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Showing posts with label Tea On A Tuesday. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Tea On A Tuesday. Show all posts
On The Page {Anything I’ve Read}
This particular morning, I spent a good amount of time reading blogs and Substacks, and I forgot how much I enjoy getting a peek into different people’s lives and thoughts. I have found so much encouragement and refreshment in small blogs that most people have never heard of. This reflection on a passage from The Great Divorce was especially lovely today.
I am plugging away at a sci-fi time travel book at the moment, and I won’t mention it yet because the jury is still out on whether I’m going to recommend it. Aside from that book, I find myself listening to books more than reading this week. On rotation are: Where The Water Goes (about water management in the western U.S., which sounds boring but isn’t), Midnight In Chernobyl (still working on this one), and Old-Fashioned On Purpose (which I just finished).
In My Armchair {Projects I’m Working On}
In the last month I have returned from a lovely trip visiting our friends in Kentucky, then spent two weeks being a little lazy and recovering, then I jumped right into attending our local homeschool conference and VBS at our church. So I haven’t had the space or energy to tackle any major new projects yet this summer…aside from looking at curriculum and trying to think through how I will teach the history class at our co-op this fall. Important things, but not particularly fun to share.
In The Kitchen {Things We’ve Made}
I’ve been experimenting with new recipes here and there, inspired by a high-protein cookbook I rented from Amazon. I made lemon shrimp and pesto noodles; a sweet potato, beef, and pepper braise; and a greek chicken quinoa bowl.
The last one was the biggest hit, and the first time I’ve attempted making quinoa anything. I don’t have a recipe - basically I cooked up the chicken and made the cream sauce using a spice mix from Walmart, cooked the quinoa, and threw it all into a bowl with greek olives, sun dried tomatoes, cucumbers, and feta cheese. It was delicious.
On My Person {Things I’ve Worn}
It has been a cooler start to the summer, so I haven’t fully embraced my summer wardrobe yet - I also have been not the best at taking outfit photos over the last month, so these few will have to do.
In The Accounts {Money We’ve Saved}
Alas, I have done a terrible job of saving money this month. June is always one of our worst months of the year for spending. We have multiple birthdays and events, and we spend more in gas than usual. But…
-I did a decent job of packing us lunches or scrounging for snacks instead of eating out.
-I received free food items through app promotions.
-I started using Upside again to get cash back on gas purchases, and I’m well on my way to earning enough for a museum membership.
-My eyesight has apparently devolved to the point that my contacts are now considered “medically necessary”, and hence are covered by insurance! So instead of paying $400 for a six-month supply, I now pay $15.
-I got a drawing book I have been eyeing for my birthday, so now I won’t be tempted to buy it myself.
Out My Window {Beauty I’ve Noticed}
Our lilac bush bloomed for the first time in several years, and it’s completely loaded with blossoms! Unfortunately, pine tree pollen season has also arrived in the mountains, and everything is coated with pollen now, giving the blossoms a greenish yellow hue. I am looking forward to a couple rainy days next week to hopefully clean off my beautiful lilacs. Do people cute lilac blossoms for vases, and if so, do they last indoors? I am contemplating researching this, because I would love to bring them inside.
The wildflowers are also in rare form this year.
Out And About {Places We Went}
Homeschool Conference - We attended our state homeschool conference, and I was not very excited about the speaker list this year. However, I sat down in my first workshop session, and the speaker was just chatting and giving little freebies before really getting into her talk, and one of the things she said spoke straight to me heart. It was exactly what I needed to hear, and I felt tears spring to my eyes. Several speakers after that providentially addressed things I had already been contemplating, and I was reminded that the Lord knows what I need better than I do. I was so thankful for all of these faithful homeschool speakers that most people have never heard of.
Vacation Bible School - This post is brought to you by my church’s VBS. Last year I volunteered, but it was exhausting right on the heels of attending a 3.5 day homeschool conference, and I was such a mess I implored my husband to forbid me from volunteering for VBS the next year. He kept his end of the bargain, so I find myself with a couple hours to myself every day this week, and I don’t feel sorry about it. Sometimes we homeschool moms are with our kids so often (and that’s on purpose), we forget it’s okay to sometimes intentionally not be with them, just for a little bit to refresh. It’s been helpful for me to have some alone time this week to reflect on the conference and my hopes for the coming year.
Swim Park - This activity is on the calendar. Don’t tell my kids, it’s a surprise.
On My Mind {Thoughts To Share}
About halfway through the year now, I can confidently say that the thing the Lord is prompting in me is becoming more faithful in prayer. I will write more about this soon, but prayer has been a struggle for me for years now, unless I am having some sort of crisis, and I know that this should not be the case. Last week, speaker after speaker spoke about the importance of prayer, and one of them said that as our kids’ parents, we should make sure no one is praying for our own kids more than we are. That’s saying something when you have faithful praying grandparents in the mix! But it was a good challenge for me to be more intentional in praying for my kids, and our homeschool, and my husband, and our church.
