HomeLife
How we spend our days is, of course, how we spend our lives. - Annie Dillard
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Gnome For The Holidays
We live here. Our children’s grandparents live there. It is sometimes difficult to connect in a daily manner from state to state with one another. This weekend we celebrated an early Christmas at our place with Papaw and Grandma. And we gave them a little gift in an attempt to bridge the gap of all those miles between Ohio and South Carolina. Meet Columbia and Columbus. They’re gnomes. They match one another exactly. (And their names coordinate – get it? The capitals of each state.) We all composed a little rhyme that set up the story of the gnome twins. Then the kids and the grandparents walked along the driveway…
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it’s a numbers game.
Otto can count to about twenty before he loses all sense of reality. After that his numbers sound hilariously complicated. “I love you more than forty two million two twelve eighteen six ninety pancakes.” (That’s a lot of love, folks.) I’m going to borrow his math skills for the night. Today my name (if you know me as “Momma” or “Mommy” or “Mom”) was said six thousand fourteen two nine twenty nineteen times. At least. I believe I was touched by small hands, oh so many small hands, about eighty seventeen four thirteen times. The volume level in our home was about sixteen nine thirty three eighty times too loud…
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The Christmas Chain Took Us To Bethlehem
It’s hard to focus on school this month. This Christmas season feels shorter since Thanksgiving landed later in November. The kids and I just want to play and craft and bake and we don’t want to add or memorize or diagram sentences. (And this gloomy cold rain is not helping our (I mean, mine) attitudes either.) But we keep trying to persevere anyway. Only a few days late, we hung up our traditional Christmas chain. And so far we’ve watched a Christmas movie with snacks, decorated our tree (finally!) and this weekend we whipped up those infamous monster cookies and took in a new local event to our family –…
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Thursday. From My House to Yours.
This morning I woke up and I thought, “I just don’t want to teach school today.” It’s certainly not the first time that I’ve thought that. Or thought similarly on other topics. “I just don’t want to do laundry/cook meals/get out of bed/wash my hair.” And most mornings when I feel that way, I just do what I have to do anyway. Like the rest of the world. I don’t want to make dinner, but I do it anyway. I don’t want to get out of bed but I do anyway. (Sometimes I let the laundry and the hair washing slide.) But today, over a breakfast of Whatever Any Kid…
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Just one more Virginia post. Just one more.
I know, I know. It’s just a place. It’s just a state. I’ve written this before, but after a trip to Virginia it takes days to shake the mountain scent off of me. And as I acclimate once again, I write. It’s how I process. And so I jotted most of these words earlier this summer in a journal, after my last bout with Leaving-Virginia-itis. It’s still true so I’m sending it through today in my current bout of Leaving-Virginia-itis. ——– Can you love a place and know it’s not for you? Of course you can. It’s surreal to visit your own former house as a guest. Displaced. But comfortable.…
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carry me back to Virginia
Thanksgiving found us traveling north to get to The South. (Actually – we drove north, directionally. Only north. And east. But no five years of South Carolina living can convince me that Virginia isn’t more southern than this state that boasts the name “south” in its title.) Anyway. We headed to the farm. And – like always – nostalgia washed over me the very instant our maroon shuttle ascended the ridge through the woods. It’s the driveway. It gets me every time. When I was fifteen and at passenger-only status I loved this driveway. When I was sixteen and driving my brother’s hand-me-down silver hatchback Toyota Tercel I’d stop at…
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Pinterest Test Kitchen: Donut Muffins Good, Cinnamon Quinoa Bars Bad
Success and failure. It seems that is just the way the cookie’s been crumbling lately. Let’s get the bad news out of the way first – that’s the way I like to roll. These cinnamon quinoa bars. I like cinnamon and I like quinoa so I figured I’d give it a shot. What can I say? It looked fine. From the top. But as I began to cut it, it felt, uh – spongy. Rubber-like. It was pretty much like cold quinoa from the drain, all mushy and chewy. A hint of cinnamon attempting to disguise its globbiness. I asked my little go-to taste tester Otto his opinion. He couldn’t even chew…
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activities overloaded: making time for nothing
I am becoming more and more convinced that people are all overscheduled and overbooked and over committed. This is not just a cry to simplify your life or downsize or do less. I’m not promoting laziness and lack of commitment or poor follow through. But, as a culture, it seems as if we’re moving from one activity to the next with no time to eat (hello fast food tossed down en route) and no time to converse about any topic except where we need to be in the next ten minutes. We need rest. We need down time. We need relaxation. Sure – all of that is true. But I…
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Table Rock: There and Back Again
Last Sunday we pursued Adventure. We drove down Highway 11 and turned right. For years we’ve driven past this gigantic rock outcropping on our way to camping excursions. We’ve camped at the base of this giant rock known as Table Rock. We’ve hiked waterfalls near this rock. We’ve driven up to high peaks and seen this rock from a distance. But we’ve never made it to the rock, which had always seemed maybe too much or too far for an adventure with a family of mostly children. We’ve hiked four miles or so with the kids – and maybe there was even a five or six mile trek once too.…
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About Gifts & The Upcoming Christmas Season.
I’m a fan of enjoying the holiday that is nearest. I’m also a fan of planning ahead. Sometimes the balance of the two of those can be a tad bit tricky this time of year. I know some of you are planners too. And I know some of you have already practically finished your Christmas shopping and some are just beginning. I guess this post would be more for those of you who are just beginning. I wrote this post two Christmases ago. We continued to embrace the same philosophy last Christmas as well. And we will be keeping the same spirit of this idea this Christmas too. And so…
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I Think Colin Meloy Would Be Our Friend.
Elbows leaning on the stage. Mere feet away from Colin Meloy. Ah – Colin Meloy. If the name’s not familiar to you, he’s the lead singer of a band called The Decemberists. He’s Kevin’s pal. (Well. He’s not technically Kevin’s pal. He isn’t even technically aware of Kevin’s existence. But I’m pretty sure we’d all be friends if we could ever get two minutes together at the dinner table. As long as I don’t serve him lentil soup.) He’s also written two novels with his wife crafting the illustrations. Those novels influenced the name of our homeschool. In other words, we’re pretty big fans. Last weekend Kevin and I drove…
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Pinterest Test Kitchen: Crock Pot Failures, Soup Is Fine and Oatmeal Bars Extraordinaire
Ah, Pinterest recipes – I have not forgotten you. Me and Pinterest recipes have still been hanging out like the old chums we are. I just haven’t had the time to take cute photos of the food we’ve been crafting together. Also – there’s been a few flops of late from my Cook This board and that’s always a tad discouraging. Let me just get the flops out of the way first. Well – there was that one night I thought it’d be wise and clever to put breakfast in the crock pot with this apple oatmeal crock pot concoction. All we got out of this was wasted apples, gooey…
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perspective. take twenty-eight.
Perspective. It’s a loaded word. You just drop it there and it means everything. I just did a search on my blog for the word “perspective” and gobs of posts filtered up because they featured the word. It’s a biggie. I’m always grappling with it, embracing it, dancing around with it, trying to see it with new eyes. It means everything and determines so much. Remember a few weeks back we had some friends in town for an annual apple picking weekend? There we all were. Picnic table. BBQ. Autumn breeze. Autumn smells. Autumn life. I glanced over and saw three cell phones. Hashtag conversations. And I sighed my ridiculous…
