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
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Otto Meets a Hawk
Maybe the idea started because I’m always trying to keep Birthday Magic going strong even after the actual celebration. Or maybe it began as a way to spread the cost of gifts out with half a dozen children. Who knows? I can’t recall exactly when, but at some point in our family history I started giving gifts that were future experiences: Taking a pottery classAttending a concertWatching live theatreA skiing tripThrowing axesDinner dates & movie dates The goal is, of course, to fit the event or date to the person receiving the gift. Sometimes this finds me at a Twenty-One Pilots concert when I only know one song. It’s led…
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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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five finds friday (the worst jeans you’ll ever see, Otto says something funny and Dolly is the best)
Has this week been kind to you? This week has handed me a stack of “you messed this up” and “hey, here’s another bill” and “whoa – how did it get to be so late so soon?” (Which is a quote from Dr. Seuss, by the way, so that I don’t add plagiarism to my list of wrong doings and inefficiencies this week.) But also. This week has been fine. Does that make sense anywhere outside of my own head? funny It’s our Break Week from school. One day I let the kids watch far too much TV. I looked at Otto, lounging on the sofa, having hardly moved most…
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Bergen Hawkeye, HomeLife, Keiglets, London Eli Scout, Mosely Ella Claiborne, Otto Fox Wilder, Piper Finn Willow
teens. parenting them.
I feel like I haven’t talked about too many hard things over here lately. I think it’s because – they’re all hard things. This year has been full of hard things. And yet. We’re all okay. At my house. In this moment. We’re okay. Nothing is currently on fire. You know what I mean? Everything feels hard. And nothing is really that hard. That’s how cliche extreme my brain feels lately. The teen years are vastly different than the toddler years. (I mean, sort of. They’re both years where some kid is always hungry. And where some kid always needs you. But just – differently, you know. Teens are messy…
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Five Finds Friday (a whole lot of photos)
Remember these? It seems that Friday is here – and so am I. And I’ve got a bunch of cute photos so I might overstuff this post with them. You’ve been warned. funny There was a lot of funny to choose from this week. Halloween brought some clever costumes. But no costume anywhere beats the one that my friend Katie wore when she came over last Saturday night. With the help of one of my daughters, she snagged my Colorado hat and came dressed as ………….. me. fashionable I’m going to stick with the Halloween theme here. I think we’d all agree at my house that the most fashionable Halloween…
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camping with the boys: lake jocassee is a wonder, but what happened to the hammocks?
Some birthday gifts take a while to bring to fruition. That’s kind of true always, but it’s especially true during this season. Otto tuned 11 back in May. Last week he and I and Bergen headed to the always breath taking Lake Jocassee for an overnight camping trip. Really, it was always more about the fishing than the camping. It always is for that fella. We unloaded our meager little supply at the tent site and the boys tossed their lines in immediately. I love low key camping. And the boys are satisfied with that too. Being with these two is just plain old easy. And that’s not a feature…
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five finds friday (otto’s birthday, boots I can’t wear & chili)
Today my youngest son turns ELEVEN. I’m almost entirely out of the “kids eat free” stage of parenting. In fact, I’d say I’m pretty heavily into the “kids eat expensively” stage of parenting. (Maybe that’s EVERY stage of parenting.) Anyway, he’s an easy fella to celebrate and I’m looking forward to celebrating his Harry Potter birthday. (That’s what the kids are calling it, since that fictional fellow’s 11th birthday is when all of his adventures began.) Let’s hope Otto doesn’t attend a secret wizarding school and run into a lot of problems that keep his life almost constantly at risk. funny The other day I walked into the living room.…
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five finds friday (ukuleles & queso)
The task of motherhood is a full time one. Anyone who has been a parent and anyone who has been a child knows this. And yet, not any of us, stay at home parent nor 80 hour work week parent, actually has a full time schedule to commit to that one role – the role of parent. This has been a week of full on parenting tasks. Swinging back into school routine is painful for all of us. Add in lengthy allergy appointments and big teen discussions/decisions that always occur late into the evening and work deadlines and it’s a sweet little recipe for exhaustion and frustration. I thought I’d…
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five finds. on a friday. (eyelashes. chicken pot pie. basketball.)
Monday seems like a very long time ago. Was it? Maybe. funny It’s getting more and more difficult to have a nightly family read aloud time. But mostly I keep persevering because it’s important to me. Yes, the books themselves matter. But the IDEA of it matters more to me. The time that we all sit in the same space for half an hour when maybe we’ve hardly seen one another all day. The time to be quiet together and to listen to good words together and to hear the same story and to have routine and tradition and familiar to end our day. I read books that I think…
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five finds friday (dates with otto & beaded earrings & friends)
In the course of one day, a load of mess can happen. In the course of one week – well, even more mess. Right? This week it was a broken water pump in our well. Deep down in our well. Life with teenagers. (Someone this week declared teens to be a little Jekyll and Hyde sort of situation – and that feels like the most true thing I have heard in ages.) But here it is – Friday again. funny Wrapped up rewatching The Office. With beets – to honor Dwight. PSA: They were disgusting. fashionable Sure – it’s earrings again. Are you even surprised? I love all sorts of…
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Lake Jocassee with the Boys
For birthdays, I love to give experience gifts. And for some time now, it’s been a bit of a tradition for the birthday boy or girl to receive an envelope and inside that envelope they will find instructions or tickets or an invitation to a future date with me. This past spring, the boys each received their birthday dates. One for a guided boat tour of Lake Jocassee. (I had found a great buy one, get one free deal.) One for a day spent out of doors together hiking or fishing. Unfortunately, the boat tour company called and canceled their tour. And through shared conversation, the two boys decided they…
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five finds friday (except it’s four because I ran out of time)
Every stage of parenting has its perks – and its disadvantages. With a newborn, you’re sleep deprived. But – when you place the baby on your bed, she cannot go anywhere else. With a toddler, diaper changes are disgusting – but the phrases and words they say are hysterically funny and worth daily recording. With teenagers – they’re good at conversations and adventures. But – when they can’t drive yet, they depend on you to take them to ALL the places ALL the time. All I do is drive, drive, drive. Short trips. Repeated trips. Back and forth trips. It’s the summer of going here and there – a…
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five finds friday – (Congaree, more soup, another Otto saying & sunshine)
I really need to go to bed instead of writing this post. I don’t feel at all certain that I can think of Five items tonight. But, at the same time, I really want to do this. funny We went to see a play at local college with many of our friends. The lead role was performed by a friend we made through our stays at Lost Valley Ranch. I love that sort of connection and how that works out. It was Shakespeare’s Taming of the Shrew and, like every event of late in our home, the feelings about attending the show were mixed. (In fact, Bergen heaved a heavy…
