother and helping them to network with each other in ways that strengthen homes and families. A few times a year I board a plane to visit my "away" kids, to attend the birth of a grandchild, or to enjoy some lazy days with my best friend, but I always love coming back to...Granny's House.

My Complete Profile

On Granny's Calendar
  • August 15 - SAC Day begins
  • August 16 - Sam is 7!
  • August 20 - Kristen's birthday
  • August 30 - THE WELTYS ARRIVE!
  • Sept 3 - FAMILY PICTURES
  • Sept 3 - Chris' birthday
  • Sept 5 - Henry is 9!
  • Sept 7 - Isaac is 10!
  • Sept 17 - The Papa's birthday
  • Sept 23-30 - Granny and Papa go to Hawaii
  • Sept 26 - PawPop is 88!
  • Sept 29 - Tim is 15!
  • Oct 2 - Cheyenne's birthday
  • Oct 4 - Liam is 5!
  • Oct 7 - John Caleb is 17!
  • Oct 18 - Tony's birthday



  • Email Granny!


    Get your own calendar



    Granny Cares
  • Care Calendar
  • Agape Pregnancy Help Center San Antonio
  • World Vision

  • Granny Cooks (and Eats)!

  • The Pioneer Woman Cooks
  • Once a Month Mom
  • $5 Dinners
  • Full Bellies, Happy Kids
  • A Year of Crockpotting


  • Granny's House (and yours!)

  • Simple Mom
  • The Nesting Place
  • Between Naps on the Porch
  • The Inspired Room



  • Granny gets around...
  • A Holy Experience
  • MommyLife
  • Confessions of a Pioneer Woman
  • Preschoolers and Peace
  • Breathing Grace
  • theMangoTimes



  • Granny stays informed...
  • Real Clear Politics
  • Fox News
  • Drudge Report

  • Granny Thinks...
  • Al Mohler
  • Between Two Worlds
  • Blog and Mablog
  • First Importance
  • Equipping the Saints
  • Desiring God

  • Granny says you may go to...
  • PowerLine Blog
  • Michelle Malkin
  • SteynOnline
  • WSJ Opinion Journal Best of the Web
  • GetHuman
  • Home School Legal Defense Association

  • Granny goes to the movies...
  • Netflix
  • Rotten Tomatoes
  • ScreenIt.com

  • Granny is watching!
  • Blue Pencil Editing
  • SPOGG
  • Mighty Red Pen
  • Conjugate Visits

  • Granny smiles at...
  • Purgatorio
  • ScrappleFace
  • LarkNews
  • Sacred Sandwich


  • Tuesday, May 30, 2006



    ...forgetting what lies behind and reaching forward to what lies ahead,
    I press on toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus...

    has spoken at 9:03 PM
    3 Backtalks to Granny



    Sunday, May 28, 2006
    Okay, so my blank page is now about 3/4 full :-) Actually, I have several pages worth of lists of courses, books, websites, ideas, and materials for the fall, the fruit of a couple of weeks worth of reading, reviewing, researching, interviewing my kids, talking with the Papa, praying, and scribbling.

    For the first time, we will be making use of some interactive, real-time internet courses this fall. After watching a couple of families use the resources of some of the tutorial schools that are now available to homeschoolers, I've decided that this may be the best way to spend our educational dollars and time, keeping us off the freeway and out of the gas lines...we'll use the information highway instead. Happily, the options for homeschoolers on this highway are increasing at breakneck speed and produce a dizzying array of choices--but it's a GOOD dizzy! It's a world away from the A Beka vs. Bob Jones "eenie-meenie-miney-mo" game we played for the first few years of home schooling in the 80's. And if you had told me in 1985 that we would be starting the third decade of this journey with a PC in practically every room, and that we'd be using those machines to bring rigorous coursework from distinguished professors right to the kitchen table, I wouldn't have been able to process it. (Of course, if you'd told me in 1985 that I'd still be homeschooling in 2006, that would have brought its own processing problems!)

