In our little house

I started reading "Little House in the Big Woods" by Laura Ingalls Wilder to the girls.  We finished it a couple of days ago and started in on "Little House on the Prairie".  Because I'm sneaky and my super power is reading, I read ahead and just finished "The Long Winter" last night. 
Here are my thoughts:
The reason that I absolutely loved the first three books is because of the descriptions of how the Ingalls and Wilders lived.  In the Big Woods in Wisconsin, the family had a plenitude.  They were so busy with their constant harvesting and putting away.  We learned how to make butter and cheese with Ma.  We learned how to thresh wheat and harvest the fields with Pa and the Wilder family.  We learned about cabin making and how little girls and boys should be.  (Which leads me to believe we've raised our kids entirely wrong.)
I am amazed at the quantity of times the members of the Ingalls family is saved by God.  Laura doesn't come out and say as much, but you get the idea that she recognizes it enough to mark it and write about the miraculous circumstances. 
The last three books I read, I am a little unsure of my feelings about.  I love her style of writing, but I begin to see the gypsy heart of her father and the long suffering of her mother.  It took a certain kind of people to settle the west and Charles Ingalls was one of those people.  I'm not sure I would be as gracious as Caroline was.  Dan's family has a lot of gypsy heart and I am thankful everyday that he has kept us settled down.  One of the things that made me think about the change in their lifestyle was during that 7 month spell of blizzards when Ma (Caroline) says that in the old days, they never would have gone without light, because she would have made candles instead of becoming so dependent upon the new fangled ease of kerosene.  Their whole way of life changed from happy homemaking to sustenance scrounging.  They grew dependent on what others had to provide for them-- coal because there weren't trees for fires, seed and food brought in because they were breaking new ground and didn't have a way to harvest much more than the grass that grew on the prairie.  One calamity brought starvation.  That's how close to the edge they were living. 
Now I wonder about us.  I wonder about the selfishness I see in myself and my children.  I see our lack of self control.  I see our lack of discipline.  I'm teaching them these things.  I see how little we would be prepared (even though we are more so than many others) for a calamitous event and how all of those little promptings to do better have gone unheeded.  In true Satan style, I hear the little whispers that say it is too late to start now.  We are doomed. 
Yet I know what repentance is and that some is better than none. 
I'm going to go practice some self control and do the dishes and sweep and mop the floor.  I can do it!