HomeLife
How we spend our days is, of course, how we spend our lives. - Annie Dillard
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birthdays and broken dryers
A lot of good went down this weekend at our home. The house has once again been redeemed from its brush with Reorganizing and Rearranging With Lacey and the rooms are in basically pretty good order and walking around at night in the dark is no longer a fear-inducing obstacle course. One of my friends with a pretty high tolerance for disorder stopped over during the height of the insanity and commented something like, “Wow. Even for you – this is crazy.” (Yeah, it wasn’t a compliment at all, of course.) School ran pretty smoothly and we are already half way to our first six week break. (Whoever suggested teaching…
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Five Finds Friday (chocolate pudding and head wraps on sale. also cookie pigs.)
Friday comes in on little cat’s feet. No – wait, that’s the fog, right? It comes in on little cat’s feet in a poem – correct? Yeah, who knows. That was probably a nerdy literary reference that only I think is funny. That’s fine. Let’s not mention it – okay? FUNNY This is a real cookie that one of our favorite bakeries sold to us. What is happening here? I don’t even know what it is I am supposed to be looking at. A mama pig? It’s too weird to consume. FASHIONABLE Babies need fashion too. And babies need spit/drool/sweet potato puree…
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list the good and share it.
It’s almost always late at night when I write. (Sometimes I commandeer an afternoon or a rare weekend morning, but generally it’s after kids are put to bed and the house sounds like whirring fans and humming dishwasher and sleeping dog.) And I think differently at night – a lot of piled up and poured out and held back can come out all through my fingers in the dimly lit rooms of my home. (And the rooms are ALL dimly lit, you guys. I don’t especially care for the dark.) Tonight I sat at a table with my daughters and some grown ups. We laughed and we talked and…
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Dear Lady After Me at the Checkout Counter at Trader Joe’s,
My daughter was watching your face as you watched my kids and I bag our groceries. As you received a phone call and chatted loudly, noting your annoyance at how long it was taking to get out of the store today because it was soooo slow. Saw your face as you grimaced and barely maintained civility when my EBT card functioned improperly. Watched your face as you eyed our grocery choices and our clothing choices and whatever other choices you decided didn’t measure up to your standard on your exceptionally busy Sunday afternoon. Hey. Maybe you were having an incredibly hectic day. Maybe it was awful and a burden…
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Five Finds Friday (green woods, red carpets, golden donuts)
Someone tell me how many Fridays we get to have with our kids before they turn eighteen. I’m sure it’s a number that’s too small and will make us all sad. FUNNY My friend Micah has been joining us at the table for more than six years. Tonight a couple of my big kids (I had to wear heels to be taller than them) and a couple of friends donned some fancy duds and headed downtown to a red carpet premiere to support Micah’s latest project – a series entitled UnSuper about the lives of a handful of super heroes. Our family loves Micah and his…
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It’s The House’s Fault
Does your own life ever just carry you away? No, I mean – for real. Like – I’m asking myself, where did my entire last week GO? My answer is – honestly – I think my house ate it. My house ate my entire last week. That – and school. Guess what friends – it takes a lot of a day to homeschool FIVE children. Who knew? (Oh wait – I sort of knew. But then summer made me forget. And now I am learning again. Math times five is ….. too much math.) When I forget to look at home education and my role in that as…
Keep Reading . . .
Going to Guatemala
some tiny epiphanies via my quarantine education
hello out there.
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a couple weekend notes and THE CONTEST WINNER (!)
This weekend the dryer broke. There was a load of mostly beach towels in it. They smell so bad right now. I also decided to rearrange the kids’ bedrooms. And by rearrange the kids’ bedrooms I mean ….. move the giant heavy wooden bunkbeds to another room, relocate the girls beds to entirely new spots, drag every old bed frame to the front lawn, move desks upstairs from downstairs, put every single bedroom item into the hall, completely change out the school room, visit IKEA and deep clean random closets, shelves and drawers. One thing always leads to another, you know what I mean? I’ve got another weekend story…
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the life jacket decision.
This summer we were swimming at a lake. Piper Finn has really advanced in her swimming abilities since last summer but the lake has murky water deeper than all of our heights combined and she still has limited experience in deep water swimming. I required her to wear a life jacket if she chose to venture past a specific spot in the water. I’m the mom. I made a mom decision. Piper did NOT agree with my decision. In fact, she pretty much thought it was the WORST. Her life jacket was cumbersome. It was heavy. Everyone who could swim well was not wearing a life jacket and she…
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The Out of Place, Incongruent (But Not At All Surprising) Discoveries Within My Own Home
A lone boot on the kitchen floor. 2. A clear plastic, glow in the dark, rat on the arm of my favorite chair. (WHO on earth gave one of my children this? No. Seriously. Tell me who bought that for my child because I want to buy THEM a little something something.) 3. The dishwasher door hanging wide open. 4. A water bottle on the living room floor. 5. A bath mat sopping wet in the middle of the day. 6. Two green peas floating in the toilet. 7. 600 tiny squares of cut up white paper on the school room floor. 8. A…
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Five Finds Friday (two Bergen photos, potato salad and gigantic earrings)
Oh Friday, Friday. FUNNY This picture from our most recent mom-son outing. It’s become his go-to face for photos. (Which is why the last entry today is so special.) FASHIONABLE You know me and Noonday are buddies – right? (Remember Sean Penn?) They have a new fall line out and there are some lovely pieces. Are these earrings too big for me? FLAVORFUL I know I keep talking about my new kitchen buddy InstantPot. (And I promise a review post is coming soon all about why I heart this new pal. And – you know, what its name is.) But here’s a great…
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an opportunity to be what’s good & lovely & true
Over and over (and over) again when my ship has been sinking, God has used regular real-life human beings to rescue me and my family. Not angels nor magicians nor miracle workers. Just people. Not people with millions of dollars or loads of resources. Every day people with jobs and deadlines and mortgages and debt and stuff to get done in their own lives. Maybe you call it empathy. Maybe generosity. But when we stop looking at our own stack of problems for a few minutes, an afternoon, the length of time it takes to read a blog post, and we place ourselves inside the pain or the suffering…
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the silver lining we get to choose to be
I stubbed my toe on a wooden baseball bat. A baseball bat most decidedly NOT placed in its proper home. It hurt, but I wasn’t angry about it. The Stuff of Childhood isn’t so annoying. I am a Changed Human. My daughter says that the silver lining in all this mess is me. I’m her Silver Lining. I don’t know how long I get to be seen like that by my daughter. So today I celebrate that. Today my heart rejoices and I decide that Grateful is my choice. _______________________________
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Five Finds Friday (Italian deliciousness & a classic novel that I missed)
Oh Friday, you keep sneaking up on me. FUNNY This conversation was funny: “Mom, can I google birds and bees?” WHAT? “Can you google what??” “Birds and bees. I am writing a story and I need to see some art images for both birds and bees. This story has both animals. Can I use Google to find pictures of birds and of bees?” “Oh. Yeah. Sure.” FASHIONABLE Piper is by far the easiest of my children to shop for. She likes most all clothing that you buy for her. Isn’t this dress from GAP adorable? FLAVORFUL London and I celebrated her thirteenth birthday (and…
