It’s been good to begin to establish our family rhythms again.  At least in part.  With both teenagers and young kids at home, the rhythm maintains a steady pace of change.  Change IS the rhythm some days. Plus, five kids.  I mean – we scaled back from what lots of families do, in terms of after school activities and extracurricular – and still, five kids means a lot of different directions at times.

This season I actually said no to almost every outside the norm sort of activity.  We just had to for our family’s sanity.  But we have said yes to an art class and to volunteering at Carl Sandburg’s house but most every other seasonal request has been a “no”.

And so we are rewarding ourselves as a family for getting up and beginning school at 8:30 every morning.  For being routine and regular with some basic forms of exercise and movement.  (This has proven harder than the waking up part for some reason.)  And the structure of school has helped us regain balance in many ways.

 

 

funny

 

London is learning to mess around with PhotoShop and this is a photo she’s been playing with.

I could stare at this silliness and laugh for ages about it.

 

 

fashionable

 

Shopping on Instagram has kind of become a thing.  It’s right there in your feed and it’s not only terribly convenient, it’s trembly tempting too.

Several friends of mine have put together an Instagram feed called Third Hand Finds and they are gathering darling small and large home decor and treasures and trinkets and whatnot.

You just follow their IG feed and they post directions on how the sales work – usually on the weekends and generally within a very specific time span.  They will post the items for sale with a description and you claim them in the comments as “sold”.  Then you have a certain number of hours to PayPal them money, you guys find out a pick up location and the item is yours.  Simple as that.

For now, this is just for local shoppers.

Third Hand Finds has little treasures like these dainty glass essential oil containers.

 

 

And lots of other fun and quirky finds.  On Mondays they sell mugs.

It’s a fun idea and totally worth the follow.

 

 

flavorful

 

The food on Whole 30 is good.  But it’s labor intensive with the chopping and the dicing and the planning.

I’m a little over eggs and potatoes at this point but it is what it is so whatever.

I did try a simple sweet potatoe with the Trader Joe’s spice blend – Everything but the Bagel.

Surprise – it was pretty good.

 

 

And at our small group dinner this week my sweet friend Keri made a watermelon “cake” and it was quite tasty of course but what was the best part was that she was so thoughtful – AND she’s pregnant and has two young kids – to think about me and London and to want to try to make something fun for us.

I love that!

 

 

feelings

 

I have some feelings about boredom.

I think it’s SO good for kids.  Like – I think it’s important for kids to be bored.  For grown ups to be bored.  (Even though at our house I don’t want to hear you actually say the words “I’m bored”.)

 

 

faithful

I love how this kid so willingly serves his sisters and mom by offering pedicures.

 

 

 

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