Our first Christmas as a family of 11 was delightful! The kids were enthralled with everything... even though we stay pretty low key and simple with celebrations and gifts. A highlight was watching the kids open gifts from each other on Christmas eve. After weeks of secrecy, the name exchange was finally revealed and the precious dollar store gifts were distributed. It was our best sibling bonding moment yet.

After a great Christmas break, it has been time to launch back into school. The following is an excerpt from an email I sent to sil Judy the first week back to reality (Jan. 7):

"We survived day 3 quite nicely - plowing on! It was a difficult day of teaching, however. We reached the chapter in history which I hate to teach... post civil war. It sounds so wonderful that slavery is abolished, and Lincoln wants to fully restore the South to the Union. But then there's that ugly piece of America called racism. When I had to read about the forming of the KKK, I cried ... both from sadness and anger. I had hoped to delay talking about this stuff with the girls, but here it was in the book... they need to know... and the time was right.
We had already talked yesterday about the fact that there were very good people in the South and very good people in the North; but also very bad people in the North and very bad people in the South. Today we talked about 'white' people and 'black' people (the girls still refer to themselves as either 'brown' or 'Ethiopian' - both far more accurate in my opinion). I explained that in America, people would refer to their skin color as black and my skin color as white. There is some hilarity to that notion - I'm actually more peach colored, and they're more chocolate. But it is what it is. Then we had to talk about how cruel some white people have been to black people... and about the evil and Godlessness of KKK people. With sorrow, I told them that there are some places in the South and North that people would be very mean to me because my skin is peach. And there are places in the South and North that people would be very mean to them because their skin is brown. I told them that it has nothing at all to do with the color that we are, and everything to do with the lack of knowledge and love on the part of those being mean. Racism and cruelty is a tool of Satan to keep people hating each other. We talked about loving people even when they hate us... even though it's not our fault that they hate us. We talked about how Jesus handled it when people were mean to Him.
It was a great lesson in the end, but rather gut wrenching for me. Another day we'll talk more about things like segregation and the civil rights movement. Interestingly, the assignment for G, E, and A this week is to memorize either Martin Luther King's speech "I Have a Dream," or Lincoln's Gettysburg Address. I'm excited about both."