In My Heart {Things I’m Treasuring}
-Warm weather and sunshine
-The occasional rainy day to hold off wildfires
-A house I love, even when it needs cleaning
-Kids who would rather play outside or make things than stare at a screen
-Friends who care enough to check in or smuggle your birthday present into the homeschool conference
-a free drink for downloading the Dutch Bros app
-Happy music
-Hearing baby birds hatch from their eggs outside our bedroom window (it was at 4AM, which was not appreciated, but it was still sweet to hear the chirps).
I’m back with another glimpse around my home and life this month. January is actually one of my favorite months - there’s always a sense of freshness about it, even while most things stay the same.
On The Page {Anything I Read}
{A novel recommended by a friend}. A friend of mine from church recommended The Historian by Elizabeth Kostova to me, because we had been talking about Dracula by Bram Stoker. The Historian is a chunky book (over 700 pages), but I am very much enjoying it. There is some pretty graphic descriptions of violence committed by Dracula, but otherwise it has been clean so far (just creepy). The book is something of an epistolary novel, and I always find it fascinating how authors can tell a story through a letter format. It makes me want to write more letters.
{Interesting Substack article}. I read this post about a quiet, meaningful life, and what we’ve been told it is and how to get it, and how maybe we’re looking for shortcuts where we shouldn’t. This is especially resonated with me as I’ve been cleaning out drawers and taking things to donate lately. The things that stay, that I would never dream of giving away, are a hodgepodge that I’ve collected over years, mostly items that have been handmade for me, or given to me by someone I love. In the end, having a beautiful home isn’t about purchasing just the right things to make my house look like a magazine, or clearing enough away to make it look Pinterest-worthy - a home is really beautiful to me because of the meaning given to those items by the people we love. It’s not exactly the point that was being made in this essay, but these are the thoughts this piece prompted in my head.
In My Armchair {Projects I'm Working On}
{Editing photos for our co-op yearbook}. I wish I could write something like "crocheting hats for everyone in my family" or "finishing beautifully artistic embroidery hangings", but once again my hobbies tend to revolve around my computer. But the truth is, I haven't had the time and energy this month to tackle handmade projects since I'm still very much a novice at crocheting and embroidery. When we rejoined our co-op this year, I was asked to take class pictures for the co-op yearbook, and I've put off finalizing the images long enough. I'm aiming to get them edited and uploaded for sharing before the end of the month.
In The Kitchen {Things We Made}
{Banana Bread & Busy Day Cake}. Between sickness and busyness, not much baking has happened this month, but I remedied that situation with a busy-day cake and three loaves of banana bread this afternoon. I had a little helper that insisted on mashing the bananas, which is just fine with me since that is my least favorite part of making banana bread!
{Fresh-Milled Bread}. I'm attempting to get back into a bread-making habit now that we've started homeschool again, and this last loaf my oldest daughter made on her own. We mainly make bread in my amazing bread maker - it takes about 15 minutes to put it together, and by the afternoon we have a beautiful, warm loaf to enjoy with a bit of butter and jam. I would like to dabble in more hand-kneaded breads, if I ever have time, but for now, the bread machine is a blessing.
{Chicken Noodle Soup}. The coldest weather of our winter so far has been in the last couple of weeks - we had a whopping high of 9 degrees Fahrenheit one day this last week. Those kind of days call for chicken noodle soup. I've never had a recipe for chicken noodle soup, I just wing it - cook some chicken, throw it in a pot with some chicken broth and carrots (a bag of frozen carrots for ease), chop up some onions for flavor, get a little creative with some spices, and then the secret ingredient - Grandma's egg noodles. No other noodle will do.
On My Person {Things I've Worn}
{Lovely Coats}. It has been quite chilly and snowy outside lately, but I like it this way in the winter, and I’ve been especially happy for my coat collection in these winter months. A few years ago I decided I might as well nurture a collection of beautiful winter coats since I spend so much of the year in them, and it’s served me well. Here are a few winter outfits lately, some with coats, some without.
In The Accounts Book {Money We Have Saved}
{Looking through Groupon for Deals}. I'm going to be honest and admit that this hasn't been an amazing month for saving money, so this isn't technically money saved, but money we "spent" in the form of points instead of cash. We chose to spend some of our credit card reward points on rodeo tickets - rodeos are a big deal around here in January, and we haven't taken the kids to one since they were babies. My husband got a deal through Groupon which saved us quite a bit on a fun experience.
