HomeLife
How we spend our days is, of course, how we spend our lives. - Annie Dillard
-
what do you think, friends?
Well. Well. Well. I disappear from the internet for a day or two and look what happens. I mean, I was just camping with friends and then suddenly every thing on this website is looking spiffy and shiny. (Truly, camping and this face lift here have little to do with one another, except that they did both occur during the same basic time span. Kind of.) At any rate. I love it. I love the giant photos scrolling across up top. (I need to get watermarks on several of those because Emma at Paper Story & Design took a few of them and they are so fantastic and she…
-
everything’s perfectly normal here
Evidence that I live in a bit of a madhouse: _______ About twenty minutes after midnight Ryder places his paws on my face to alert me that he would like to exit the home to use the facilities. (Or to lie down outside where it is cooler than inside our home. Poor hairy fellow.) I note the time. Again. 12:20 am. The Yukon’s back door is cranked wide open. And has been since we loaded the car for a camping trip – oh, I don’t know – SIX hours ago. ________ My eleven year old is sound asleep. Wearing a camping shirt, cargo shorts and with his knife/multipurpose tool attached…
-
Making Our Trail: KOA Kansas City East, Oak Grove MO Review
We’ve been a camping family for a long time, actually. But somehow we have never stayed at a KOA. Until our giant road trip adventure this summer. And pretty much, all the way to Colorado and all the way back, we stayed at KOAs. KOA stands for Kampgrounds of America and the very handy thing about a KOA on a road trip is — they are everywhere! (And yes, my friends who know me well know that the “k” in “kampground” is a tricky one for me, as I prefer words to be spelled correctly. But I decided to just let this one go – and it was a good…
-
The Journey Home: Making Our Trail
“I don’t want to ever come home. And I am ready to be home.” This is the text I sent today to my friend. It’s about all I have for you guys tonight. Goodness, it’s hard to come back down to sea level when you’ve been frolicking on the mountain top. Yesterday and today the sea level problems included miles on the road, the perplexity of figuring out the best way to handle bathroom breaks with young sons in this current culture traveling as the only adult and trying to decide via telephone how to care for a little wound Ryder the dog keeps reopening on his leg. Ah, but…
Keep Reading . . .
Stitch Fix: We Tried It!
Bear Grylls Survival Camp: A Timberdoodle Review
returning …
-
Five Finds Friday: On The Road
Is it really Friday? Like, for real. Is it? At least a half dozen times today someone in our car said, “Seriously, you guys – what day is it?” (Mostly that someone was me.) Because when you have been on the road for a long time, all the days blur together. I don’t know how my dad does this regularly. Maybe he never knows what day of the week it is or even what time it is. Anyway, just for fun, let’s see if I can muster up a Five Finds Friday from the road. FUNNY The microphones full of bubbles that I bought from the dollar store before this…
-
a “did you know” kind of Monday.
Monday morning the kids and I spent nearly an hour driving from shop to shop looking for homemade bread. For Otto’s birthday lunch he had requested the simplest and sweetest of lunches. (It’s a birthday tradition in our family – you get to pick all of the meals.) The perfect peanut butter and jelly sandwich. Homemade jam. Homemade salted caramel peanut butter made locally and sold at our weekly farmer’s market. Spread on homemade bread. With chocolate milk. I thought about baking the bread myself. Well. Actually, I thought of having London bake the bread for us. But the weekend was full of birthday and trip preparation and Maddox’s first birthday…
-
Five Finds Friday (27) (guess what Trader Joe’s carries now?)
(drum roll.) It’s Friday. Some weeks I think about skipping these posts. But my friend Walter says he likes them. So. I mean. I’ve got to keep Walter happy. . FUNNY This wig. And what it apparently brings out in people. Also. This dog in this hat. FASHIONABLE (See above.) I hope it’s fashionable to wear cowboy hats in Colorado – and every stop between here and there – because my boys are pretty stoked about their hats. (Which is good, since I am pretty stoked about how adorable they look while wearing them.) FLAVORFUL It’s a small thing really. But there we were last Sunday, completing our weekly food…
Keep Reading . . .
Five Finds Friday (teen drivers. the first egg.)
The Right Word.
Otto Meets a Hawk
-
scars. and healing.
My eyebrow has this little sliver of a space where no eyebrow grows. It’s a scar. From nearly forty years ago. I fell right out of my bunk bed when my younger brother was born and he was handed over my crib and I was forced to move to a top bunk bed. I fell right out of that bed in the middle of the night, directly hitting the hard wood floor far below on my wee little eyebrow. I needed middle of the night stitches and my head still bears the mark and my memory carries the story and it’s all right there, written on my face in a…
Keep Reading . . .
returning …
epiphany: the order of things
Raising Girls: embracing help through Awaken
-
another thing to miss.
And when I glanced across the aisle, I saw them. I didn’t know them, but I watched — I watched husband and wife grey hairs and wrinkled skin, slightly curved spines, bifocals. Hands intertwined (clasped) the satisfied smile of years upon their beautiful faces. Hands held through the song. Granddaughter whispering in her ear. It shouldn’t have surprised me. The wetness in my eyes. But it did. One more thing to miss. The future. Th wrinkles. The intertwined fingers.
-
Five Finds Friday (26)
FUNNY I was looking for a short bit of entertainment late one evening on Ye Olde Netflix. I didn’t want to watch Fixer Upper and be reminded that I want to redecorate or to wish I lived in Waco, Texas where apparently every street corner is overflowing with homes that you can buy for $42,000 and turn them into homes that house glorious farm house sinks, shiplap on every wall and mason jars on the mantles. I’ve watched all the Call the Midwife episodes. I have no stomach for cop dramas or court room shows. I had to stop watching Friday Night Lights when they let Matt Sorenson make too…
-
South Carolina State Museum: Field Trip Review
Nearby South Carolina capital Columbia boasts several museums and family-friendly sites like the Riverbanks Zoo to draw the Greenville crowds south. The South Carolina State Museum is situated right in Columbia and the trip from Greenville over to Columbia is easy to navigate and the museum is a breeze to locate. Our family recently made the drive, along with a handful of other Upstate families, to spend a day exploring the museum and its many exhibits. As a homeschooling family in the middle of a year long study of Roman history, our primary draw to the museum on this trip was their featured exhibit – Julius Caesar: Roman Military Might and Machines.…
-
ramble on.
I have a couple of posts lined up in the “drafts” section but I just don’t quite feel like pushing the old “publish” button on them yet. (And by a “couple” I mean 123 drafts actually. Not all of them worth sharing publicly. Some just needing a little rewording here and there.) But nothing seems to fit what I feel like writing about so that must mean it’s time for a rambling post instead of a tidy post. (I think it’s probably because tidy posts require more brain power and I am low on that this evening. I need to recruit some day time hours to write and then…
Keep Reading . . .
love. (for a concert and a band.)
a thank you, thirty years later.
Grill. Master.
-
please tell the therapist it was the ice cream’s fault
Oh you guys it’s just SO hard to be a grown up sometimes – is it not? The floor is always dirty … like grit crunching under your feet dirty. And sure I have five kids at home and one dog, but there used to be eight of us here and triple the number of dogs and it feels like the crud level has just surpassed any sort of acceptable limit and how on earth can a person control it all every single day? It’s always after midnight when I feel most compelled to eat copious amounts of crunchy food or homemade ice cream (or both) and it’s always bright…
