HomeLife
How we spend our days is, of course, how we spend our lives. - Annie Dillard
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playing along
Yesterday afternoon I stopped what I was planning to do (wash that two-days-soaking dirty pot in the sink) and allowed myself to be caught up in a game with my children. It was time for copywork and I overheard the game plan of the gaggle of small humans I am raising. (Is it really overhearing when you are in the same room and it is your own children speaking loudly enough for your neighbors to hear?) The kids were staging some kind of involved game of police officer. (Remember when you called every game by its title? Grown Up. Mommies. Church. School. Grocery Store.) Well. This game was called Police.…
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selfishness – another site.
I was looking at some random blogs the other day and I was overwhelmed at the cuteness out there in blog world. (Or whatever it’s called.) And then I started thinking about myself. And about how I like to think that I do not think about myself all the time when in fact apparently I do. I thought I had a pretty cute blog. And it’s alright, you know. But . . . comparatively speaking . . . man – I have some weak spots. I could use a little bit of glitter and glam. A little eye candy I guess. I like simple. I do. And I am a…
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Who needs a reason?
I don’t have a reason today to share these pictures. It’s just that . . . I was looking at the photos and this kid is so cute. And I just didn’t see the point in keeping this kind of adorable to myself. Why should I, really? This boy, this oTTo Fox Wilder McDonald, is My Favorite One Year Old Boy. And because he is number six some things are a little different for him than perhaps they might have been for children 1 through 5. He has discovered (and been allowed to hold) markers at a significantly earlier age. Which would, of course, account for the orange marker on…
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autumn. out there.
I might be making a terrible mistake. I might be doing homeschool really really badly. I am not sure. But it’s fall. Autumn. (If you like the fancy pants name of the season. And I’m all for any season that has two names. Just like any kid with two names. Or more. You know how I roll.) It’s beautiful outside. Leaves are literally drifting to the ground all around our yard in an idyllic fashion. You don’t need a sweatshirt but jeans feel great. A crunching sound is created under little size 11 feet. It’s just too perfect out there to be in here. So I keep shooing all of…
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A Five Year Old’s Movie Review: Legend of the Guardians
Boys’ Night is a Big Deal at our house. At Bergen’s continual request, he and Daddy went to see Legend of the Guardians not too long ago. In his own words, Berg is going to share about the movie with all the owls . . . Hit it, Siskel. Huh? Never mind. Tell me about the movie Berg. I do remember that this owl blended into this black rock. Was it scary? It was scary in one part. Who should not watch this film? Piper. Why? Because it’s too scary. Were you scared? No. Why not? Because it’s not scary at all for me. What did Daddy think of it?…
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The Art of Beethoven
Sometimes I get homeschool so wrong. And sometimes I get it a little better than that. But mostly I am in the middle of the mundane. And I get weighed down with the lists I fail to complete the schedules I forget to follow the mess and mire that swirls and settles on our house of a Monday. I can get pretty lost pretty fast. Which is why moments like the following can shock the sunshine right back into my day. I have this idea for our homeschool for a weekly music lesson. (And by “I have this idea” I really mean “Charlotte Mason had this idea”.) We study one…
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Bosco 9
When we first met our dog Bosco she was squirming in the bottom of a white five-gallon bucket with about four other puppies just like her. She was covered in fleas and looked like a miserable mess. It was a snowy day and we had driven for more than an hour to find the house where Bosco was listed for sale in the local newspaper. Listed as a pug. For $25. That seemed too good to be true. And it was. She was no pug. But after driving into the mountains of Floyd, Virginia on a snowy day and climbing a fence and wading through three feet of snow for…
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the one in which I eat my own words. again.
Seriously. People do eventually overcome this habit, right? You do grow wiser with age – no? Or must I spend all of my life eating (and then eating again) the very words from my own mouth? Which ones, you ask? Upon which edible assembly of mouth vomit am I swallowing back down currently? These. I uttered this dish so recently that they are still warm from the oven. Still fresh. Still digesting But here’s the deal. I’m not going to have that LASIK eye surgery after all. Not yet, anyway. It’s not that I am not anxious to ditch these contacts and these glasses and this blurry vision. That isn’t…
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More Evidence
I keep telling you how funny I think my youngest daughter is. And, like everyone in the ten and under crowd, her humor can sometimes veer to the potty variety. (Which, I guess, implies that mine can too, since I am finding these comments humorous.) So. With that said. Here’s the latest. Walking around the house, making a funny face and a slurping noise, Finn declares, “My spit tastes …. ummmm …. pretty good.” After watching her poop disappear down the toilet, she commented, “Aww. That little one doesn’t know where his family is.”
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the future is here
It was fifth grade for me. I was in fifth grade when I could no longer hide my secret. I had spent the last year or more voluntarily sitting near the front of the classroom, cheating on my school-administered eye exams and squinting my eyes to attempt to produce better vision. But in fifth grade, my charade was over. I was busted. I had to come clean. I could barely see. On the drive home from the eye doctor, fitted out in my hot pink plastic glasses (it was the 80’s, alright?), I experienced an awakening of sorts. I saw letters on billboards I had never been able to read…
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friends like this
Do you have friends like this? Friends who sit in your living room and hear the worst days of your lives. Not leave. Not blink. Not get up and exit. But stay. Remain. Listen. Stay. Remain. Listen. Repeat. Over and over again. As often as necessary. More often than necessary. Do you have friends like that? Oh my goodness. I count it one of the greatest blessings of my life to have friends like that. And we are so unbelievably fortunate that I could list a small handful of friends like that. Because we have them. That’s real. And amazing. And so incredible. But I am just talking about one…
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If You Are What You Eat – Then I’m In Trouble
Sometimes I like to describe my day by sharing a ridiculous true-life incident. And sometimes I get a kick out of breaking down the day’s events into numbers. But today? Today I am going to cruise down a new avenue. I think I’ll chronicle my yesterday according to what food items I consumed. How do you like them apples? (Them apples? Get it? A food joke.) No time for breakfast on Tuesdays – Bible Study morning. Which means getting ready (and getting five kids ready) to leave the house by 9 a.m. (Sure, that doesn’t sound early to people employed outside of their homes. I know. But to people employed…
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Are we predictable?
Unpredictable. That’s what it seems our life is. (Well. Everyone’s life is. Sort of.) But especially ours. Or at least it seems so lately. Like uber unpredictable. Wildly unpredictable. Over the top unpredictable. More unpredictable than anyone else’s. Do they give a prize for unpredictability? We win. Okay. It’s not really all that unpredictable. Maybe just average unpredictable. Maybe just your average, run-of-the-mill unpredictable. The kind of unpredictable ordinary lives are made of. That kind of unpredictable. Maybe that’s all I mean. I don’t know. That’s probably all I mean. My dad always told me that I tended to be a little too dramatic. Unpredictable. Predictable. Whichever. Like I said,…
