Currently | September 2022

 

Feeling...Really good about how our start to the homeschool year is going.  I started using Sarah MacKenzie's notebook scheduling method, and it has honestly changed everything!  We are getting SO MUCH done, way more than in years past, and it's been pretty easy to keep on top of, even three weeks into the school year.  It's helping me keep the kids' work organized and not forget about things I wanted to do, and I am loving it.

Organizing...lots of clothes, and not because I'm switching to fall clothes - not yet.  No, I have been sorting through everyone's drawers and packing things for a vacation to North Carolina!  I wasn't sure if we would be able to take an official vacation this year (New Mexico was a long weekend trip), but we finally got everything finalized!  We are going to be driving with five kids across the country, WHILE trying to homeschool in the car.  Wish us luck.  (I'm sounding nervous, but actually I have a pretty organized plan for carschooling, which I will share on the blog soon!)

Baking...a key lime pie, because my parents are coming over for dinner tonight.  I tell you, I'm really getting into baking pies.  Pies feel so domestic and homey, and they're surprisingly quick to throw together once you get a recipe down.  I love it when the kids come up to the counter, peer over the edge of the dish, and then run off yelling "Mom is making a pie!"  Do I want my kids to have memories of their mom making pies?  Absolutely, yes.

Reading...I have really been loving the No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency series lately.  The characters are so lovable, and the mysteries are not terrible at all.  It's a cozy mystery series, but with a fun twist of being set in Botswana.  I've also been listening to Skeletons On The Zahara, also set in Africa, but the complete opposite of the No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency in every way. 

Watching...Derek and have been re-watching the documentary from the History Channel about Ulysses S. Grant.  I love it just as much the second time around.  It's so well-done, and it makes me reflect on how the Lord really does choose the times and places where we live (Acts 17:26) for a purpose.  I don't know if Grant was a believer, but from the documentary, I know that he was mediocre at pretty much everything, barely scraping by for most of his life to support his family, and had very little gifting or talent - except in the exact qualities and skills he needed to be an amazing general and win us the Civil War.  I have no doubt God placed Grant exactly where he was in history just for that purpose, and gave him the exact talents that he needed to help the country get past that dark time. 

Worried...that we are going to miss the fall leaves on our trip.  Usually, I was thinking we would be back in time for the peak week of leaf season, but things seem to be changing a little early this year.  All the trees and bushes started getting a yellow hue a couple weeks ago, and there are some bright gold leaves popping up on the ends of scattered tree branches.  Here's to hoping that the fall colors will hold off until we get back!  I told Derek that we are never going on vacation in Autumn again.  I get too stressed about the leaf situation.

Loving...that I think my sense of smell is mostly back.  I can't remember if I've mentioned it on the blog, but my smell has been wacky since last November, which is when I'm pretty sure I actually got Covid.  I really have very little trust in those tests, because we supposedly had it in September 2021, but I'm almost certain now that wasn't correct. 

Anyway, I couldn't smell anything immediately after our November illness, and after a couple weeks of being very stressed about it, I started doing smell-training - which is basically choosing a scent that you know very well, and sniffing it very hard while concentrating on smelling for 20 seconds, and doing that daily until something starts to happen.  I got quite a few smells back that way. (What were the first smells I worked on?  Coffee, and books.) 

However, for a long time, I had to be really concentrating to smell things - I couldn't just walk into a room and tell if it smelled good, I had to focus on smelling and then I sometimes could.  I then had a brief period in the summer where lots of perfumes smelled completely terrible.  

That weird experience lasted a couple weeks, and has mostly gone away.  I can smell pretty much anything now!  Sometimes without even trying!  I did have to sniff-train myself to smell this scent from Bath and Body Works the other day, but it only took me a few hours to be able to smell it.

Enjoying...fall soaps.  Speaking of Bath and Body Works!

Planning...on ways that I can preserve the herbs in my little herb garden before we leave on vacation.  It just occurred to me that if I don't do something with them now, I'll probably return from our trip to a garden of dead herbs.  I'm planning on freezing the mint leaves in ice cubes, freezing the rosemary sprigs, drying and crunching up the basil into basil flakes, hang-drying the lavender, and making mint and lavender syrups.  Should be a busy couple days of work!  Next year I'm going to harvest and preserve all through the summer and build up a little herb cabinet, instead of waiting until fall.  I'm by no means a gardener, Derek keeps my herbs alive, but each year I get better at figuring out how to make good use of them.