Out My Window {Beauty I Noticed}
{Morning skies}. Our back window faces East, so every morning as I'm pouring my cup of coffee, I look out the window and see what colors the sky will be today. Peach and pale azure? Fire orange and deep purple? Rosy pink and lilac and icy blue? It's always a surprise. Sometimes, just as the sun peeks over the distant mountains, it will shine like a spotlight into the living room, splashing the wall like a paintbrush with glowing red.
{Snowy landscapes}. We've been enjoying a good amount of snow this January, and I love it. I read a meme that said, if you choose not to enjoy the snow, you'll have alot less joy, and the same amount of snow, and I couldn't agree with anything more. Here's another Substack post that similarly extols the virtues of snow. Do not complain about snow in my presence, because you'll receive no sympathy from me. I love how it washes everything clean, and makes an ordinary landscape other-worldly.
Out And About {Places We Went}
{Snow Sculptures}. We decided to try something new this year, and we went to an outdoor display of snow sculptures. We didn’t get to watch the actual sculpting, but we did see a huge block of hard-packed snow, the “before”. It’s amazing what people can do with such an unstable and temporary medium! I don’t understand why you would want to waste all that lovely snow on sculpting something weird, as a few artists did, but most of the sculptures were pretty neat. We enjoyed the sculptures, walked around a cute little mountain town, and enjoyed Mexican food for dinner. It was a worthwhile (and free!) outing.
{The Rodeo}. Rodeos and stock shows are a big part of the culture around here in our western state, as I mentioned above, and this month we re-introduced our kids to the rodeo in particular. It was so fun to explain the different events to the kids and watch my little one’s eyes go round. “They have to race around the barrels as fast as they can, and get as close as they can without touching.” “They have to get one rope around the calf’s back feet, and one rope around his head, and then pull the ropes tight.” “They have to ride up next to the steer, jump on it, and wrestle it to the ground.” “They have to stay on that bucking horse (or bull) for 8 seconds without touching it with their free hand or falling off.” You don’t realize how crazy all that sounds until you try to explain it to a 7 year old. It was a grand time.
On My Mind {Thoughts I Want To Share}
{On reading hard books}. I always feel pressure to put something profound here, but I am in a hurry to finish this post before January is indeed over, and I’m pressed for time. So let me just say that if you are afraid to attempt to read an epic poem (as I mentioned I was in this post), don’t be. I couldn’t decide, so I picked up The Iliad and Paradise Lost, and I’m surprised at how much I am enjoying both. If you’ve read any Dickens within the last five years, trust me, you’ll be fine.
In My Heart {Things I'm Treasuring}
{1} Bright eyes and a big smile asking to help with the baking.
{2} Side-by-side sorts of friendships - different than the treasured “bosom friend”, but heart-filling in their own way.
{3} Frosty front porches glittering in the morning sun.
{4} Being worried that you are catching the family cold, but then waking up with your sinuses still clear.
{5} Sitting on the floor, reading a living book to my kids for school, and having a tiny dog climb onto my bent-over back and settle down there for a nap. Yes, she did that.
{6} Spots of sunshine on our wood floor in winter.
{7} A husband who never fails to have a pot of hot coffee ready for me in the morning.
Hope your January has brought fresh and new joys to you - and here’s to February!
This week I got my Christmas shopping done.
Sometimes life gets a little hectic, and before I know it I have five projects hanging over my head. And the calendar keeps rolling on, and each day passes without anything getting crossed off my list, and the pressure in my chest builds. When I start to feel like I'm a few interruptions away from bursting into tears, it's time to set some things aside and make sure those projects get done.
That's what I did last week. I have a sweet husband who had the week off, so he filled the homeschool teacher role for a couple days. But aside from that, I cancelled school for the week, and I spent every spare minute crossing things off my list. I finished my Christmas shopping (except for a couple little straggler gifts). I sorted, edited, and uploaded all my 2024 photos (so far) for printing in January. I cleaned out my kids' rooms (no small task) in preparation for Christmas presents. And then I spent the weekend sending out emails, writing an overdue book review, writing a couple blog posts.
So here we are. I've been wanting to share our recent happenings on here before we are full-on into Christmas season. Despite what the weather did a couple weeks ago, it's still fall, and I don't want to let it slip by without chatting here.
Our Fall
Our post-election snowstorm.
Ever since 2020, I get very skittish in election years, and I've particularly avoided going out on Election Day. You just never know what is going to happen, and I'd rather be tucked away in my little mountain home to deal with the results on our own, for good or for ill. So I stayed up far too late on Election Day, went to bed with the slow dawning of relief spreading through my muscles, and when I woke the next morning with nary an election hiccup in sight, it felt like Christmas morning in more ways than one. Snow blanketed the ground, and we cheered the results and declared a snow day. I baked, we played Christmas music. It was lovely.
It turned into two lovely days, and then three, as the snow continued to fall, and our previously planned events were cancelled clear into Saturday. Finally on Saturday morning, with my husband and oldest out hunting, the younger kids and I could take it no more. We went roller skating, and had a grand time.
