Otto Fox Wilder
There comes a time in every rightly consructed boy's life when he has a raging desire to go somewhere and dig for hidden treasure. - Mark Twain
-
five finds friday
This week in numbers. (Even though numbers are NOT my thing.) 3.5 hours at a testing facility for kids and school testing. 1 broken motor mount on my Yukon. 5 hours spent driving kids to cross country, soccer and errands on Tuesday afternoon. 10 kids at my house on Wednesday. 22 baked potatoes for a group dinner. 19 chocolate chip cookies stolen and devoured by Ryder. funny Our pup Talluah is a funny one. She adores sleeping curled up on a pillow. Preferably above someone’s head. And I know I share a lot of photos of this dog sleeping – but it’s what she does a lot. And –…
-
five finds friday (funny kids, garish sofas, filthy rocks, twinkling lights)
But seriously – Friday AGAIN? This week there were birthday parties, cross country conditioning, teenage tears, education a-happening, some genuine love expressed by some of my kids toward one another, meals of cereal, meals of hot dogs, meals of beef stew and meals of chicken and broccoli. There was a tad of single parent drama and a touch of divorced parent drama but we all survived and made it to the other side, if there is another side. You know. Life was lived. The sun was shining more than the sky was raining and I had next to no work meetings and I rearranged some furniture and tried to…
-
Five Finds Friday (a lot of Otto and a little about a pipe bursting, also a bit about grilled cheese sandwiches)
Sort of makes my stomach hurt when the calendar says it is already well into MARCH. No. Just – no. funny Otto has not yet learned to appreciate the gift of being clean. The allure of being freshly showered pulls no sway with him. If I didn’t remind him to shower, frankly, he never would. More to the point, if it wasn’t required, it wouldn’t happen. So after a recent such forced cleanse, I commented, “Man, you look so clean.” To which Otto looked up from what he was doing and said, “er”. “What?” I asked. “Er,” he repeated. “I’m not clean. But I am clean-ER than I was.”…
-
five finds (asleep with a book, love anyway, i like big sinks)
BREAK WEEK! Whenever it’s break week I think – how am I still so busy when I removed one gigantic to-do item from my list? And by the end of break week I’m wondering how I ever have time to actually homeschool my kids. It’s been a great week – although I could have done without the endless rain. I had big thoughts for this week. I always have big thoughts for break weeks. I dreamed of a two day adventure to Charleston, a day trip to Congaree, time spent in the mountains of North Carolina. But we pretty much didn’t go farther than fifteen minutes away from our house…
-
five finds friday: Dickens and Twists and a cake baker and a cuddler
It’s the end of another week full of . . . . well, full of everything. In the literature and writing course I teach my students are assigned copywork each week. The copywork is a quote or a short poem. It’s their task to write the quote down each day for a week. Then, when we meet together during class, the first thing we do is dictation. But really, for these students, it’s not even dictation – it’s just from memory. They write the quote down on a blank piece of paper – attempting to recreate the quote perfectly, with identical punctuation and spelling. Last week I assigned the longest…
-
weekend ramble (fly tying edition)
It was a full one. A Go & Do sort of weekend. One of my favorite Go & Do’s of the entire weekend was spent with Otto. His Christmas gift was a date to learn how to tie flies. Like – fishing flies. I don’t know if those are spelled differently than other sorts of flies. So far I’ve been bowling with Mosely and attended a brush lettering class with London, I’ve got an ax throwing date with Bergen and learning how to make pasta with Piper still to go. And none of those classes had the same price tag as this class with Otto. His was FREE. Which…
-
Fishing and Uncles and The Video Proof
They talk about it all the time. Otto wrote a short story about it for his class. Fishing. And, in particular, fishing with Uncle Danny. My two sons have an obsession. And Uncle Danny is like a rockstar. And he lives on a lake too – which wins big bonus points. So when the opportunity arose to get those two young fishermen casting their lines into the water with my brother, we each got in our cars and drove to the TN line and exchanged a couple of wide eyed, big grinning fellas for a couple of days. My heart felt a…
-
five finds friday (dutch babies and bad Halloween candy, beanies and avert brothers)
It’s November already, for the love. funny Last week at Target I saw this. It’s a joke – right? fashionable Alright. I’ve got two. One. I love my Bogs boots. They’re about three years old. They’ve been looking rough and I was wondering what I could do to bring back their glory. I wear them year round and they are my first choice for comfort and style. I found this Wren’s Leather Cream on Amazon and took a chance. Success! They look so fantastic! I will definitely be heading toward their products for all of my other leather care – furniture and…
-
you pick the story from our day: a beautiful & terrible world.
Which story should I tell you about my day? The one where the kids and I sat on a gigantic rock outcropping behind poet Carl Sandburg’s house in Flat Rock, NC and read his poems to one another while the mountains and the trees listened in? Or the one where my kids acted so ridiculous at the dinner table that one of them spewed lemonade all over his sweet potato? Should I tell you about how we visited a new to us apple orchard and loved the dwarf trees and the views and the staff there? Or should I tell you how my…
-
Five Finds Friday: brown sugar tea and Otto are both sweet
I worked a little extra hard this week to balance the work/life/home routine and said no to a few things so that we could say yes to slower afternoons and being home together during that time since our nights are currently in a season of being busy with soccer and such. I think it paid off, but goodness – balance is a tight rope, is it not? (And even on the weeks like this where I put in the extra effort, by Friday it seems to fall apart again.) Life is a steady tension of push and pull, give and take. This week I found extra time to write…
-
Five Finds Friday (there’s jam and a johnny cash shirt)
I told you we “officially” started school this week. And we did. But we also hiked Black Balsam in North Carolina (or what I like to call Middle Earth or the mountains in the Sound of Music or what my friend Sarah who hiked with us called Darcy’s land from Pride and Prejudice. The point is – it was other-world pretty.) and we also spent a day swimming at the ever-satisfying Lake Jocassee. So, yes – we did school. But we also saw some magical spots and I was reminded that, although I dream sometimes of living somewhere else, where I actually reside is full of beauty and charm. Anyway…
-
Eight Years of Otto Fox
The only Keigley baby who can claim the title “unexpected”. The true baby of the family. He still can’t pronounce the letter “r” and none of us are certain if he has ever actually slept in any variation of his own bed. Otto Fox Wilder McDonald. Named after Otto Frank and Laura Ingalls Wilder and his grandmother’s family and a wild animal. Today he turns eight. Eight years since I gave birth to my only child born in the state of South Carolina. Eight years since I held a fresh-to-this-painful-and-beautiful-world newborn who shares my last name and my whole heart and who cost me extra weight and…
-
Five Finds Friday (Minty Timmy & Tuna. Not an appetizing combination.)
This week has been a catch up and refocus week. How is it that just one week off of your regular routine can really blast that routine into smithereens? It was ONE week, people. Hey kids, remember, we have a schedule? Apparently it only takes one week to forget everything we worked on ALL year. But, regardless, here we are Friday. How are ya’? FUNNY Here are some funny things: The writer Roald Dahl. The movie Holes. My children. FASHIONABLE Wouldn’t you know it? Earrings again. I don’t even know what Stella & Dot is but I’m guessing it’s another LuLaRoe, Pampered Chef, Norwex,…
