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where we’ve been . . .
It’s a good thing my computer saves my password to sign into this blog. I almost forgot it myself. It’s been a busy couple a days y’all. Here’s what I’ve been doing since last I wrote a post: Of course teaching school. (High school science say what? I don’t even think the letters strung together make actual words on some of London’s biology book pages. On the other hand, two real winners this year in the curriculum category are Visual Latin and Language Lessons. All the thumbs up.) Taking my youngest students to the cutest classroom on a farm. A classroom alive with birds and fish and…
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evening shake down
It’s probably the changing of the seasons. Or being without a car. Because even when you don’t want to go anywhere, you still like the freedom of the knowledge that you can go somewhere. And it could just be me. It’s probably just me. There’s nothing technically wrong but I sort of am standing here disgusted with all the things. And thinking thoughts rapid fire …. This house feels so constantly dirty. No one seems to know how to return anything to its home. Ever. Bergen lost at least three of his school books over the course of this single day. Ryder was rifling through the trash in the…
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As Seen Through the Door Frame: A Monday Night Poem
My desk is wherever I am. Tonight it’s the extra leaf at the end of the dining room table. I’ve spread my supplies wide, stacked in an order that follows my brain and makes Lacey Logic. I hear laughing. My Piper and her friend Hanna. They’ve asked to bake chocolate chip cookies together. Before they began, they prepared. Not the flour and the butter, but themselves. They have raided the dress up closet and put on fancy Cinderella style dresses waist aprons and grins. They have turned on the music of the Okee Dokee Brothers. Singing. Laughing. Dropping cookie dough on the floor. I’m actually working here…
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The Stories My Life Hands Me
I don’t even have to try to generate story ideas. Life just keeps handing them to me. May I present to you – A Portrait of a Sunday. Or How We Surprised Uncle Danny and Got a Little Surprise Ourselves. On Sundays in our home we sleep in. We make a big brunch together. We attend our church’s evening services. And that’s about as busy as we like our Sundays to be. But for the sake of love we broke from routine, rose early, loaded the car with picnic supplies and headed to Knoxville, Tennessee to surprise Uncle Danny for his birthday. Aunt Beckey and their son Max were pulling…
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Five Finds Friday: brown sugar tea and Otto are both sweet
I worked a little extra hard this week to balance the work/life/home routine and said no to a few things so that we could say yes to slower afternoons and being home together during that time since our nights are currently in a season of being busy with soccer and such. I think it paid off, but goodness – balance is a tight rope, is it not? (And even on the weeks like this where I put in the extra effort, by Friday it seems to fall apart again.) Life is a steady tension of push and pull, give and take. This week I found extra time to write…
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it’s easy to love homeschool on a day like this.
One of the more challenging aspects of homeschooling five students at once in five different grades is that their needs and desires and skill sets, both educationally and otherwise, are so varied. When they were all younger, this seemed less dramatic. There seemed to be less of a division. Now London, in high school, can be rather tethered to giant books or a computer for her math program. Her science can take nearly an hour to wade through each day. Labor intensive. Much more so than elementary school. So the dreamy Little House on the Prairie days are fading and it’s certainly plausible that I am holding more tightly…
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switching words; seeing light
Sinking ship. Wheels falling off the cart. These are the words I have used to describe my life. My heart. My story. Sometimes they are the words I feel are true. Sometimes they are the words I assume other people feel are true when they look at me. They’re definitely the words I have felt have been chosen for me. I am beginning to see how they are also the words that I have chosen to sit under. The words I have circled in red. Underlined. Used a highlighter to accentuate. The words I might as well have tattooed on my body. (Don’t worry Dad – it’s just a…
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redefining.
Life is weird. I left my phone at the house when we headed out this evening. The kids and I were gone for maybe four or five hours. The internet didn’t go anywhere and I didn’t miss anything and the 12 texts that were waiting for me were taken care of in all of three minutes when I returned. It was freeing and that feels ridiculous to acknowledge. I’ve struggled of late to figure out (again) the balance between social media and the internet and regular old living. I want to be less connected to my phone. Increasingly, however, my line of work is tying me to…
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Five Finds Friday (a video, a broken dryer, and – of course – an earring)
It’s really only been one week since I last typed one of these? You’ve got to be kidding. funny These guys are still funny. fashionable Have I mentioned these before? It’s totally possible. I love these ear cuffs from Noonday. My ear is pierced twice in only one ear. (Once upon a time in high school or college Emma and I both wanted to get only one ear pierced, so we split the cost and each had one ear lobe pierced. That’s the entire story.) Anyway, I should ask Emma if she wants to split the cost of this earring, since…
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Dr. Bonyfide, Science Books: A Timberdoodle Review
This was the year that I knew our science would take a giant shift in the Wildwood Halls of Ivy. London started high school which means the rules all change and there is a particular order and type of science that she has to cover. She’s taking Biology this year but I didn’t want to have all of the kids take high school biology because, of course, my elementary students couldn’t keep up with that. We’re still doing a weekly Nature Study together because it’s important to me, but this year I decided to have London take biology and Bergen and Mosely (7th and 8th graders) are trying a…
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slice. of. life.
Not all days go according to plan. In fact, very few days actually do. Today we rose on time and started school in an orderly fashion. Mosely baked us fresh and warm chocolate chip muffins (which she hopes to begin selling soon, matter of fact). There was a history lesson about Roger Williams and narrations about Benjamin Franklin, a grammar lesson about prepositional phrases and one about the four types of sentences. (I remain unconvinced this is actually important information.) Novels such as Henry and the Clubhouse, Because of Winn Dixie, Count of Monte Cristo and The Hobbit were all read by some student residing in my home. A…
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from there to here
Growing up one of my primary chores was to mow the grass. This chore was far more pleasant than bottle feeding the baby calves or cooking dinner for picky brothers. We had a riding lawn mower and I could spend my time looking like I was hard at work so no one would talk to me or bother me, but all I was actually doing was just sitting still and imagining things. (I applied the same principles to my assigned task of raking hay on the tractor too.) I have always been a daydreamer. Always spent far too much time in my head, working through ideas and dreaming up…
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Five Finds Friday (Bergen is very funny, a chance to help and a really great documentary)
It seemed like I had a little more time to do things this week. Oh, that’s right. It was our rest week from school. Of course I had more time to do things. Today the kids and I and some friends went on a dual purpose outing – a field trip and an interview for Travelers Rest Here. The couple was a fantastic pair of humans beginning this charming and exciting tea farm. They shared about their lives as I asked them questions and I was impressed slash overwhelmed slash in awe of all they have thus far accomplished and we all looked to be about the same age.…
