Princess' heart

Give a kid a book... and if you follow the grand Charlotte Mason scheme of things, or frankly any of the other wonderful home education methods out there that include what we commonly refer to as "living books", you have come across, walked the the fields of your minds with the likes of authors such as my daughter has... Such as my family has...

Many of these "living books" are known to all of us as *classics*.  Too few of us have read them, more often then not we have seen various "versions" of them depecticted for us upon the "silver screen", renting them at our local dvd purveyor...  Books by Twain, Dickens, Austen would be some of the more common names that the average person would perhaps recognize...

Many of the books my children have been assigned I have NEVER read, never been assigned, never even heard of!  So I too crack them open, and often choose to do read alouds out of them, JUST because :)
Yet more often than not, they read and read and read these blessings of mine... and narrate back to me the story as they go... It is part of the Charlotte Mason Approach...

In many of these books, young ladies or gentleman are called off to help an elderly relative... Called, or invited to assist, to be of help..  To live out side of their own home, to continue their studies, and live, and help, and bless another.. One who perhaps is ill, or handicapped in some way...

It is hard to imagine today a young person eager to do such a service oriented task... Hard to imagine any young person selfless enough to want to leave their own comforts, pack up their school and live away from home & friends, to help an ailing relative in time of need... Yet such is my Princess... She has packed up her schooling, and is living at my mothers to aid her in this time of need for a few days each week.. My mother who was once a teacher herself, is more than qualified to oversee any difficulites that may arise, and I am only a few towns away... we do our "narrating" on the phone, and I come over to Oma's house to teach Math :) 
It also gives Princess time to enjoy the nature, and a story is unfolding before her... one with foxes and squirrels, and rabbits... Today she was alive with the chatter of all she had seen in the snowy woods this early morning........  She gives me daily reports on Oma's progress... How each day Oma is doing this or that.... Today I heard how Oma is not needing her walker, how much Oma is napping, how Oma got her own water, INSISTING :)

It is a good thing for the Princess to be there, to hear the stories of our family........ To hear the stories of her ancestors... A good thing to really connect with her Oma and Opa in this way... It is a good thing to help out, in this way, to get water for someone, to warm up the soup, make a lite meal.  It is a good thing to know you are competant enough to do some lite cleaning, vacuming, dusting and make a real difference in the life of someone you know... It is a good thing to get accustomed to being responcible enough to handle your assignments in this fashion....... a very good thing indeed... A good thing to walk in the woods, to shovel a drive, to nap, to daydream, to help someone else decorate their tree because the just can not... it is a very very good thing....
the only bad thing is.
how bad i miss her.................... which is a whole LOT!!!!!!
I love her heart to serve..
I love her heart to love
I love that she wants to be a doctor, so she loves going to the doctor with Oma
I love that she CARES
and that other people matter so much more to her than video games, parties, and all the silly things that can matter when you are 11 years old...
I love my Princess........
Her heart is one more precious than gold
her worth far beyond rubies