This fall we pinched our pennies a bit. Instead of a corn maze (which are quite expensive here) we went on a tour of a tea factory, and visited a fall bulb sale at our local gardens. Instead of a pumpkin patch, we visited our ranch friends, and they gifted us with pumpkins from their garden that are still gracing our house. Instead of picking produce, we went on an adventure in the mountains, and sat in the middle of a huge, secluded aspen grove while we read books and ate candy corn. Fall fun doesn't have to cost alot, does it? Spending time with people you love in the brisk air is what makes fall special.
Homeschooling is going really well, much more smoothly than the previous two years. As I've written before, I think when you hit a homeschool rough patch, the thing you really need to do is power through. Things do tend to improve if you give them time. Even though I have more to manage than ever before, I feel more up to the task as well. I would like to write about our curriculum choices for this year at some point, since we made a bunch of small changes and we are also managing work for our new homeschool co-op. We are taking a more "purist" approach to Charlotte Mason style history this year - my kids are reading so many good books, and it's really wonderful to see them connecting with what they're reading. I'm reading about half their books with them right now, and I myself am learning so much! A curriculum summary will be coming eventually, but for now all the books are my favorite change.
A Hobby Update
Every year around this time, I find myself wanting to learn how to crochet. I've tried learning to crochet before, but it's tricky! I will persist though. A Christmas ornament crochet pattern caught my eye on Etsy the other day. Even though I've gone shopping for the correctly colored yarn, I have not had time to attempt my project yet. Now that all my pre-Thanksgiving tasks are out of the way, perhaps this week I can give it a go. I hope to report success the next time I write an update.
Reading has been very touch-and-go since the summer. I have finally finished quite a few books, but can't seem to get my reading momentum going on any one book. I will have a reading update blog post coming in the next couple weeks, but I have a feeling my yearly totals are not going to be as impressive as previous years. One recent book quite likely will make my favorites list though - I just finished True Grit by Charles Portis a couple weeks ago, and I found it delightful. If you like spunky main characters, amusing first-person narration, and the Old West, it's a winner.
I haven't been baking nearly as much as I typically would in the fall, but I did make caramel pecan cinnamon rolls last week, and they were very tasty.
Derek and I have found several new shows that we are finding amusing. Our favorites are usually competition shows (think Survivor), and we found one called Anonymous. It's one of those social media game shows, which can often be annoying, but this one grew on us. We also have tried a show called The Snake, which is a one-day game show where contestants have to complete tasks while figuring out which player is secretly trying to sabotage them. And then we stumbled across Frogger - which is, well, a real-life Frogger. Similar to America Ninja Warrier, but sillier. We're saving that one to watch with the kids. One of these days I'll get Derek to finish watching Downton Abbey with me, but for now, competition shows are scratching the entertainment itch.
Gratitude
I told Derek a few weeks ago that this year has felt like a year of disappointments. I rattled off a list of things that have just not worked out the way we wished. We had to buy new appliances instead of taking a planned trip to see friends, we didn't have successful hunting seasons, and finances have been leaked away by scary trips to the emergency room.
What I really needed was a bit of sleep, because things always look worse when you're tired.
But in the last couple weeks, my heart has started to calm. God is gracious to us, and somewhere along the way that knowledge settled back on me, like the snow settled on the ground last week and made it sparkle. We are very blessed. All the things I was disappointed about are just life; but life is also full of gifts, isn't it? This is the time of year when we are reminded to open our eyes wider to see them fresh.
Remember when we all used to post thankful lists this time of year? I'm thankful for:
-A house that is filled with warmth, and voices, and a little bit of chaos
-The way snow looks when it's hanging all over pine trees
-The smell of fresh-baked bread
-Books that make you feel like home
-A healthy husband and children
-The smell of fallen aspen leaves
-Watching the sun rise before anyone else is up
-Holiday plans with family taking shape
-Friends that let you know when you're missed and welcome you into their homes
-A group to study the Bible and sing hymns with
-Good preaching
-The right to educate my children at home
-Pumpkin candles
-Twinkle lights
-Siblings to laugh with and supporting parents
-Fuzzy blankets
-Thrift store finds
-A small-town library that lets you check out board games
-Decaf coffee
-Small dogs that don't pass up a chance to cuddle on my lap
-Sweaters
-Sleep
So many little gifts when you stop to think about it. I know this, I've been counting gifts for years, but sometimes life gets busy, and you forget how wonderful everything can be - God's common grace in showers every day. And of course, underneath it all is always that deeper gratefulness that comes with knowing my Savior calls me His own. If everything else falls apart, if every hope is disappointed, if everything is lost - that is something that can't be taken away.
