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The Excellent Lombards: A Book Review
Sometimes a book finds you. It’s been a while since I finished a novel purely for pleasure. I’ve been reading novels for Book Club and non fiction books for teaching and learning and whatnot, but I have been missing just reading for fun – the kind of reading I encourage my children to do every day. Our town’s library has a shelf with new releases. It’s a shelf I usually veer away from as the new releases are due to be returned in 14 days or less. Which might seem like a perfectly reasonable request to perfectly reasonable people. Of whom I am not. Jane Hamilton’s name popped out…
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. . . when vomit drew me closer to Jesus
When I say Otto was sick this week, I mean the poor little guy was for reals sick. He counted each time he threw up. I didn’t realize he was keeping track. There he was, little silver bowl in hand, emptying his stomach contents. “Nine,” he stated. Nine times. It wiped him out. It wiped me out. And it took my sheets out too. But whatever. London was sick all night. Otto started in early early morning after I had stolen a few hours of rest. While cleaning up Otto I heard footsteps racing across the upstairs hallway. Bergen was joining the sick ranks. If you’re counting that is…
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less words, more pictures
Did you guys forget it was Friday too because I wasn’t on my space here publishing a Five Finds Friday post? No? That’s fine. Me neither. It’s been a busy handful of days and my computer was here at my house – as was my dog and my friend Amy – but myself and my kids were not here. We’ve been a lot of places, actually. In the car. At the farm. At the beach. In the car. In the car. (Mostly that was me – all the extra “in the car”s.) There’s a lot to say and I’ll say it mostly later but it was an effort to…
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we are all in this together – let’s be kind
You know what’s hard? I mean, extremely difficult, without cut and dried answers? Parenting. It’s like a choose your own adventure book with new endings and twists being added each time you set the book down for a short break. It’s just so complicated. Worthy of your efforts? Without question. But hard. So ridiculously hard. It’s the kind of hard that makes you want to cuss, cry, rant, hug your own momma and daddy, pull your hair out, ask for help from strangers on the street, pretend you’ve got it all figured out, believe your own junk will ruin your children, find a time machine, hide in the bathroom. That kind…
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every hour
The day is done but in Many Ways it has just started. I’m sitting down in that half way attire of the nighttime. Pajama pants, shirt from the day, earrings off, feet tucked up under myself at the kitchen table. Dishwasher humming, Ryder asleep on the threshold, the spiral notebooks with tomorrow’s school lists stacked to my left not quite ready for the students to do their work but I know they need to be before the pillow greets me. I don’t know where I am supposed to be in life but I’ve got a decent handle on where I actually am. The house is basically tidy and that…
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just the lovely remains of a weekend well spent
It’s only been like a matter of DAYS since I’ve last typed a blog post – right? Good grief we’ve crammed a lot of activity into those days somehow. Part unintentionally, part on purpose. Friday the kids and I attended the North Carolina Mountain State Fair. I’ve wanted to attend this shindig for years after seeing it annually advertised and this year I just decided we would go for it. (It helped that on Friday the entrance fee was completely waived for students and their teachers. I have students. I’m a teacher. I can afford free.) There was the Midway (not at all free) and its weird rides, its…
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Five Finds Friday (apple dip and other people’s good words)
You know it. Friday again. FUNNY Lately what is hysterical to me are the announcements and proclamations and such that Otto Fox decides to make. When he decides to deliver his information is as equally funny as how he chooses to deliver his message. He is currently The Deliverer Of All Information That Is Gross. Spoken with no drama and no build up. Hours and hours after his discovery he enters a restful near-bedtime living room and hops on the couch. Between singing verses of a song from Sunday School he offers this gem of knowledge — “Guys,” he says. “We have some moldy…
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Gigamons: A Blue Orange Game Review
If ever there was a game that I thought looked too silly to play, it was Gigamons. If ever there was a game that I thought had directions too many, it was Gigamons. If ever there was game that was nearly an INSTANT hit with my children, it was Gigamons. Otto has carried it around. He has taught nearly all of his friends to play it. He has memorized those at-first-glance-too-wordy-for-me directions. London has been creating a miniature felted figure based on the Gigamons board piece. (Hey, Blue Orange games – we’ve got a prototype for you. We think it would be popular. It’s so adorable.) I admit it. I…
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( sighhhhhhhh )
Some moments just seem to stack right up on my shoulders in a seemingly preplanned effort to defeat me and make me feel small. The five hours spent push mowing in the sun on a Saturday to stand on the front porch tonight and be overwhelmed at the shrubs that have completely overtaken my front porch. Taller than two of me and I know that what I cannot do is keep up. I want a house in the country. Two stories. Wrap around front porch. No main road visible. The tree lined driveway and the fence-lined property and the plants and the giant oaks and the weeping willows and…
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Kids in the Kitchen: You Can Do It!
My kids spend a fair amount of time in the kitchen, helping prepare our family’s meals or whipping up something they imagined or read about or watched. Partially because I need their help, partially because I want them to know how to cook for themselves, partially because I’d like to cook less often myself, partially because they actually enjoy it and partially because I think it’s really important for them to learn about food – how to create it, where it comes from, ways not to waste it, etc. etc. etc. I don’t remember a time when kids weren’t underfoot and around in the kitchen since their…
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What The Lizard Did
He changed colors right in their hands. Brown, dirty looking. He jumped from my right Chuck Taylor to my left. Caught immediately in his escape, he stopped being brown. Just stopped being the one color and started being another color. The mysteries of nature I cannot begin to comprehend. _______________________________
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Five Finds Friday (an applesauce recipe, a Kenny Rogers reference, an inadequate list)
FUNNY Our kitchen cabinets currently look ….. kind of out of control. I had several of the kids practice their times tables by writing them in chalk on the chalkboard cabinet doors. There are three sets of the threes times tables and the numbers scratched wildly everywhere are making me feel a little unstable. I should probably erase them tonight. FASHIONABLE All that rearranging and resorting and window seat making sent me searching for fun pillows. How cute is this one? I love fun throw pillows. But they can get expensive. There are lots of really cute ones available on Amazon for under…
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a post in which I pretend we are chatting in person
My hair is curly wavy messy, but after my brilliant stylist and friend Brittani gives it a cut she likes to blow dry it straight and it’s so shiny and different that it’s a game I play to see how many days I can leave it that way before I am forced to wash it. Am I the only one that plays that game? We’ve lived in this house for about five years I think and today the laundry room light bulb blew out for the first time. It was tricky to get the globe off to get to the light. I think it required the help of four…
