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five finds friday (a long winded run down of yesterday and white chicken chili and student success)
I want to humor myself here and lay out the schedule of what Thursday was like. thank you. Prior to 9 am – Wake up. Shower. Make certain kids are all up. Print out papers needed for teaching school. Oversee lunches packed. Create a crockpot dinner. Maybe eat breakfast and see if kids do the same. Make sure kids do chores like feed pets, take them out to the bathroom, get them resettled for their day while we’re gone. Wonder why we have so many pets. 9:30 to 12 – Teach a literature and writing class to junior high and high school students. Kipling. Wordsworth. Spring poetry. Compare and contrast…
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parenting, continued
Last week (or something like that) I was talking with a couple of friends who are moms of many daughters. I suggested we start a club – The Moms of Many Daughters Club. (MMD – sounds alright?) We need a support group y’all. Not that raising any number of children is easy. Not that raising boys is easy. But I’m just saying there’s a special kind of challenge to raising multiple teenage girls. At the same time. We texted back and forth here and there for the better part of an afternoon. We’ve been sending a few texts in between. When we need a virtual high five or an…
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what day is it? a day late weekend ramble. I guess.
You know how on vacation you forget what day it is? Or how, during Christmas break, you can’t recall which day is a week day and which day is a weekend? Sometimes I feel like that every day. My life certainly has routine and rhythm – a heavy and sobering dose of it really – but still, I forget what day I’m on many many times. I like my life. But I’m also tired. That’s okay. I drop the ball some days. On big projects. On follow through. On words I should have said and calls I should have returned. On opportunities with my children. Some days I hit the…
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five finds friday (silly and sweet)
Because I want to write stuff you want to read, I’ve got to ask – do you still like these Five Finds posts? (I really do want to know.) It’s been a good week – one that had SUNSHINE in it. You guys had such fun responses to my dating post and I love you for it. My dad is out of the country currently, visiting my brother who lives in New Zealand. One of my other brothers went with him. Who, as a matter of fact, has never left the country, so it’s a big deal. I’m excited for them. Likely, that means Dad has no time to…
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notes on dating
A Disclaimer: It’s a straight up comedy of errors that my life would even have me at a point where such a post could be written by me. I am 45 years old. The majority of my dating experiences occurred in the early 1990s and half of that was monitored by my conservative parents. Back then, my plan for dating was simple. (If you’d even classify it as a plan.) I was looking for a fun adventure, a buddy or I was looking for a boyfriend that would lead to a marriage that would lead to a family that would lead to forever. In high school I had three…
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weekend ramble (soccer starts & the sun is back)
This weekend . . . Piper played her first game of this year’s soccer season. It was muddy. Very muddy. Wet. Also cold. Turns out, London’s really into cheering – and offering unsolicited coaching advice – loudly. I took eight kids to see How to Train Your Dragon 3. It was fine. It felt like, oh, I don’t know, versions 1 and 2. I begged/pleaded/forced London to make me another of her delicious grilled cheese sandwich creations. It took more convincing than it should have for the child to whom I gave LIFE to craft me said sandwich, but whatever. I procrastinated on my work articles for the entire…
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Five Finds Friday (a lot of Otto and a little about a pipe bursting, also a bit about grilled cheese sandwiches)
Sort of makes my stomach hurt when the calendar says it is already well into MARCH. No. Just – no. funny Otto has not yet learned to appreciate the gift of being clean. The allure of being freshly showered pulls no sway with him. If I didn’t remind him to shower, frankly, he never would. More to the point, if it wasn’t required, it wouldn’t happen. So after a recent such forced cleanse, I commented, “Man, you look so clean.” To which Otto looked up from what he was doing and said, “er”. “What?” I asked. “Er,” he repeated. “I’m not clean. But I am clean-ER than I was.”…
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books that work their own magic.
This post is about a book. But it’s also about parenting and homeschooling and personality differences and what we can never fully understand and about getting out of the way of ourselves as often as we are able and letting beauty and truth and ideas educate whenever we remember to step back and shut up already. I’m a talker. An explainer. I give too many details. To my kids.To you readers.To the lady behind me in the grocery aisle. And I often am dangerously close to doing the same to good literature. Superimposing MY words on top of already beautifully crafted other words. (This is an especially difficult habit to…
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weekend ramble (from morning Clemson adventure to evening fancy adventure)
This weekend was full of beautiful moments. Otto was invited to join our friend Brent and his son on an adventure to Clemson University. They got up super early (the rest of us resting luxuriously in our beds) and headed to the stadium. I know less than nothing about college football. However, I have somehow raised a son who thinks that football is fantastic and I am super grateful when other people can help feed that passion. Because as much as I adore my youngest son, I find it hard to continually answer the same stream of questioning. “Mom, who is your favorite player?” “Who is your favorite player…
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what whole 30 taught me
It was before Christmas when I tried my first (and thus far my only) attempt at Whole 30. If you’re unfamiliar with Whole 30, you can learn more about it on the Whole 30 website. Basically it’s just a program that helps you to manage what good foods go in your body and what bad foods stay out. It’s a 30 day plan to kick sugar and processed foods out of your diet and to break food habits you might need help overcoming. Why did I try Whole 30? I don’t have a neat and tidy answer. I had been thinking about it off and on for several years. I’ve…
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parenting blues
Exhausting.Rewarding.Comical.Lonely.Time consuming.Lovely.A pain in the rear.Life giving.Emotional. Yes. All of the above. Parenting is ALL of that. And about a thousand things besides. I don’t have a plethora of experience with teenage boys, but I’m having a crash course in teenage girls. It’s ridiculous to compare. And nearly impossible to stop one’s self from doing it anyway. So many bits and pieces of life as a whole were entirely different when I was parenting my first teenage daughter. Naturally, she had her own personality to bring to the story. Her own story to add to ours. And – of course – there was an “ours”. Two parents do things differently…
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weekend ramble (break week is over, we threw axes, I want the sunshine to stay)
Although break weeks are glorious, they are also troubling. They end too quickly.We stay up too late.Our meals are haphazard and not at usual times.We all get a little extra sad when they are over. And this break week pretty much rained every single second of every single day. Here are a few things that happened: Mosely made a nearly perfect chocolate cake with some sort of dreamy fudge icing.Ryder enjoyed the remainder of the fudge icing because we walked out of the kitchen thoughtlessly.I started reading a collection of poems by Billy Collins that are so wonderful.I had a half day window of time that I was actually…
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five finds (asleep with a book, love anyway, i like big sinks)
BREAK WEEK! Whenever it’s break week I think – how am I still so busy when I removed one gigantic to-do item from my list? And by the end of break week I’m wondering how I ever have time to actually homeschool my kids. It’s been a great week – although I could have done without the endless rain. I had big thoughts for this week. I always have big thoughts for break weeks. I dreamed of a two day adventure to Charleston, a day trip to Congaree, time spent in the mountains of North Carolina. But we pretty much didn’t go farther than fifteen minutes away from our house…