Happy Thanksgiving season! Knowing me, I won't get around to writing another personal post before the day. So I hope you all are overwhelmed by gratitude to the Giver of all good gifts this year.
"Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, and comes down from the Father of lights, with whom there is no variation or shadow of turning." James 1:17
I don't know who needs to hear this, but August is still summer.
Bunches of people online and in my real life have already started the school year, and I'm over here drinking my lemonade in the sunshine and trying not to think about school at all yet. June, July, and August are the months with the warmest weather around here, and it occurred to me the other day that it would be perfectly fine to delay the start of the school year and just finish a little later next May - since May often still brings snowstorms to the mountains anyway. So I'm in no rush to call the summer done yet. I'm not so sure about the kids - if anything is going to push me to bump up our homeschool start date, it's the kids getting bored.
July was actually quite rainy, but as I write this, the plan for this weekend is to attempt porch camping with the kids, a yearly tradition for us. However, when I checked the weather, Sunday night it is supposed to get down to 33 degrees Fahrenheit, which is almost freezing! Not acceptable. We may have to delay the camping plan - another reason I am not anxious to end the summer. We haven't been able to do everything yet! (Update: Since I first typed this up, we did actually porch-camp, and it was actually the hottest week of the summer, definitely not near freezing! Weather forecast reliability never changes.)
We have done alot of the typical summer things over the past month - swimming, park days, the zoo, hiking. Lots of time with friends, including a lovely week with our Kentucky friends when they were in town. My parents celebrated their 40th anniversary, and took us all to Great Wolf Lodge. We may never have ended up going there on our own (it's not cheap, and cheap is the name of the game right now), but it was such a special treat, and I'm glad we could have memories there with extended family!
We also had a lovely 4th of July, and you have to permit me to share a few photos. We spent the day hanging around the house, making the stereotypical flag cake and watching the Sandlot, and then having dinner at my parents' and watching fireworks.
Aside from that, our big outing for July was a trip to a little mountain town that is particularly known for its wildflowers - and it did not disappoint. We had no real plan except for one hiking trail that we wanted to check out. After wandering around the town a little bit and eating our packed lunch, we took to the trail, and I have never seen so many wildflowers in one place in my life. The reputation is well earned! I couldn't stop taking pictures and exclaiming about how beautiful everything was. We counted 21 different varieties of wildflowers! I wish I could show you every picture of my cute kids, and every view, but here are just a few.
I had intended to spend this summer trying out new pie recipes, but instead my domestic pursuits were diverted a bit when a friend from church offered to teach me how to can preserves. So for the last couple weeks I have been researching recipes and food safety rules, obtaining cans and produce, and trying my hand at it. I've made blueberry lime jam, and apple-pie-in-a-jar jam, and mango raspberry jam. It appears that all my cans have sealed just fine, so I guess I did it right! Am I still going to test out the jam before my family and wait 12-36 hours to see if I develop botulism symptoms before they eat it? Probably, but that's just because I have major germaphobe tendencies. I followed all the rules, fruit jam is acidic and botulism doesn't grow in acidic foods, so I actually feel very confident in my jam and accomplished. But you know, just in case.
It doesn't help much that I have been binge-reading Richard Preston's books about the history of the ebola virus. Remember about ten years back when we had a few cases in the United States? I remember being slightly anxious about it since I was still working as a dental hygienist (ie. dealing with alot of bloody gums), and I was pregnant at the time too. Well, let me just say, if I had known more details about the ebola virus, I would have been even more freaked out. I really don't know if there is another virus that is so brutal and gory. My goodness. I'm never visiting the rainforest, and keep monkeys or bats or any tropical creatures far away from me, that's all I'm saying.
My big kids participated in 4H this year, and did woodworking, sewing, and leather working projects. A few of their projects got accepted to be displayed at our state fair, so now we are trying to figure out if we can make the trip in the fall to check it out. I am so proud of them for all their hard work, and thankful for an even more hardworking husband, the unsung hero of our 4H experiences.
Even though I am determined not to cut the summer short, I do also have to start planning the school year soon, so in the next week or two I'm going to sit down and get the year mapped out. Everyone has a different school planning system, but over the last couple years I've developed a bit of a system. It gives me enough structure to keep us on track, but enough flexibility that I don't feel too much pressure. I may work on a post about it soon.
The other big project on which I'd love to make some progress is sorting through pictures and getting them printed and into some albums. This is a never-ending project for me, to be honest. I've printed off little bunches of photos here and there, but I want to do the complete family photo albums from each year, and it's expensive and time-consuming. I'm printing out photos as my budget permits, and 2014 photos just arrived in the mail last week. In the meantime, I am just about to get started on organizing and choosing favorites from the year 2016.
