HomeLife
How we spend our days is, of course, how we spend our lives. - Annie Dillard
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five finds friday. (the driving. the giving of thanks. the funny video. the perfect measuring cup.)
I have a friend with as many children as I have who are all at about the same ages as mine. Sometimes when we see one another, we make eye contact and we don’t even have to open our mouths. We just know. Life. Is. Busy. It is full. We spend HOURS of our days in a gas-guzzling tank of a car driving someone to something. It’s where we are. We aren’t complaining. We’re just – tired. It is a literal part time job to drive our prodigy to and fro. It is a line item on the budget to foot the bill for the gas for all the back…
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Colorku: A Timberdoodle Review
This is a sponsored post. I received this item from Timberdoodle in exchange for an honest review. These thoughts and words and opinions are, as always on this page and in real and regular life, all completely and totally my own. ________________________ Oh goodness – this is a pretty one. And I know that isn’t the goal of this game or product or educational tool. (I don’t exactly know how to categorize this one.) But I’m also saying – it’s so cute. The colors are beautiful. Just look at it. It’s called Colorku. I keep wanting to call it Color Sudoku because that’s what it basically is. If you’ve ever…
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she’s right, he knows her name.
It was maybe three weeks ago when we woke up to faucets that wouldn’t turn on. Water that wouldn’t flow through our pipes. We didn’t know it at first, but it was an issue with our water pump and we had to replace the entire unit. (Which is hidden deep down inside our well.) That weekend Piper and Otto had gone camping with our friends and they were just returning, all campfire and dirt smelling. Piper wanted a shower. But there was no water at our house. There had been none for hours. She talked about how she just wished there would be enough water for her to take one…
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holiday links.
If you have any plastic cash or actual green bills after Black Friday, I’m going to make a list here of some ways you can spend what’s remaining. Full disclaimer – yes, everything I share here can help me earn plastic money and genuine money as well. Most of it in rather tiny ways, but we all know how piggy banks get filled – one coin at a time. Let us now commence my pretty much shameless plug here for all the ways I use side hustles to foot the bills for my family. (And let me include a photo here so you can see how tall and cute these…
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parenting reminds me I need Jesus
I wish that I had a couple lives to live. Maybe then there would be enough time to learn from my mistakes. To change the course. To turn the tide. Maybe then I could see the storm before it hits, predict the lightning before it strikes. It turns out, parenting is just another experiment. And, when you get some hindsight, a little distance in the race itself, certain aspects become more clear. But you’ve already turned the corner when you realize you could have taken a different route. It’s a frustrating reality. This bigger picture. This scope. And the longer I parent alone, the more I realize that single parenting…
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five finds. on a friday. (eyelashes. chicken pot pie. basketball.)
Monday seems like a very long time ago. Was it? Maybe. funny It’s getting more and more difficult to have a nightly family read aloud time. But mostly I keep persevering because it’s important to me. Yes, the books themselves matter. But the IDEA of it matters more to me. The time that we all sit in the same space for half an hour when maybe we’ve hardly seen one another all day. The time to be quiet together and to listen to good words together and to hear the same story and to have routine and tradition and familiar to end our day. I read books that I think…
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five finds friday (dates with otto & beaded earrings & friends)
In the course of one day, a load of mess can happen. In the course of one week – well, even more mess. Right? This week it was a broken water pump in our well. Deep down in our well. Life with teenagers. (Someone this week declared teens to be a little Jekyll and Hyde sort of situation – and that feels like the most true thing I have heard in ages.) But here it is – Friday again. funny Wrapped up rewatching The Office. With beets – to honor Dwight. PSA: They were disgusting. fashionable Sure – it’s earrings again. Are you even surprised? I love all sorts of…
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tick tock. a small choice.
I’m always looking for ways to tame the beast known as my iPhone. I’m grateful that a tiny device can do so much for me: Tell me the weather. Let me communicate with my dad and my brothers. Provide a path for continuing and deepening friendships with my people who live all across the United States.Create a source of revenue to feed and clothe my kids.Connect me with people like you guys.Give me directions while I drive.Offer hours of music or podcasts or audio book choices. And yet. I kind of hate my iPhone. I hate the power it can literally have. The pull for me to pick it up,…
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water. the gift & the cost.
It’s just not something we think about. We know we are privileged to have such free and easy access to it. But it’s not on our grateful radar all that often. Until you wake up one morning and turn the faucet on to fill up your tea pot and nothing comes pouring out. That’s this week at our house. Sunday morning we discover our water is not working. We do all the things we know to do: Check for leaks in the pipes under the house.See if a breaker has been flipped.Find out if there’s any water available from the spigots outside.Call several friends who surely know more than we…
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an ode to not making time to write: and it’s not okay
Writing consistently over here has been SUCH a challenge this school year. I am just plain old out of time. Sure, yes – we all have the same twenty-four hours and all that. And sure, I bet I waste time somewhere too. But mostly, I’m really living a fast sort of life right now. I think it’s just the nature of the beast of parenting big kids – and so many of them. And, of course, the nature of single parenting. And of running a growing business. And of teaching at a co op. And of homeschooling. At night, when I finally have two seconds, which is usually past midnight…
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swimming in the deep end
It all feels like it’s already been said. All the words have been taken. The ones about exhaustion and anxiety. About despair and waiting. The posts about overworking and not enough sleep have all been written. Balance – we get it – it’s elusive. Time management – we understand – it’s tricky. Self care – we know – it’s important. I’m a broken record over here. My friends and I, over tea or crepes, through deep sighs and understanding arm pats, we say we hear you, we see you, we ARE you. We’re all singing the same song, paddling the same canoe, weathering the same storms. We are all tired.…
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Five Finds Friday (pumpkin bars, earrings (!) and my kids dressed like historical figures)
Well the weather has been dreamy. The days have been full. The teens have been teen-y. The budget has been stretched. The meals have been quick and sometimes eaten standing up. The water pressure has been sinking. But we’re at the weekend and that’s good news. funny We’re reading a book out loud before bed called Right Ho, Jeeves by P.G. Wodehouse. It’s my first Wodehouse novel and it’s quirky and downright hilarious. It has Berg laughing loudly on almost every page. flavorful We had the pleasure of Oma and Pape Dale stopping by last Friday night. And – the tragedy is – we did not take one single photo.…
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share the good
The statistics are staggering. The world is a mess. Bad stuff happens a lot. True. True. True. But also. There are good people too. Kind people. Friends who pick up the phone when you call and listen to you rant about the injustices in your own life. Who offer words of camaraderie and words of hope. Words of “I’m angry with you”. Kids who see your day is heading south and make you the tiniest and cutest cup of coffee with frothy milk and sprinkled sugar, not because you really love coffee but because they do and they want you to try it and everything tastes better in a cute…
