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you know, this and that
It sort of feels like fall outside. And I’m completely fine with that. Last weekend Kevin and the boys had a fabulous little jaunt to a lake in Tennessee where they met Kevin’s dad and a captain with a boat and spent the day fishing together. Those two fellas of ours have just been infatuated with fishing for months now. They trade lures daily and have all kinds of endless conversations about riggings and baits and hooks and I don’t even know what else in their fishing lingo. It’s adorable. The girls and I stayed home. Apparently, a girls weekend at home means lots of food. Seriously. It was crazy,…
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Sunday Night Preparations For a Better Week
I imagine this is true for every home that includes young children. Or old children. Or any number of humans dwelling within its walls. Sunday night often determines the pace of rest of the week. When I’m on my game, when Sunday afternoon is free and affords me time to look over my list and my lesson plans and my menu and our family’s schedule, then the whole week is better. It’s an effort. A decision. A priority. And sometimes it breaks down. But when it doesn’t break down, when I make the effort, when I look ahead a few days – you guys – the entire week’s dynamic is…
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Dear Ten Year Old Daughter of Mine.
You do not know it is a gift – but I am telling you – it IS. My daughter, I’m giving you free thought. I’m removing a tiny bit of peer pressure. I’m not giving you a phone. And I’m not granting you access to Instagram or Facebook or whatever new social snap chat IM kik ap that exists. You aren’t even going to speak that language. Not yet. I don’t need your thanks now. I’m not asking for it. But it’s a gift nonetheless. The days of comparing body types and body images and self-loathing or self-loving are not in your immediate future. You will have time enough…
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Calico Critters – a practically perfect toy
“I call those years The Golden Age of Parenting,” she said. That’s what a fellow mom told me this weekend when I told her the ages of the bulk of my children. You know – I agree. I already think the exact same thing. Yes – home schooling FIVE kids is literally my day’s labor. But these kids are just a capable, funny bunch of humans. And I love creating magic for them because they are so readily satisfied with tiny do-dads and small treasures. Last year for Mosely’s birthday she received our family’s first set of Calico Critters. Have you heard of these toys? At the…
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Ten Ways To Have A Spotless Home
1. Never have any children. Ever. None. 2. Also, never allow any children to enter your home. If, for some unknown reason, you find yourself in a life situation that absolutely makes following the above rules impossible, you can at least implement the remaining guidelines. 3. Never allow your children to learn to cook. Keep them out of the kitchen entirely, as a matter of fact. If they keep creeping back in and trying to learn, treat them as if all they do is make a mess and be certain to non-verbally let them know that they are in your way. That they are messy. That you would cook better and tidier…
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Pinterest Projects With the Ones
My Pinterest board entitled Projects With the Ones is flooded with ideas with which I rarely follow through it seems. Recently I decided to set my talented children to task to accomplish some of these fun tasks. London was first to be given the challenge. I asked her to peruse the Pinterest board and to make a choice. She was instructed to gather all of the necessary supplies at our home or to make a list of what would be needed to complete the project. She chose an art project that is as simple as it is sweet. Using pages from a discarded book, we all drew designs of our…
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let’s talk about sex
It is an absolutely unpopular idea. Even amongst Christians. And I cannot, for the life of me, figure out exactly why. We reward all kinds of nonsensical, foolish, unworthy things in our culture. But we’re quiet on this front. There’s a serious lack of praise for two people who choose to say no to sex outside of the bonds of marriage and to say yes to purity. It’s an out of fashion idea. We believe it’s an impractical request. A holy grail. Mission impossible. Christian parents say to their children, “Listen. You should wait to have sex until you get married. But I know that’s really hard. So. Let me tell you about…
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from the cabin: Bergen Hawkeye at Lost Valley
five finds friday
parenting, continued
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we all scream.
Kevin has always been our family’s largest consumer of ice cream He will probably one day lose that title to a teenage son or two. However. Right now I’m afraid he might lose it to me. Ice cream has never been my top dessert choice. I’d rather have pie or cake or pudding. Until now. Every summer we pull out our faded yellow plastic ice cream bucket with the goofy penguin printed on the side and load it up with rock salt and ice and wait all afternoon for our cold dessert. (The noise. The steady upkeep of ice.) It was worth it. But it was so much work that…
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Maple Syrup Video Cuteness
Last spring we had the opportunity to accompany Kevin on a business trip which included Pennsylvania and New York visits. It’s precisely one of the reasons I have loved this season of Kevin working from home coupled with home schooling. Kevin’s main work purpose for that trip was to get video footage for Cornell University and the New York Maple Producers for a project they were tackling to promote maple syrup education. One video had been completed before the journey and now a second one is finished. My personal favorite bits are the ones that include our kids, of course – particularly the cute eye-widening expression of one young Otto Fox Wilder. …
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Berg wishes he was a cat.
We kept one of PIlgrim’s kittens from her last litter. I’m a sucker for orange kittens – and this guy is super cute. Like all kittens that abode at our home, one has to wonder if they will ever be able to use their own limbs as they seem to be carried about hither and yon for the first many weeks of their adorable kitten lives. But it seems Abraham Lincoln is managing just fine. Yes. Abraham Lincoln. (Kevin keeps a running joke going strong where he calls the kitten any particular name of his choosing. Teddy Roosevelt. Kurt Russell. Genghis Khan. Ken Ham.) Anyway. The kitten is quickly becoming…
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Happiest of Birthdays my Little Piper Finn
You guys. Despite our absolutely telling her to stop – this kid of ours named Piper Finnian Willow Lacey has been growing up. Right before our eyes. It hurts my heart, I tell you. Hurts my heart something fierce. She is SEVEN. I know it’s the lament of every parent at every birthday. But I just can’t believe how quickly these years keep piling up. I was going to spend this post writing sweet things about my girl. But I got distracted when I typed her name in my “search” button and began reading the snippets of her life from this blog. She is so funny. Always has been. And so…
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Otto can wear whatever shoes he wants. And I’ll tell you why.
In case you’ve lost track, we have six children. Our sixth child, our youngest son, at five, has been lately addicted to a pair of shoes we purchased at the last minute for a wedding he was in. A pair of black slip on shoes that are not my personal style for my child and are not anyone’s personal style to be worn with camo shorts. And yet. He does. Nearly every departure from our home will find Otto Fox in an ensemble that includes comfort clothes and black fake leather slip on shoes. He calls them his “inside shoes”. His inside shoes that he insists on wearing outside…
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Colorful Family Pictures.
If you’ve seen the Keigley kids lately wandering around here and there you may have noticed our five year old son has a pink streak across the back of his hair. Maybe you saw that London has reddish dye all across the tips of her hair. I have a green streak somewhere in the back of my hair and our hands were all multi-colored for days. It’s not that we’re really into color vibes or hair dye. It’s more like this: Our lovely friend Jane is a photographer. A week or so ago we had a family photo session scheduled at our house. She sent me a text. It said –…
