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five finds friday: dutch babies & my babies all grown
It’s Friday and it’s already December and I guess that is just how it’s going. Our tree is up – about a week early, breaking Keigley tradition in order to be sure London could decorate with us. But I have liked having the cheerful lights and the happy ornaments in the living room for an extra week. It’s been so long since I have written a Five Finds post that I think I’m out of practice. (I had to look up what each of the five Fs were!) But you know what I am NOT out of practice doing? Giving my opinions. And that’s basically all Five Finds Friday is.…
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The Deal With Me & Low Cost Flights
I love a deal. And I love an adventure. It seems I find myself talking about this website where I find both an awful lot so I figured a post about it was maybe overdue. Going is a website. It’s like a clearinghouse for low-cost flight deals. You do not purchase any tickets directly from Going. Here’s what you do: You create a profile and then choose a home airport. If you want to try the free version, you can pick up to five airports. The Premium version gives you up to ten airports. The Elite version offers unlimited airports, mistake fare deals and first class rates. Once you sign…
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Thanksgiving Tables …
It’s Thanksgiving week and we all know it’s a FASSSSSSSSSSTTTTTTTT roll right on to January from here on out. But it’s Thanksgiving this week so let’s focus on that. I’ve got my college girl home and we’ve got our family Thanksgiving dinner this week and every single Keigley kid will be together at one table at one time and that is delightful! We’re keeping it relatively low key this year but low key does NOT mean that there won’t be plenty of pies and too much food in general. One of my favorite parts of Thanksgiving week is the day after the big meal. Yep – the day after Thanksgiving.…
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Stages & Seasons: From Diapers to Dissatisfaction
There was the season of diapers. Remember that? It was almost an ENTIRE DECADE at my house. I cannot even believe that. For nearly ten years of my life I was in charge of checking for poop, wiping poop, cleaning poop et cetera ad nausem. Now I live in a frat teen house. Teens are everywhere. More accurately, the teens are often difficult to find but their STUFF is everywhere. (I’ll warn you, I might use an excessive amount of capital letters in this post. YES IT IS NECESSARY.) Bergen collects jackets. Thick jackets. Sherpa lined coats. Denim jackets. A pea coat just joined the family. He routinely scours thrift…
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This Age.
Ryder and I are the same age, apparently. He in dog years and me in people years. We’re both fans of slow moving and it seems like we spend our days switching from one spot to the next throughout the house. He to rest and nap and me to write and read and work. I went out to eat recently with a few friends. The light was dim, but not that dim. The words on the menu were small, but not that small. And guess what? I could not read them. Literally could not see the descriptions. I either had to guess or ask my friend. A few days after…
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Oh hi. It’s me.
To quote Taylor Swift and every IG reel and every teenage girl and shoot, most all humans lately – It’s me. Hi. I’m the problem. I like to sigh and roll my eyes and tease my kids, particularly one dear son, about his high levels of distractions, but honestly – I am no different. I have to make lists with sub points and lists of their own and still I just sometimes ignore those lists. We’re flying through this school year – Bergen’s SENIOR year – and I cannot keep him from gaining inches (he’s STILL growing) and I cannot stop the days from slipping right by. We slipped away…
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Let’s Start Coding: A Timberdoodle Review
This is a sponsored post. I received this item from Timberdoodle in exchange for an honest review. These thoughts and these words and these opinions are, as always on this page and in real and regular life, all completely and totally my own. _____________________________ Every homeschooling family I’ve ever met has a “speciality”, if you know what I mean. While some magical folks excel in ALL THE THINGS (and therefore cannot be my close friends – kidding, kidding) most of us have a certain knack for one subject more than another. Or love for one field over another. Maybe it’s all about the music in your house. Violins and cellos and guitars…
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Snap.Shot.
How’s it going around here these days? Well. Today I came home from a stacked day full of meetings and a podcast recording and errands and being sure this kid went to that house and that kid conquered that chore and one kid at camp and I don’t even know what else. I was wrapping up my last meeting of the day. It was at a pizza place, as luck would have it. I was finishing my conversation and ordering a pizza to bring home to the kids who weren’t at camp or at work or at a friend’s house, when one of those at home kids texted me. “The…
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To Those of Us Graduating Kids This Spring
This is an open letter to moms with seniors this year. And to dads too, I guess. Actually – how about this is a letter to just to ALL the people who love anyone who is graduating this spring. There – we can ALL have permissions to feel the feelings. It is a LOT! It is everything and it is none of the things. It’s so much. Here are these kids that we love and in whom we have invested – and they think it was enough time to be educated and to be “ready” but we know it was never enough time. And they think they know so much.…
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Five Finds Friday: The British Edition
Well hello there. It’s been a while. Recently London and I “opened” her high school graduation gift, many many months delayed. A trip to London, England. I have SO many words to write SO much. (And you can bet they are words like fancy and loo and queuing and charlatan.) But it seemed a fun way to start digging into this overwhelmingly delightful trip is to try a little structure – a British version of the Five Finds post! funny It was a little funny to watch me drag my 24 pound suitcase from airport to tube to station to street to hotel to up three flights of stairs because…
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Five Finds Friday (puppy. black leggings. muu muus. apple cider.)
All week long this country song has been playing in my head. “I’m much too young to feel this damn old.” Yes. funny We visited Denver Downs, a family farm with pumpkins, a corn maze and more, this week with friends and had a really great time exploring the farm and enjoying its quirky and fun and creative play options. (We divided into two teams to complete the corn maze and both teams finished at the exact same time!) What was funny was to see these big kids on these oversized trikes riding around in circles. I was also reminded that big kids love to play too. faithful Last night…
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Time is not my enemy.
But sometimes it feels like it is. I’ve been (ever so slowly) reading a book called The Lazy Genius. It’s full of really great stuff. Practical help. Emotional help. All the in between help. The author talks about the seasons of our lives – raising little babies, empty nest, new careers, frequent moves, crisis, whatever it might be for you. And she also talks about the seasons we actually live in here on earth – you know them, fall, winter, etc. She suggests that, instead of constantly battling against the one we’re in when we find ourselves in our least favorite of seasons, we should lean into the season, recognize…
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Five Finds Friday (touring college and of course – boots & tea)
This week was fasssst. And pretty lovely and pretty regular and there was a golden conversation with the most wonderful of humans and there were long hard stares directed at me from teens and there were jobs that got checked off to the to do list and a major frustration financially and a car battery that died but a dad who bought a portable recharger and it was the kind of week we all lived – up and down like the ocean waves. And here we are – FRIDAY! funny I like teenagers. And I like raising them and being around them. And I like laughing about them. And you…