    So...how are your choices coming? What worked this year and what didn't? What are you exploring for next year? Click on the "Comment" button and let me know!

    has spoken at 11:30 PM
    10 Backtalks to Granny



    Wednesday, May 17, 2006
    Grandson David came over to show me how well he's reading! He's recently had a breakthrough after struggling for a couple of years with the printed page, and I was thrilled to hear him reading, if nervously, from Frog and Toad are Friends. GOOD GOING, DAVID! Granny is proud of you!

    has spoken at 6:33 PM
    3 Backtalks to Granny



    Saturday, May 13, 2006












    This is for Miranda...
    and for all of you who might appreciate a nice slice of pumpkin bread. This one is too good to wait for fall :-)



    PUMPKIN BREAD

    1-1/2 cups sugar
    2 eggs
    1 cup vegetable oil
    1 cup pumpkin
    1-1/3 cups flour
    1/2 teaspoon cloves
    1/2 teaspoon cinnamon
    1 teaspoon baking soda
    1 teaspoon baking powder
    3/4 teaspoon salt

    Beat together sugar and oil. Add beaten eggs and then pumpkin and mix well.

    Mix together dry ingredients and stir into pumpkin mixture.

    Pour into greased and floured large (9 x 5 in.) loaf pan. Bake at 325 degrees for approx. 1 1/2 hours or until a pick inserted in center of loaf comes out clean.

    Easily doubles for two 9 x 5 or three 8 x 4 1/2 in. loaves. Smaller loaves will bake for about an hour.

    has spoken at 10:37 PM
    0 Backtalks to Granny



    Tuesday, May 02, 2006

    It's simply amazing to me how fast we get from the looooong month of February to the first of May. I'm sitting here staring at a blank page, certain that next year's plans and curriculum and fresh ideas are here somewhere....Come on--this is the part I really love and I'm drawing a blank!

    The kids are in the middle of their standardized testing this week: the younger ones in the Stanford Achievement and the older ones taking their college boards. Every time we do this, I wish I had results a lot sooner so they could be a help to me as I decide where our focus should be for next year. Is my fifth grader slow in math? Maybe we need a different book, or more flash cards, or more emphasis on fractions? Is my seventh grader bored with reading, ready for a whole new selection of literature? Did we pick a science curriculum that isn't working for any of us? Did we totally forget history this year? (One of the kids came home from the test and asked me, "Mom, what's the Emancipation Proclamation??" Gulp...)

    But alas, by the time we get test results in mid-July or so, the plans for next year will be set in concrete, if wet concrete. Maybe that's God's way of sparing me from yielding to the temptation of basing everything on a test. I know this with my heart, but sometimes my head is way too concerned with a number or a percentile or a grade level than with how much my children are learning and whether they're integrating that knowledge into their wider world.

    So...I sit here staring at my page, praying for some inspiration to design just the right combination for next year, one that will help us fill any gaps we've left but that will also give fresh viewpoints, creative new approaches, and a spark of fun to fuel it all.

    A funny thing happened on the way to curriculum planning, by the way. As I normally do, I started by listing all the children's names, leaving space for broad categories of subject matter. And then I stared in disbelief: only four names? Whom did I leave off? I began reciting names in age order and it hit me--yes, only four this year! Nathan will don a cap and gown this month and close his homeschooling chapter, leaving us with two daughters and two sons yet to graduate. We, once again, downsize our little school and give thanks for the honor of launching one more young adult into his wider world.

    Yes, it will happen to you too...perhaps many years down the road, perhaps just a few. Some of you will see your list get longer before it gets shorter, as the little ones around your table pick up their schoolbooks and start down the homeschool road with you. But one May day (and trust me, it's only a blink away), you'll look down at your planning pad and wonder whose name you've forgotten to write.

