HomeLife
How we spend our days is, of course, how we spend our lives. - Annie Dillard
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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…
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one of those . . . weeks
You ever have a day that just u n r a v e l s ? Or, you know, an entire week? Heads are nodding, I’m assuming. Mine is. I don’t even exactly know how. Or why. This year I stepped back from teaching the writing and literature high school course I have taught for three years. I thought that would translate into extra time. I guess it has. Although I don’t know exactly where that time went. In fact, I’m actually asking how on earth I ever fit it in for the last three years. I’m minus one student at my own homeschooling kitchen table so that seems like…
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mid-week rambling.
We’re trying to do a little school around here. (Math. History. A couple good novels.) It was sad to start Wildwood with only four students. And – most days it actually kind of feels like just three. Mosely is working and taking dual enrollment classes and only needs a few more credits to graduate so she’s not really in all the table work daily rotation. It’s funny – I’m not teaching at Meadowlark this year and so my daily workload has decreased in that area. And yet. I am struggling with feeling unmotivated. It’s as if when my schedule isn’t bursting at the seams, I somehow have a MORE difficult…
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Five Finds Friday (boots, of course, and pretty drinks and a book update)
We started school this week! And yes, it felt pretty odd to only have FOUR students at Wildwood’s first day. funny Lately Piper and I have been laughing together a lot. Which is a nice thing because being the youngest teenager at our house, sometimes there’s less laughing and more …. NOT laughing. If you catch what I’m saying. We’ve been playing Sudoku before bed each night. We’re kind of average at it but I still love doing it with her. Our family attended a local event recently and Piper and her friend decided to roll the dice and get their faces painted. That was a little funny too. fashionable…
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today. (teens are wonderful wonderful too – PSA)
I know I’ve written a LOT about my feelings this year – about graduation and kids growing up and oh whatever floated across my mind. (This may not be called “My Space” but it sure as heck IS my space.) I stand by all these feelings. They are true and they are mine and I have felt them all. (And I still do and I still will. Parenting and motherhood AND LIFE are just all bubbling over with feelings. It’s what makes us HUMAN. Sitting in my living room yesterday with friends and co-workers (how lucky that they are both?) we watched our teenagers drive off in one car together…
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five finds friday (more feelings, an architect’s table I want to find and milk tea)
Is there anything better than birthday week? By a coincidence of timing, I ended up taking the boys on a couple belated birthday adventures of their own over the last few weeks and those have been like gifts to me – kayaks and treehouses and drives on the Blue Ridge Parkway. Any day I see a wide expanse of a mountain view is a good day to me. funny This week my sweet friends surprised me with a night out for desserts and drinks to celebrate BIRTHDAY. (I found a drink I like so I can add it to my VERY limited list of Beverages I Enjoy. Sangria. Who knew? Here is the rest of the…
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The Right Word.
Decreasing numbers. First we were 8. Then, in the same year, we were 6. Last week a series of mixed events had us at about 4 for more than a week. I felt like our numbers were dwindling too dramatically and I didn’t care for that feeling. My sweet college friend Gretchen and her lovely family were passing through town for an evening. We enjoyed dinner and sharing stories and gawking at the increased height of our kids and their deep voices and all the time that has somehow passed. (I shared stories of her college escapades that embarrassed her but delighted her children. What are long time friends good…
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chipped nails and stacks of mail and practicing my mom skills all over again
Those are two things that bother me. Stacked mail.Chipped fingernail polish. The mail, staring at me and demanding that I take action, makes me feel like I’m running behind and will never catch up. As I type and I see the bits of pink and bits of gray on my fingernails because I thought – this time, this time – I will paint my own nails and keep up with their maintenance. It’s difficult to keep it all together, even in the summer when keeping it all together is less structured and requires less effort. May and June were busy little months, full of trips and drives and graduations and…
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… a new dinner option
May was a blur. Finishing up school for five kids Wrapping up teaching at Meadowlark. Graduation. A wedding in Texas. A drive to the ranch and back. The ranch itself. And I guess now it’s time to get serious about All The Other Parts of My Life. So it’s Monday and I’m plowing along, digging out of a hefty influx of emails in my inbox, fighting the urge to only do Fun Summer Things and resisting the desire to Read All Day Long. I’m still struggling through the ins and outs of this silly Mailchimp Subscribe situation – but I think I’m getting close to solving it. (Thank you for…
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five finds friday
A Reason for Handwriting: A Timberdoodle Review
