Five Finds Friday

It’s been a week.

Which is a phrase that, if someone else said it, I might laugh.  Because, well, yeah – of course it’s been a week.  That’s how time works.

It seems that this particular Christmas is the sort of Christmas where I’ve said, “Oh – we were supposed to go look at lights? Hmm.  Maybe we won’t get to that this year.  Oh what’s that you say?  Making homemade ornaments from applesauce and cinnamon like we used to do when you were little?  Uh – I guess we can do that ….. another day.  Our annual Winter Solstice Hike?  Man, it sure is raining.  A lot.”

Is that the sort of holiday you’re having?

Well, I guess I hope not, for your sake.

But it is the sort of holiday we are living.

And in other random news that is equally frustrating, I updated WordPress for this blog and got a rather unpleasant surprise as it kind of whacked out the get-stuff-done side of my website and my Amazon link disappeared. (Talk about bad timing.)  All week long I could not even access the website to post anything.  (And this blog serves a couple of purposes, but truthfully, it’s about the cheapest therapy for my brain, if you can believe that.)

Anyway, I’m going to give this old Five Finds my best shot this week and we’ll all just see what happens.

funny

I love that our Christmas tree is loaded with ornaments that tell a story.  That tell dozens of stories, actually.  It makes me happy each year to pull out the wooden paper and pasted ornaments that I made with my brothers when I was a kid.  I like seeing the ornament of a little toy soldier that my mom made out of a clothespin.  I like the Little House on the Prairie ornaments from our epic adventure one summer.  

Sentiment. Love. Nostalgia. 

It’s all there.

What is also there is — holiday whiplash.

I mean, there’s this darling blue teddy bear from Bergen’s first Christmas as a tiny 8 month old.  

It’s precious.  (And so was he.)

And also.  Someone glued a bottle cap from a beer bottle to a piece of yarn and hung it on our tree.  For like five years in a row.  What?

(Apparently we keep packing it back up and unpacking it again every Christmas though.  So.  There’s that.)

fashionable

We started a new thing this year.

On the first day of December (or there about) we all received a new set of sheets – most of them flannel.  And all of them winter or holiday themed.

It was like a cozy welcome to the holiday.  

I loved the sheets too – most of them I found on a Black Friday sale at Target.  They are just SO cute.

flavorful

Basically all we have consumed for the past two weeks has been sugar served with a side of sugar.

Whole 30 what?

Also a lot of snacks and extras – know what I mean?

Want a non sugary but still very snacky option?

Here’s what is delicious – pimento cheese.

It’s so easy.

This is what I do:

One block of cheese of your choice.  I like cheddar and the sharper the better for this.

One block of cream cheese.

A little jar of pimentos.  (The kids actually like it when I just leave this out altogether.)

A dash of garlic and salt.

I literally put these things inside the Ninja and blend like crazy.  

The end.

And then I eat it on crackers and chips and pita and carrots and a sandwich and a quesadilla and whatever is near me until the pimento cheese is gone.

faithful

I just finished reading a book by CS Lewis called The Great Divorce.

My kids didn’t like the title.  I kept trying to tell them – it’s not about divorce like you know it.  It’s about … uh, divorce as in separation and about divorce from our physical bodies into eternity and what that maybe-might-possibly could look like, sort of, through this author’s imagination.  Kind of.

Anyway.  It was a read that made me think and strained my brain a little too and I’ll possibly share more in a later post, but I am grateful for thinkers and for writers, for men and women with the gift of communication and big ideas and the ability to share them well.

feels

Last week the families of Meadowlark Collective, the homeschool co-op that several friends and myself started this year, met together for a brief reception – an evening of sharing just a little of what the students have been learning.

It was simple and sweet and I think it truly reflected a sampling of the vision we had when we first thought of beginning this group.

I stood in the back for a part of it and watched it unfold and I thought – “Wow.  This is happening.  We sat in a kitchen somewhere and asked what if and the what if turned into this and we’ve got more than thirty kids and an idea and an ideal turned into an actual thing.”  It was equal parts surreal and encouraging, overwhelming and humbling.

This week we sat in a kitchen again and talked about next year – what was working and what wasn’t, what we still needed and what was yet to come.

And I’m feeling all sorts of grateful that I get to journey on this path with these people – strong, smart, caring women and men who are willing to look at education and gently suggest, “Maybe there’s another way.”

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