In some ways it is really fun to look through pictures of my kids from all those years ago - my goodness, they were cute. They still are! But seeing their little faces every day is also hard on my heart. Time has gone so fast. It kills me whenever I stop for a moment and reflect that I'll be the parent of a legal adult in less than five years (let that soak in).
I look at the pictures and even though I remember the hard parts of those little years, I also realize that I did soak them up and treasure those times. Sometimes I beat myself up for not treasuring them enough, but I did actually. The way I took so much care to capture all their little features and quirks proves it to me. Still, when it's gone you always wish you held on to the moments just a little bit more. It's never enough - never enough time, never enough time with my precious babies who aren't babies anymore.
I may have had a higher than average number of crying sessions since starting this project. But it's reminding me to soak up this moment we're in right now too. In ten years I'll look back at pictures again, and I'll see how little they were, and I'll remember. Remember how much I loved it all. I can be filled up to the brim with the joy of right now with them. That's all we can ever do, and it doesn't seem like enough, but it also is.
Motherhood is beauty and sadness, joy and pain, love and frustrations and laughing and happiness mixed up with tears. The best thing I'll ever do. And you can't go back, but through every stage until the Lord takes me home I'll have this joy of being their mom, and that will never cease to be a gift.
Okay, now that I've got that sentimentality out of my system, I'll wish you all a happy Monday, and promise to try to be a better blogger now that summer busyness is settling down. But just know that if I'm not here, if I go a couple weeks between blog posts, or if my social media gets stale, I'm not quitting the blog or anything - I'm just not letting them grow up without paying attention.
Yesterday it snowed. We had at least a couple inches on the ground, a couple days after I had planted my herb garden in our little porch greenhouse. The basil was wilting, so my son transferred it back to a portable pot and brought it inside for me.
Today, literally by the time the sun rose, all the snow was already melted, and my kids convinced me to let them go exploring in the woods alone. I gave them alarm whistles and walk talkies and sat on the porch waiting for them to come back. Dare I say, it was actually hot in the sunshine!
Such is spring in the mountains.
The last month has been a bit of a whirlwind. We had a nice Easter, and then before I knew it I had our homeschool group meeting, then visiting a co-op, then my son's birthday and a birthday party, then field trips and eye appointments. This week we'll have standardized testing, and two nights out with friends for me. It's a good busy, but busy nonetheless.
Homeschooling is going well, we're well into the homestretch and limping toward the finish line. I made limping sound like a bad thing just now, but it's more like finishing a bunch of our curriculum and trying to find some things to fill these last few weeks before we're officially done for the year. I bought this Shakespeare curriculum, I want to finish this book about the ancient Romans, and there will be spelling and math drills abounding. My daughter asked if we could start the second book in the Anne Of Green Gables series as a family read-aloud, so that might be on the horizon as well.
We've been on the go so much, I haven't had as much time to bake or experiment in the kitchen, and I'm itching to try making something new. I did buy coconut milk and seltzer water in preparation for making refreshing springtime beverages, and we've been stocking up on all the fruit. As summertime approaches, you'll probably find me gathering recipes to try when I actually have time to make things again (hopefully).
One new thing in April is that I re-started my no/low buy after falling off the wagon in March. I'm adjusting my rules a bit to allow myself to buy a couple things a month as long as they are less than a certain dollar amount. It's going well so far, and it's a good thing, because our puppy ended up costing us $800 this month. That was not a happy day.
Dot basically swallowed a toy, and ended up throwing it up, but still looked so miserable and listless that we were worried there was something else stuck in there. Our vet was closed for the day, so I ended up taking her to an emergency vet, and oh boy. Never again.
You know you've made a mistake when everyone in the office keeps calling an animal "your kiddo", while your actual kiddo is holding said animal. I would have walked out, but they took the dog away for an hour, and I had to strategically ask for her back before being able to escape. It cost that much just for an X-ray, and even though there wasn't anything obvious in there, they wanted to put her on an IV overnight! A dog, remember. And a dog which I already told them was still drinking plenty of water. I said I was taking her home to take our chances until our regular vet opened, and what do you know, she was 100% back to normal the next day.
Thankfully we were holding money aside to buy a new window, so we'll just have to wait another year. Who needs airtight windows anyway?
We went on a field trip to the zoo a couple weeks ago, and as we were walking down the paths, I noticed that I could smell the flowers, so our state is in that stage of spring now. Then when we went to church the other day, the flowering trees were just at their prime! I'm so glad I took some pictures that day, because as I mentioned, a few days later we had more snow. I was circling the tree, taking pictures and videos and big, deep breaths of the floral air, and I must have been making quite a spectacle of myself because a woman walked up and asked if I wanted a picture with the tree. I was a little embarrassed, but obviously agreed. She commented that she and her husband "were admiring your joy over the trees, and we just thought you needed a picture".
