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mid-week round up of not much really.
Since purchasing the Travelers Rest Here website I have been writing more frequently and editing more regularly and attending meetings more often and Doing Stuff. (See how professional sounding business ownership has made me?) I love what I get to do and it’s been in so many ways an easy transition as I have been naturally promoting TR (for free) since we moved here a decade ago. Now I just get to try to make it profitable. The hard part is the balancing act, of course. The merging of my homeschool with my job with my relationships with my blogging here with my preparing dinner with my sleeping. You…
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The Story of Redemption at Radius this Friday
For the past several years, on Good Friday before Easter weekend, the kids and I have visited a unique and moving experience that takes place at Radius in downtown Greenville. It’s called The Story of Redemption. My words are sure to be inadequate in describing the experience because it’s far more authentic and visceral than I will have the language to capture. Each year the dynamics of the experience are varied, but the idea is the same. Guests arrive and enter in the small group they came with, or individually. Essentially, you are taking a guided “walk” through the story of God’s redemption of mankind, through…
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don’t sit in your struggle alone
Struggle. It sometimes seems like it’s the predominant characteristic of our lives. And, even when your own life isn’t full to the brim overflowing with hardship or disappointment, you still have people you know, love, care about, meet on the street, whose lives are slopping over the sides with struggle and hard and heavy. You can personally be floating along in a relative calm, a ray of sunshine across your canoe, and you just bump your oar right up against someone who has capsized, who is flailing around outside their canoe, clinging to their life jacket, head bobbing in the water next to you. It happens All The Time.…
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Five Finds Friday (hulling strawberries & bird posters & Netflix)
Well, hello there Friday. We’ve been on our “spring break” this week, which actually has not been spring break at all, but just our regular six weeks of school, one week off routine. I love our week off. I like not setting an alarm clock and having casual meals all week and just doing a little of whatever we want. It’s nice to purposely NOT plan an adventure or a trip on this week too (even though I am frequently tempted to adventure out anyway). Sometimes you just need a week at home with no real plans. I had seriously contemplated a day drive to the coast because –…
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A little London then . . .
Every now and then I look into my archive of Posts I Forgot to Ever Publish. I’ve got journals filled with ideas and bits and pieces of article starts and story lines and sentences that go nowhere and words that have never seen the light of day. I fell across a sweet one tonight though. London is thirteen years old now. She has the recipe for her own specially curated potato soup inside of her head and she makes it spontaneously, no need to refer to to the original instructions any longer. She is capable of being an excellent map navigator and she is learning how to speak Spanish…
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watching the hawkeye shed his skin
I watch my children. I study them. Like it’s my job. Because, I think it is. For the past few years I’ve noticed a trait in my oldest son. Possibly it’s hereditary. Or circumstantial. Or both. I’m not sure that it matters which. I just know, I’ve seen it on my boy. I have seen it on him like you would see a heavy cloak – or a bathrobe – or if he decided to play dress up in a grown man’s oversized dress shirt. Fear. It’s dangly and uncomfortable and it doesn’t really fit his form. It’s hindering him at every single step and he is certainly…
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What I used to think, when I used to think this —- How I Pictured My Life With Children
This weekend I had eight children at my home for the afternoon and evening. They played intense and well-orchestrated games of a Nerf gun version of Capture the Flag. I took them out to dinner at one of our favorite local restaurants in town. Those magical kind of lights hung across the restaurant’s deck, live music was playing, a bubble machine was going wild for all the younger guests’ entertainment. (And mine too, actually.) The weather was dreamy. The night clear. The stars bright. Afterwards those same eight kids and I bounced on over to a giant field of freshly plowed dirt with a series of white…
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Five Finds Friday (peanut butter eggs & t-shirts & ads & funny songs)
It’s been a good week. A full week. A week where my eyes did not shut frequently enough. So Friday is here already all over again, like it does. Thursday’s rain was slow and welcoming, except for when the dog spent his day getting soaked outside and then dreamed of still sleeping in my bed. That’s unacceptable Ryder. FUNNY I did see this really fantastically awful music video that my friends Tom and Erica showed me. Parts of me really want to share it, but parts of me really feel kinda sorry for the misunderstood gent who is performing his heart out. So, I’m not going…
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the writing on the wall
It’s painted on my bedroom door. The words of one of my favorite authors, Wendell Berry, from my favorite book by him – Hannah Coulter. You mustn’t wish for another life. You mustn’t want to be somebody else. What you must do is this: Rejoice evermore. Pray without ceasing. In everything give thanks. I am not all the way capable of so much, but those are the right instructions. I see the words when I go to sleep. And when I wake up. Otto Fox has them memorized and quotes them often to me. The whole bit is beautiful. Poetry. But the part that always pierces me begins right…
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A Simple Map Study: A Charlotte Mason Geography
Sometimes in home school (in life) we make things so complicated. Well, sometimes I make things so complicated. My family moved from the coast of Virginia to the mountains of Virginia the year I was leaving the sixth grade. In my old school on the coast, geography was taught more exclusively in seventh grade. In my new school in the mountains, geography had been taught in the sixth grade. I missed the window. Therefore, I have nursed a deficiency in geography for most of my life. I am good with directions and carry a pretty decent mental map around in my head of my own hometown and my own area…
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motivation. can you locate it?
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This Week. Feeling ALL the Pressures.
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roll the windows down. spring wants to come in.
I like spring. And I’m welcoming the sunshine with open arms and an open sunroof. Today I made a labor intensive meal and it was pretty delicious. In our science lesson today we talked about barometric pressure. (Well, the author of the book “talked” about barometric pressure because my brain hardly comprehends how barometric pressure operates or what it actually is.) Anyway, there was a part of the lesson that spoke about the physical effects weather can have on people and I’m telling you, from personal experience, weather does change me. That’s for certain. I love the promises of spring. Of blooming flowers and afternoons in the…
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Lost Valley Ranch: A Recap and A Memory
It’s during those long winter months and darker days when people like me start to think about spring and summer and vacations and trips and sunshine. It’s true, I like the planning nearly as much as I like the traveling. Well. I don’t know if that is entirely true. The point is, I love planning trips. I like looking at maps and measuring distances and thinking of ways to make the road trip fun. I like looking up funky road side attractions and making lists of where we could stop for the best BBQ in Nashville or the most delicious dessert in Kansas City. And thinking about summer makes me…
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Five Finds Friday (Minty Timmy & Tuna. Not an appetizing combination.)
This week has been a catch up and refocus week. How is it that just one week off of your regular routine can really blast that routine into smithereens? It was ONE week, people. Hey kids, remember, we have a schedule? Apparently it only takes one week to forget everything we worked on ALL year. But, regardless, here we are Friday. How are ya’? FUNNY Here are some funny things: The writer Roald Dahl. The movie Holes. My children. FASHIONABLE Wouldn’t you know it? Earrings again. I don’t even know what Stella & Dot is but I’m guessing it’s another LuLaRoe, Pampered Chef, Norwex,…