    It's a bittersweet day.

    has spoken at 10:39 PM
    5 Backtalks to Granny



    Granny's Mission Statement
    "...Tell to the coming generation the glorious deeds of the LORD, and his might, and the wonders that he has done....that the generation to come might know, even the children yet to be born, that they may arise and tell them to their children."
    ~Psalm 78:4-6

    My Focal Passage for 2011...
    Philippians 2:5-11

    5 Have this mind among yourselves, which is yours in Christ Jesus,

    6 who, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped,

    7 but made himself nothing, taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men.

    8 And being found in human form, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross.

    9 Therefore God has highly exalted him and bestowed on him the name that is above every name,

    10 so that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth,

    11 and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.

    ~Philippians 2:5-11 (ESV)


    Oxymoronica...

    "The vanity of being known to be trusted with a secret is generally one of the chief motives to disclose it."

    ~Samuel Johnson


    [Oxymoronica, n., A compilation of self-contradictory terms, phrases, or quotations; examples of oxymoronica appear illogical or nonsensical at first, but upon reflection, make a good deal of sense and are often profoundly true.]


    Books on the iPhone, the Kindle, or on the nightstand...


  • The Good Husband of Zebra Drive, Alexander Mccall Smith
  • The Valley of Vision: A Collection of Puritan Prayers and Devotions, Arthur G. Bennett, editor



  • Books finished in 2011...

  • Oxymoronica, Mardy Grothe
  • Some Sing, Some Cry, Ntozake Shange, Ifa Bayeza
  • English Society in the Eighteenth Century, Roy Porter
  • One Thousand Gifts: A Dare to Live Fully Right Where You Are, Ann Voskamp
  • His Word in My Heart, Janet Pope
  • The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, Rebecca Skloot
  • Half the Sky: Turning Oppression into Opportunity for Women Worldwide, Nicholas D. Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn
  • Reading Lolita in Tehran, Azar Nafisi
  • Think: The Life of the Mind and the Love of God, John Piper
  • Moonwalking with Einstein: The Art and Science of Remembering Everything, Joshua Foer
  • Blue Shoes and Happiness, Alexander McCall Smith
  • The Red Queen, Philippa Gregory
  • Bonhoeffer: Pastor, Martyr, Prophet, Spy, Eric Metaxas
  • The Confessions of Saint Augustine, St. Augustine
  • Complete Poems and Selected Letters of John Keats, John Keats
  • Unfamiliar Fishes, Sarah Vowell
  • Words That Work, Frank Luntz
  • NurtureShock: New Thinking About Children, Po Bronson and Ashley Merryman
  • Poke the Box, Seth Godin
  • Why We Get Fat: And What to Do About It, Gary Taubes
  • A Patriot's History of the United States, Larry Schweikart and Michael Allen
  • Song of Saigon: One Woman's Journey to Freedom, Anh Vu Sawyer
  • The Artistic Mother: A Practical Guide for Fitting Creativity into Your Life, Shona Cole
  • The Politically Incorrect Guide to English and American Literature, Elizabeth Kantor
  • The Greater Journey: Americans in Paris, David McCullough


  • Oh, the thinks you
    can think...
  • Tapestry of Grace
  • Anatomical Charts
  • America's Library
  • George Washington's Mount Vernon - Virtual Mansion Tour
  • Thomas Jefferson's Monticello - Virtual Mansion Tour
  • Hurricane Demo

  • Oh, the places we'll go...
  • The Alamo
  • Majestic Theater
  • The MAiZE
  • Magik Theatre
  • Sheldon Vexler Children's Theatre

  • Granny always says...
    Saying goodbye...
    Sunday snippets...
    Summer.
    Sunday snippets...
    Coming soon to a country near you...
    Making (a) room...
    Just in case this might make an impact on your spe...
    Midweek snippets...
    What's up?
    She said YES!

    Granny used to say...
    October 2005
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    Grace Notes

    "Were the whole realm of nature mine
    That were a present far too small...
    Love so amazing, so divine
    Demands my soul, my life,
    my all!"