HomeLife
How we spend our days is, of course, how we spend our lives. - Annie Dillard
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Yeah. Just Like That.
Guess what family is unanimous in their recent discovery of their intense dislike for goat cheese? This family! (Was that really a hard guess for anyone?) Yes. It’s true. Our apologies to all goat-cheese-lovers reading right now. We discovered this over a recent dinner. I made a beautiful salad. And yes, I can describe this salad as beautiful. Because it was. A beautiful serving dish. Crisp, bright green spinach leaves piled high. Creamy white feta cheese sprinkled across the bed of green. Goat cheese layered across and mixed with the feta. Perfectly grilled chicken placed carefully across the salad layers. And exquisite, colorful ruby pomegranate seeds shimmering across the landscape…
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Love Is A Verb
I heard it first said at Look Up Lodge actually. (Maybe twelve years ago.) Love is an action. Love is a verb. There is always a lot of talk about love. And how we humans can best express it, one to another. Particularly at this time of year. But even the coolest, most amazing gift, (even a Mac) cannot express our love as beautifully and as profoundly as our actions can. Even our most simple actions. Yesterday I was suddenly and inexplicably very sick. Really sick. Chills, aches. Miserable. Even my eyes hurt. It was lousy. But despite the fact that I have six children, five of whom do not…
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Long, Strange Trip
Destination: London, Ohio. The birthplace of one Kevin J. Keigley Detours: Three. One – To wrap up former business details. Two – To surprise a wonderful friend. Three – To avoid a rock slide on the interstate. Number of Donatos Pizzas Ordered During Our Three Days in Ohio: 4 Hours Spent in a Packed Suburban With Six Children: About 30 Number of Times Mosely shouted “My bum itches”: Approximately 42 Favorite New Menu Item at a Restaurant: Panera Bread’s Macaroni & Cheese New Skill Acquired by Bergen, Taught to Him by His Older Cousins: An intense football tackle Number of Rented Books on Tape: 2 Number of Books on Tape…
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What Do We Do?
(It’s another one of those this-picture-has-nothing-to-do-with-this-post-other-than-the-fact-that-this-is-my-blog-and-this-is-my-cute-kid. Apologies to all.) I just heard this line in a song . . . “If you feel it, it must be real.” That turns my stomach. This idea is absolutely pervasive. It has invaded everything. Our music. Our movies. Our commercials. Our attitudes. Our expectations. Our brains. Our hearts. Our actions. And I hate it. Because it is a lie. I’m not saying feelings always lie. I’m not saying feelings are wrong. Or sinful. Necessarily. I am saying – you cannot trust only your feelings. You cannot live from your feelings alone. You cannot base your actions on your feelings. It is a dangerous…
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It’s Time
And the stockings have been hung by the chimney with some degree of care. All eight of them. Let the season begin!
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Home
There are just so many little things that make home home. You know? And those things are probably a little different in each house. You know when you have been away from home for a while – for a business trip or a vacation or a holiday or even just a long weekend? And then you come home and you take a shower in your own bathroom with your own normal-sized shampoo and soap? That’s the feeling I’m talking about. I love that feeling. I love that part of home. The comfortable, familiar aspects of our literal house. The parts of our house that make this place a home .…
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Is This A Test?
We try to learn a few verses together as a family. I write them on the chalkboard wall near the dinner table and we read them out loud together before each meal. This week I wrote out James 1:19-20 – “Everyone should be quick to listen, slow to speak and slow to become angry for man’s anger does not bring about the righteous life that God desires.” And let’s just be honest. When I picked this little nugget of a verse I was targeting a handful of sometimes short tempered, angry-word-shouting siblings. I was trying to preach when I should have been quiet. And so maybe this day just serves…
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11:00 a.m.
The alarm on my watch beeps every day at 11:00 a.m. When Kevin was in Israel we both sat our alarms to the same hour so we could remember to pray for one another and our family at the same exact time, despite the physical distance between us. Once Kevin returned, I just left the alarm setting as it was. (Not just because I don’t know how to change it either.) It has been a good daily reminder to pray for my husband. In the past when I have prayed for my husband, or any loved one in my life really, my prayers were pretty selfish. Yes, I would pray…
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The Greatest Obstacle
Do you want to know what my biggest parenting challenge is? Let me start but telling you what it is not. It is not determining which homeschool curriculum to use or even the decision whether or not to actually homeschool these children at all. It is not preparing daily breakfasts, lunches and dinners with variety and healthy eating habits in mind. It is not balancing the demands of six children, a messy house, overflowing laundry, marriage and friendships. It is not determining the best course of discipline appropriate for six different humans. No. It isn’t any of those things. My biggest parenting challenge is this . . . With five…
Keep Reading . . .
a little grief. how the time passes.
and there’s a video
an apology/not an apology
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Remember When?
This is a recent photo of the Little Willow. The “bigger” kids dressed her up one day. For no reason. And yesterday was Halloween. Which, at the Keigley house, did not imply anything out of the ordinary this year. Kevin and Riley ran a race. The rest of the kids and I had a less-than-financially successful yard sale. We relaxed in the afternoon, went to the store, had tacos for dinner and watched a movie with friends. You know – the regular. But this Halloween made me think of last Halloween. And that made me laugh. And since yesterday was so . . . . normal, I thought I might…
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No Longer
No longer will I look scornfully upon you when I notice your child walking down the street wearing only one flip flop. Maybe your daughter just tripped on her left flip flop, took it off and used her teeth to try to “fix” the problem, thus creating a new problem – a completely unwearable piece of footwear. And maybe you were only a block or so away from your car anyway so it just made more sense to walk back to the car with her one shoe-less than to really address the problem on the street with four other children in addition to the one-shoe-wonder walking down the street.No longer…
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I Didn’t Know
I am constantly learning new things. Sure, plenty of those things are powerful, spiritual and perspective-altering. But some of them are not. For example. I didn’t know that size 6 jeans for six-year-olds are already $15 even at low-cost stores such as T.J. Maxx. (I just visited Ye Olde Good Will Shoppe to cure that one.) I didn’t know that petite clothing has very little do with your overall size. I always thought those clothes were for very tiny people so I sidestepped those racks. I recently found out that petite is actually talking about your height! As a relatively short person, why hasn’t someone, anyone, told me this before?…
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Are You Sure?
I find myself always asking, (repetitively, yes) How can I best serve God? (Right now. In this life. In the present.) And the answer seems to always be given (repetitively, yes) softly in my mind, boldly in my life. By serving the people living at this house. No, no, no. Can’t I do something glamorous?Something big?Exciting?Cool?Highly visible?Dramatic? God,Don’t you need a writer for a really popular magazine?Do you need me to work at a theatre like Flat Rock Playhouse?Do you want me to sell all of my possessions and travel across the country with my family in an RV for you?Do you want me to sequester myself away in some…