And all of a sudden I wasn't embarrassed anymore, because why would anyone not have joy over flowering trees? Joy is actually the right response, and who cares if everyone can see it? God could have just left all the flowers on the ground, but that would have been too obvious - instead He decorated branches with them. Isn't there something magnificent about that?
This week I hope you too find something that makes you so joyful that you make yourself a little ridiculous over it. Let it spill over, scatter it all around, and don't be embarrassed if someone comments on it, because why should you not splash a little joy on them too?
"Let the heavens rejoice, and let the earth be glad;Let the sea roar, and all its fullness;12Let the field be joyful, and all that is in it.Then all the trees of the woods will rejoice before the Lord.
For He is coming, for He is coming to judge the earth.He shall judge the world with righteousness,And the peoples with His truth."Psalm 96:11-13
Happy Spring, friends!
I found a rare day to escape to a local coffee shop to write a bit. This is a new coffee shop to our little mountain town, and local chatter swirls around me as I type. I can see my dad's shop out the window, snow covers the ground and low clouds threaten more. A little greenery brightens my table, a Chinese evergreen stem in an old glass bottle. My heart-topped latte is almost gone.
I waver between feeling excited for the school year and very nervous. This is the first year that I'll be doing work with all five kids, and the thought overwhelms me. I try to remember that I felt that way each time I added a new student to the mix. This is the last time I'll have to recalibrate.
We've been making good use of our last week. Yesterday we went mini-golfing with our dear friends who now live a couple states over. I'm so happy whenever we get to see them, and we talk and laugh like we still see each other every week. Friends like that are special, something to treasure. The hardest part is always saying goodbye, until the next time they come here or we go there.
Later this week the kids have "cousin camp" at grandma's house, which means that Derek and I get a date night which we don't quite now what to do with. I'm hoping to do something fun on Saturday as a last hoorah for summer break.
The plan for today is a hike up in a state park, perhaps to an old broken-down lumber mill we discovered a couple weeks ago. Or perhaps we'll try a new trail. The kids are packing nature notebooks, binoculars, and snacks into their packs. I try to get them to draw something each time we go out into the mountains, but we are meeting a friend today, so my expectations are low for amazing nature drawings. Laughter, and silliness, and foot races, and sun-kissed cheeks are on the agenda.
We've been watching movies on the porch this summer. The kids lay out their sleeping bags, and we all wear long sleeves and pants to protect ourselves against mosquitos as the sun fades. The TV glows in the dusk, hummingbirds whir past our porch, and the kids laugh as we introduce them to childhood classics, like The Princess Bride and Hook. When my littlest looks cold I call her over to settle on my lap and zip her up inside my over-sized sweatshirt. She giggles against my chest at the defeat of the pirate captain.
The swimming pools have officially closed, despite my wish that they would stay open until Labor Day. Before they did, I took the kids to every family swim night I could, and I'm impressed with how much their swimming has improved. It's rather a magical stage, swimming right now. I stand in the pool and watch them play, but they mostly entertain themselves with very little help from me. I can just enjoy the sunshine and the sound of their antics. We always bring licorice or skittles for a snack on the way home.
I've had a running to-do list for several weeks now. Every time I crossed one thing off, two more were added, but I've finally chipped away at it this week. Plan enrichment subjects? Check. Choose read-alouds for the year? Mostly check. Set up sewing station, clean out the kids' toys, schedule doctor appointments, do the grocery shopping? All check. The things that are left are mostly the items I wanted to do for fun or things I've been putting off. Work on researching my family tree. Make clay earrings. Clean out the car. Organize the kids' fall clothes.
We are going on a vacation in September, and those last two things need to be accomplished before then. I'm just excited to get to go on vacation at all, since every unexpected expense this summer cut into our vacation budget. It'll be a shorter trip, but we have alot of interesting stops planned, and you can bet I'll count every educational experience as a school field trip, because we can. I don't typically like taking trips in the fall instead of the summer, but out of necessity it has started to grow on me. It also makes it easier to get started on school when I know that we have more fun things coming right around the corner.
My coffee is lukewarm. It's time for a warm-up so I will close this out. I wish you all the last bits of summer fun you can muster before pumpkin spice starts to fill the air!
I started this day off by finishing an audiobook while I walked to the mailbox, then I decided to make some salted caramel sandwich cookies. If this post ends up being a little disjointed, it's because I'm jumping up every 8ish minutes to take a batch of cookies out of the oven!
Just Life
She spends most of her day following the warm spots around the house, as you can see from the photos.
Our mailbox is empty this morning, as it's often been lately because apparently they can't get a mail carrier for our route. If I want my mail, I have to go down to the post office so they can give it to me. I made a couple trips down there last week to pick up Valentine's Day packages. Derek and I often skip gifts on Valentine's Day, but this year we both ended up getting each other something. I got Derek this shirt, and he got me a new Chi hair straightener because my old one was desperately old, and was also probably the reason that my hair stylist had to cut two inches of broken ends off a couple weeks ago. Though I'm told only two inches over the course of a year is pretty good for our dry climate here.
