HomeLife
How we spend our days is, of course, how we spend our lives. - Annie Dillard
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The Weekend Ramble (but do you salt your watermelon?)
Why is it already a billion degrees inside this house for the love? I’m just not ready to turn on the air conditioning yet – I wanted a buffer month in my electric bill, you know. Can’t spring give me that? This weekend the kids put in a little farm labor at a local fruit and vegetable farm. It was just supposed to be the big kids but Piper was eager to work too and she found a job that fit her particular skill set beautifully – welcoming the berry pickers and instructing them where to pick their berries. (Truth be told, that ten year old had a dramatically…
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Five Finds Friday (a couple short finds and a funny video)
The weather this week has been spectacular. Blue skies and sunshine. And I’ve been so happy about that. The list of things to do this week has been regularly long – but starting with the mindset that my life is full and not busy has been surprisingly so helpful. Hasn’t changed the to-do list but it has shaped my attitude. Also – I can’t come up with all the fives this week. What can I say? I’ll give you what I’ve got and we’ll have to choose to be satisfied with that. funny Tripp and Tyler have a new video out and it makes me laugh.…
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The Weekend Ramble
I’m going to stop using the word “busy”. (For real, you guys can help me. Call me out. But, you know, can you say it with gentle words when you do?) Instead I am going to use the word “full”. My life is full. And, like all lives, it is full of beautiful and beastly moments. Of good things I like doing and mediocre things I have to do and rotten things I must endure. This week we picked strawberries. I love picking our food from the ground or the tree or the whatever. (I mean, it’s fine to pick it from the grocery store shelf too and I…
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my ideals and my reality: they aren’t lining up
Today my dad stopped in for a short visit. It’s always good to see his smiling face. Last month on one of his pop overs he gave the kids an art assignment – they were to draw a picture inspired by a song he loved. It is a song that imagines what the Garden of Eden might have looked like before sin entered the world. (It’s called “When Dragon’s Hearts Were Good”, hence the dragon themed art it inspired.) The kids had a time period in which to complete their artwork and they all worked hard, to varying degrees. On this trip he swooped in and judged the contest…
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these days ….
Latin Everywhere, Everyday: A Timberdoodle Review
five finds friday
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what’s a synonym for rambling thoughts?
I’ve come to enjoy the rhythms of Monday posts that are rambles as much as Friday posts that are structured. This weekend was full and crowded with stuff and things. Friday night I crossed an imaginary line. A tattoo line. I went from two small tattoos to just sky diving right off into a third much larger one. Maybe it’ll be a story for another day. Who knows? Saturday the girls played their last soccer game of the season. It was a really great experience for them all in different ways. Saturdays spent cheering them on were actually quite enjoyable. All the same, I’m grateful the season has ended.…
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five finds friday (it’s four this week but who’s counting?)
All the days. All the weeks. Same song. Same chorus. They go so quickly. funny We’re still laughing at Studio C. Sometimes they’re just amusing and sometimes they’re downright hilarious. Like this one …. fashionable I’ve long wanted one of these leather ottoman pouf chair type things. I don’t know what they’re supposed to be called. I think these are great! Shoot – just give me the entire room. Books that you can only reach by ladder equals my dream living space. faithful God just uses whatever He wants to use and whomever He wants to use some days doesn’t…
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walking the line
There are days when I think I’ve got a couple of things under control – a portion of bits and pieces working together alright. When I feel like the routine is serving us and I have meals pre-planned and the moments feel sort of in my grasp. And then there are other days. Moments here and there where tears surprise me – from worry or fear or exhaustion. A heavy weight settling first on my shoulders and then on my chest and landing somehow in my throat, squeezing so that just the smallest stream of air can flow in and out, clouding my mind and making my view a…
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farewell mr. potter.
Tonight I finished the seventh and final book in the Harry Potter series. I’m more than a decade late to the game I guess. I’d love nothing more than tossing my thoughts and theories and opinions all over this blog post to hear what you guys think too about the plot twists and the last line and the entire last chapter and Neville and Dumbledore and Dobby and everything else. But I imagine others are late to the game too and I don’t like spoiling good stories so I’ll wait to talk to you in person. It took me until Book Five to really feel engaged and…
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Little Ways to Save Money for Trips
I have five kids living in my house. Three of them are teenagers. The food consumption alone in this house is outrageous. Our house is over one hundred years old. The heating and cooling bill take a gigantic chunk of the pie every month. And pie – well, if we want that, we can’t even share just one any longer – we need two! This month my car needed a new oil sensor – whatever that really means. Its gas guzzling capacity rivals that of my son’s cereal eating capacity. Yesterday that car died in the parking lot of Wal-Mart. It has since been revived but there are no guarantees…
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the weekend report.
It’s that rambling from the weekend time. I took two cups of those delicious sweet strawberries and made my first 2018 batch of strawberry jam – complete with the memories that come with the jam process every year like clockwork. And still in that same old bowl. Goodness, but that jam is delicious. Maybe it’s the nostalgia that tastes so sweet. (That and the copious amounts of sugar.) I also bought our first watermelon this weekend – even though I know it’s not quite local yet. But Mosely has been longing for watermelon for months and we couldn’t resist. Sitting on the porch and enjoying the sunshine, the breeze…
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Five Finds Friday (strawberries and kids who write songs to avoid doing what I ask)
Last week I missed writing this weekly feature because of work deadlines and someone actually told me that they missed reading it that week. Which makes a late night writer like myself feel appreciated – so thank you. funny I live in a madhouse. A circus. A carnival. And like all circuses and all carnivals, when you’re on the tilt-a-whirl you feel pretty good. When the cotton candy is crammed in your mouth in a giant pile of soft purple sugary goodness, it’s all high and no low. Eventually comes the crash, however. Especially when cotton candy stomach meets tilt-a-whirl stomach. My kids are funny. Until…
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five finds friday (ukuleles & queso)
Five Finds Friday (a whole lot of photos)
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stored up words . . .
Some things. In no particular order. I try to schedule only one or two meetings for work each week. That keeps the load manageable in between homeschool and the pesky fact that everyone in my house (me included) likes to eat at routine times. Plus the additional fact that managing a home takes an actual time allotment. Who knew? At any rate. Last week I broke my rule and had about as many meetings and interviews and appointments as there are days in the week. (More, actually.) And I found myself writing late into the evening and dining out to “save time” and just all around being busier…
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What is there – and what isn’t. What we see and what we don’t.
It’s a funny thing. Perception. What is real vs. what seems to be real. What is true vs. what feels true. What other people see and what is actually going on. What we think we said and what someone else thinks they heard. I’d wager a bet that perception is to blame for most all of our misunderstandings with these pesky things we call relationships from one human to another human. It’s part of the reason why two people can watch an accident and have two different stories to tell after it has happened. It’s part of the reason why two siblings can grow up in the…
