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routines. chore lists. schedules. I share a few and I’d love to hear from you.
We’ve been extra diligent about getting up on time and starting school on time. This year. And yet – school is taking a loooong time lately. I mean, that’s normal. It’s fine. I have two high school students and one middle schooler and two elementary students and that all just equals a lot of educating and computer sharing and mom-help-needing. Add in work and teaching at Meadowlark and I don’t know how to manage it all mostly. I was laughing with a couple other families after church on Sunday about busy schedules and meals in the car between karate and soccer practices and whatever it is your family is…
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the weekend ramble (a poor showing at Staples and an incident at TJ Maxx)
The kids and I spent some time on Saturday doing a little yard work and building up some bricks around our fire pit – can’t wait to inaugurate that on a cool autumn evening. We had a few limbs and branches down from the bits of wind we experienced so we gathered those and have them all stacked and ready. Maybe I’ll wait till I’m finished with this Whole 30 though so I can enjoy a roasted marshmallow. I guess in the mean time I could have a roasted …. potato? Of course, I also spent some time chopping vegetables and prepping food, but that was actually alright. I…
Keep Reading . . .
Oh hi. It’s me.
you can’t call it a mid-life crisis.
back of a book, on the porch
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Five Finds Friday (photoshop silliness and good finds)
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…
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because I can.
I don’t have anything to say. That’s why I thought I’d sit down to type a blog post. Whole 30 has not made me unreasonably hungry. The food is plentiful and tasty. What it has made me is tired of chopping and cutting and cleaning up afterwards. It has made me tired of planning. And tired of thinking ahead about food. It all feels annoying. Apparently, according to the websites and stuff, I am at the “Kill Everything” phase of this 30 day process. What? That’s crazy talk. I feel fine. I don’t want to kill anything. Except that obnoxiously loud flying insect that somehow dared to enter my…
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The Awakening of Miss Prim: A Book Review
After I finished the beautiful and spunky and darling The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society novel I was forlorn. (I mean, you know, forlorn for precious literary novels.) I’m always working through a non fiction book (or six, whatever) but those aren’t books I can read at night before I go to sleep because then I forget everything about them. And they aren’t books I pick up for a little refreshing break in the afternoon or evening. (The Road Back to You or For the Children’s Sake isn’t exactly light reading for me.) So when Judy Kay suggested that I might really enjoy another book with a…
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The Weekend Ramble (no real plans made me very happy)
It was the first weekend in ages where we our schedule wasn’t stacked high with demands and places to be and things that must be accomplished. What had been on the schedule was cancelled and it was such a free space of time that my kids actually had the opportunity to be bored. I was thrilled. I helped a dear friend plan her family’s upcoming adventure to Boston and Philadelphia and if you have any suggestions for great places to eat or must see ice cream shops in either of those two cities – share them in the comments and I’ll be sure she sees them. I don’t really…
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five finds friday (meadowlark and a ryder photo and let’s talk whole 30)
It’s been a while – hasn’t it? I forget when I last did a Five Finds post. I’m going to try. It’s been a great week, but full as ever. I hired an intern for Travelers Rest Here. What a great thing that is going to be! Can you hire an intern for regular life too? Are there interns out there who want to do my laundry or plan my meals? Interns that specialize in home pedicures or lesson plans? Interns that run by the bank and pick up books at the library and mow the grass? Interns who manage my texts in a timely fashion for me? …
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today at the burrow.
Today my two adorable grandkids and their pretty momma stopped over for a little visit. I taught a history lesson that included the story of both the Statue of Liberty and the Eiffel Tower and suddenly our lunch conversation had all of us wanting to plan a trip to New York City. (Maybe Paris next year – right?) I drove Piper to get her cute little pixie haircut that she asks for about once a year. There were math lessons and one box unpacked from the recesses of the barn. (It was clothing – a missing box of girls clothing for which Mosley rejoiced.) I planned for…
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Autumn Grove Giveaway. (And I threw in some photos of the boys room too!)
*** This post is sponsored by Grove Collaborative. The opinions and thoughts are absolutely my own. *** I can’t just spend my entire days hanging up pictures on the wall or making my bed or unpacking more boxes from the barn. Mama’s got stuff to do, y’all. (That’s funnier if you hear me say it in person because it’s a ridiculous reference to some old video from ages ago that made the kids and I laugh.) But for real. I have stuff to do. So. Much. Stuff. Like everyone else in the world, of course. We’ve all got stuff to do. And some of those things I…
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moving. miracles. and our house has a name.
We’re beginning to enter our new normal. I think. We’re buckling down to school this week and our Meadowlark Collective begins this week and there is not a single unpacked box inside of our home. Woah now. Hold on. Keep the admiration to a minimum. It’s semantics here, folks. That’s all I’m using. True. There is not currently one single unpacked box inside of our house. And for that – all the rejoicing. It feels more regular. Not chaotic. But there are gobs and piles of furniture and unpacked boxes inside our barn here. (Barn? Shed? Garage? I’ve debated all the names. I think our friends called it a…
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homeowner life.
This evening I decided to put on the pajama pants earlier than normal. Maybe at like 7 pm. It was fantastic. Then I realized that it was trash day and I walked the very easy path to take the trash down the driveway. (Although I loved our old driveway – a long gravel road, I do not miss walking/pulling/dragging the stink trash can down the drive.) Once the trash can was settled in its place, I wandered over to the mailbox and checked the mail. Amazon had left me a small package. I tucked the package under my arm and stood in my driveway. I noticed some weeds in…
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I’m still here. But in a new house.
Last week felt as if it lasted about a month. We started moving in to our new home on Monday and finished moving in on Sunday. I’ve been going to bed so utterly exhausted that I hardly know my own name. I’ve got loads of stories to tell and photos to share but frankly, I’m still entering this next week pretty worn down and facing the return to school and a birthday for an eleven year old and a whole lotta boxes left to unpack. Not to mention the work load and emails that I have almost entirely ignored for a week. But let’s not talk about those right…
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August Offers at The Grove
I wrote a list for myself about companies I needed to contact to have things switched and moved from one house to the next. Contact Duke Power. Cancel our trash service here. Acquire new trash service there. (I wonder if curbside recycling is possible at our new address?) Change my Amazon Subscribe & Save address. (Which, turns out, has been the most obnoxious to change. While I appreciate their security levels, I find myself sort of annoyed at the extra steps it is taking to shift my cat and dog food delivery to the new house.) And on that list was, of course, Grove Collaborative. Switch it…