Derek made me a really wonderful Valentine's dinner, and decorated the school room and everything. It literally felt like a going out to a restaurant without even leaving the house. It was so sweet of him to go to so much effort, and really unexpected since we usually don't do much for Valentine's Day!
Aside from Valentine's Day, we also celebrated my oldest son's birthday in the last couple weeks. He is twelve. That feels so grown up - I remember being twelve and wanting to be included more in adult conversation at that age. I can tell he is at that point as well, and it's just hard to believe he is growing up so fast. He likes to remind me that he'll be driving in a mere four years. I try not to think about it too much.
On his birthday we went out to a local pinball arcade and let the kids have an unlimited hour of play - it was such a fun outing! My mom has been telling me about this arcade for a couple years, and I'm so glad we finally made it happen. I think Derek and I might make a date night out of it soon. We didn't pay for ourselves to play, and I was a little sorry we didn't, because I really want to try some of the games!
I have not given an update on Lulu here for a while, and she has grown quite alot since we got her. She definitely looks more like an adult miniature dachshund now (which, let's be honest, is still pretty small). Her favorite part of the day is right after Derek lets her out in the morning...she charges in the door and up the stairs, trying to catch me before I get out of bed. If I'm not getting up early, Derek gives her a boost onto the bed, and she races over to me, darts under the covers, and then squirms up until she is laying on her back with her head poking out of the covers right next to my face. Then she'll tilt her head over to me and snuggle for a while, until I sneakily tuck the covers around her and roll out of bed. We don't let her sleep on the beds at all at night, so this one little morning snuggle is the only time she gets. I have to say, having a soft, adorable little puppy dog tuck herself right in next to you is a nice way to be awakened in the morning.
Happy Mail And An Instagram Break
As a mini update on my New Year's goals: I did not paint last week, and I did not work on Ancestry.com. I did, however, receive a lovely letter from a childhood friend, and I wrote a letter, and plan on writing another today if I have the time. I highly recommend letter writing if you can find good people to write to. Since starting my letter-writing project, I've been keeping my own letters rather short so that it is manageable for me to write one per week, and I'm proud of the amount of letters I've stamped and mailed so far. I also forgot how nice it can be to receive a personal letter in the mail back. There is something really special about this form of communication - maybe it's easier to be honest when you are handwriting a letter, and maybe having to wait so long for a reply makes it a little sweeter when you spot handwriting you recognize amidst the junk mail.
Since we're talking about different forms of communication, I also decided to give Instagram another break. I was reading back through some of my old blog posts regarding social media, and remembering how lovely that year was when I wasn't on any social media at all. Even as I dipped my toe back into Instagram last year and have been using it more rarely, I still find myself rather sick of it again. One of the lasting benefits of being off Instagram for a whole year has been that it's much easier to recognize when the algorithm is messing with me, and when Instagram itself is bringing out negative feelings in me. I was feeling that way again recently, and decided to give it a break, until the end of the school year I think. Perhaps you'll be seeing more posts on the blog now! I also still post an occasional Bible verse or article on Twitter if you want to join me over there. Twitter just doesn't suck my time in the same way Instagram does.
Disjointed Thoughts On Wisdom Online
Speaking of Twitter, I saw this tweet over there last week, and it's been swirling in my mind since then:
I think the sentiment here is very true, whether we're talking about marriage or some other aspect of life.
I think it would be better for everyone if more young Christians had the wisdom to recognize when their experience is too fresh, that maybe they shouldn't offer advice until they have more years under their belt. That perhaps they can't have learned any real lessons until the experiences have marinated a bit.
Though age doesn't guarantee wisdom and there are plenty of foolish older people, a real depth of wisdom comes with fearing and knowing the Lord through the storms of life. Wisdom is a potential that might come to fruition as we walk with Christ through a variety of life experiences, good and bad, and those experiences can't all happen in only the amount of years that you can count on two hands. If wisdom comes, it comes with time.
On the flip side, I also think there is a derth of mature, wise Christian women actually sharing advice online - or in person either, for that matter. I wish older women would speak up sometimes, but then I see how they are sometimes poo-poo'ed or shot down when they do. Perhaps they don't speak because there are so few young women who want to hear what they have to say anymore. The gray-headed are not honored in modern America, often not even among Christians, and it's a shame on us.
All these thoughts are very half-baked on my part, but it's something I've been mulling over for a while. I'd love to hear what you think!
I've been severely neglecting my salted caramel cookie dough while typing that out, so I'll finish up now and get back to it!
How was your Valentine's Day, friends?
Have you been baking anything as winter starts to wind down?
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