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five finds friday (on a SATURDAY, featuring cute letters and free stuff)
Unscheduled. Awry. Shifted. Not as planned. Those are all the correct words to describe this week. Mostly stemming from car issues, nearly nothing that I thought was going to happen or scheduled to happen actually occurred as planned or anticipated. All. Week. Long. Some days my car would start. Some days it would not. Some days I spent trying to get it repaired. Some days it looked repaired. Some days it did not. Also, several of the kids began to feel off this week – a cough there or a fever here, light headed for one, extra exhausted for another. Again – changed up all the plans. I’ve got…
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Meet Bri: A Young Living Q&A
I told you guys a few weeks ago that I was delving into the world of essential oils in a kind of professional way. (Sort of how I do everything – kind of.) I’m entering Young Living like I enter a swimming pool – I’m a toe dipper. A wade in first and then take forever to finally dunk my entire head under water. I have friends who are high dive jumpers. They’re all in. There might be a circumstance or two in my life where I have jumped all in, but those tend to be the exceptions for me. I like to test the waters. For Young Living…
Keep Reading . . .
thoughts. on this fragile world.
holiday links.
The Deal With Me & Low Cost Flights
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weekend gone awry, right on schedule
The kids are watching Cars Three and I don’t even know how we justify THREE movies about cars that can talk and have feelings and relationships. But then again, I think they’re sort of cute movies. So. You know. Whatever. (I’m so grateful that (for now) my two teenagers and one nearly teen will happily watch a cartoon with their younger siblings even though they also have of late embraced the world of Thor, which is unbelievable to me as well. Not so much the very fit immortal who comes to earth so much as the fact that my kids are old enough to watch those movies is what…
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Five Finds Friday (bad lip reading, maggie weaves, piper feeds a calf)
I had no mental space this week for reading Charles Martin novels because I exhausted all of my emotional energy on watching the last two episodes of This Is Us. Those writers. They are so talented. I also watched my first ever Super Bowl and turns out, it was kind of fun. Sausage cheese dip and good company help that out too, of course. funny In honor of that Super Bowl viewing, here’s something funny. A Bad Lip Reading. (Here’s hoping there’s no creepy ad that comes up first for you guys. When I went to this link the ad was for the newest Fifty Shades…
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to be a parent
I don’t have to tell you guys – parenting is hard hard hard work. A single day can hold so much, can’t it? There’s the subtle disrespect and the blatant type too. The kid who helps his sister do the chores and the same kid who cries later because his sister won’t share her flashlight. The continual reminding to get their tasks completed and the endless questions about what’s for dinner and why does this have to happen on that day and why can’t that other thing happen instead and where should this go and what do you think we should do with this. The mess that…
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It’s Like A Road Map to Cooking With a Plethora of Detours: Supper of the Lamb Book Review
If not for it being “assigned” as a Book Club choice, I would probably have never heard of it. The Supper of the Lamb. I don’t even know what category it falls under. Cookbook? Culinary read? (Is that a category?) Memoir? It’s parts all of the above. And more. A little parenting advice. Memoir-ish. A picture of the author’s life. (A slice of it, anyway.) Non-fiction. Directions for a specific meal. Recipes. Dinner party plans. Life help. Social commentary. Amusing. Downright hilarious at moments. Poignant. Is that too much to ask from a book? Probably. But he’s delivering it anyway. It’s a little like…
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Five Finds Friday (odd products, good products, a faithful God and a friend who’s doing great things)
Hi February. Nice to see you. Let’s be friends. funny The internet brings us both wonder and horror. Sometimes at the same moment. What. Is. This? fashionable I’m not a big make up wearing kind of human. (Mascara feels like really “going all out” to me.) I have a daughter, however, who is infatuated with make up. It has almost always been true. And now she’s a grown up and she’s making a job out of the art of make up. Anyway, Riley has become a Mary Kay guru and I love my daughter so I’ve been trying out some of…
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aimless. arbitrary. disconnected. Today’s Thoughts.
Sometimes when my friend Brittani cuts my hair, she straightens it afterwards. In regular life, I can all but guarantee that I will never do such a thing on my own. I do own a hair dryer because Hannah bought me one a few winters ago when my pipes froze and we needed to try to thaw them out. I’ve never used it on my hair. Also, it takes too long. But after she has taken all that time to dry it straight, it’s sort of a game to see how long I can go before I have to wash it. (Don’t worry – I take a shower, I…
Keep Reading . . .
soundtrack of my mind
Losing Time: The Cost of Spontaneity This Week
pendulum swinger
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Inside Out & Back Again: A Book Club Book Review
Reading books with my kids is one of my simplest joys. Years ago I started a Mother-Daughter Book Club with my older girls. Since then Piper Finn has been begging for her turn at a Book Club. We’ve been meeting for several books now and this week we gathered again to discuss the beautiful story in Inside Out & Back Again by Thanhha Lai. My friend Addy chose the book and I am so glad she did. I had never heard of the story before. It’s the story of a young girl and her family who were living in Saigon during the Vietnam War. The family is…
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Visual Latin: A Review
Teaching a foreign language to my children is simply not going to happen from my skill set. We’ve played around a little with a program called DuoLingo that helps to teach Spanish, plus a handful of other languages you might prefer. The kids like it – it’s a free online program. It’s just an introduction sort of situation, not a thorough education, but they enjoy acquiring a few words and I think it’s mildly helpful. Although I’ve heard other parents sing the praises of having their children learn Latin, somehow it has never been on my radar. But this year, after hearing positive reviews from several homeschooling friends, I decided…
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before the promises fulfilled: life in the regular
Sometimes I come across words like these: Repay the years the locusts have eaten. Beauty from ashes. Like a phoenix rising. All the right ideas. The symbolism. The hope. But (thus far) none of the follow through. I have yet to see the descendants, numbers greater than the stars. I’m no longer sitting in the ashes, although the smell from the fire still lingers on the tips of my hair, despite all the extra washings. I’m not in a hard place like I’ve been before. My problems are less desperate, more run of the mill. We’ve just started a study on the book of Ecclesiastes at church. Meaningless. Hevel.…
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Five Finds Friday (a funny video and my take on The Greatest Showman)
Hey-o. Friday it is. Short days – long week, am I right? I maybe made it worse on myself by catching up on This Is Us on two different nights so I was past my bedtime twice this week. (Past my bedtime. Who am I kidding? I don’t even have an assigned bedtime and that’s a real problem.) funny I woke up one morning this week to a text. “We are still meeting, right?” To which I was forced to respond with honesty – “Right. Yes. We are. That’s exactly why I am still in bed in my pajamas. Because we are meeting.” Who’s the grown…
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Me and Young Living: At the Beginning
So. Essential oils. I’ve been learning slowly about the benefits and the uses of essential oils for years. A friend of mine calls it voodoo magic and that makes me laugh. She and I both joke about that title and we both seem to pair skepticism along with a willingness to give it a go. That and more than a handful of occasions where the voodoo crossed into experiential fact and here I am today writing this post about essential oils. I definitely like the smell of oils. And at first, perhaps, my dabbling in them was primarily because I like stuff to smell nice. And a house that…
