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Wonder: A Book Review
“Thank you God for good books to read,” London prayed in our before bed family routine. And the good book she was talking about on this particular evening was the book called Wonder. Actually, the specific book was a sequel – or companion book really – to Wonder called Auggie & Me. We started with Wonder – maybe a month or so ago. It’s a novel that’s been out for more than five years I think but now that there’s about to be a movie released based on the story, it’s reappearing on the front shelves of book stores. I sort of hate that I am only…
Keep Reading . . .
five finds friday
Mand Labs Lit: A Timberdoodle Review
the burrow: a fireplace update
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Five Finds Friday (Harry Potter kitties & biscuits & tween fashion)
I like that the weather has finally turned cooler. I don’t like that it’s dark by 6 pm. I like that my teenagers are fun and interesting humans. I don’t like that we are closer to graduation age than we are to starting kindergarten age. I like that the weekend is upon us. I don’t like that my to do list from last week carried right on over to this week. funny It’s a Harry Potter world at our house. Dumbledore and Gryffindor and Mrs. Weasley are all names I am attempting to become more familiar with, just so I can have a shared language…
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life. in the right now.
This is life right now. The house I currently live in puts on a pretty show – right? I mean – just look at her. From a distance. There’s so much good about it – the allusion of rural only minutes from our town. Wonderful neighbors. High ceilings. Wide door frames so I can swap furniture with relative ease from room to room. And there’s also the other. Mold that seems as unbeatable as sin. The smell of musty old-ness that just seeps into every drawer and closet (of which there are only two) and floorboard in the house in South Carolina’s rainy season. (Which is basically…
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A Great Big List of Games
It’s underneath the tree every Christmas. A new game. Sometimes we open it on Christmas Eve to play, sometimes it gets played Christmas afternoon and sometimes it waits a couple of days to make the rounds. But it’s long been a tradition – the new game for Christmas. If your family likes to search out a new game for the holidays, I thought I’d take some of the guess work out of the search for you. Some of the games listed I have written reviews for over the years and you can click on those to read more. Some of the games I’m just telling you are fun and…
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alone. married. single. not single.
It’s such a pervasive lie that it almost always sounds and feels like the truth. It is promoted by society and culture, movies, songs, novels and well-meaning friends. This lie that the culture keeps feeding us, keeps shoveling down our throats through our screens and our movies and our words, is that to be fulfilled, to be a success, to be happy, you must have a significant other. A boyfriend. A girlfriend. A husband. A wife. The idea is — you cannot be complete without romantic love. Get a person! Don’t be alone. Happiness is not happiness until it is shared. Soulmates. Better half. Til death do us part. It’s…
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five finds friday (dutch babies and bad Halloween candy, beanies and avert brothers)
It’s November already, for the love. funny Last week at Target I saw this. It’s a joke – right? fashionable Alright. I’ve got two. One. I love my Bogs boots. They’re about three years old. They’ve been looking rough and I was wondering what I could do to bring back their glory. I wear them year round and they are my first choice for comfort and style. I found this Wren’s Leather Cream on Amazon and took a chance. Success! They look so fantastic! I will definitely be heading toward their products for all of my other leather care – furniture and…
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the questions. the answers.
Things change and get strange With this movement of time. It’s happening right now to you. (Avett Brothers, Down With the Shine) Each month, each week, each day, each hour – it’s the same and it’s different. Time goes and it slips and it sloshes and it wraps me up in tangles and it finds me sitting at the kitchen table for hours making lesson plans and it pushes me into meetings for work and propels me down hiking trails with my children and it keeps me up late and has me rising early. It’s time. It’s balance. It’s never enough and always too much. And it’s the same…
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five finds friday – mostly a photo collection
It’s been a good week. And a regular week. A slow week and a fast week. Things have been fine and things have been pleasant and things have been weird. Right on track, I’d say. I’m mostly going to use photos today. Because I’ve both written and spoken a lot of words already this week. fashionable flavorful When we visited the apple orchard in North Carolina we were talked into buying mountain grown sweet potatoes. The staff told us they were the best sweet potatoes. That they were stringless. That growing them in the mountains soil made them better. I wanted to believe.…
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you pick the story from our day: a beautiful & terrible world.
Which story should I tell you about my day? The one where the kids and I sat on a gigantic rock outcropping behind poet Carl Sandburg’s house in Flat Rock, NC and read his poems to one another while the mountains and the trees listened in? Or the one where my kids acted so ridiculous at the dinner table that one of them spewed lemonade all over his sweet potato? Should I tell you about how we visited a new to us apple orchard and loved the dwarf trees and the views and the staff there? Or should I tell you how my…
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Why What We Think About Our Sheriff’s Adultery Actually Matters
It’s been hard to ignore. The news in our county here. The local news. Allegations about our county’s sheriff. Accusations of sexual harassment and abuse. I’m not saying I know the entire truth. Only two people probably can say that. The first articles and news stories written months ago were only about the accusations, the claims made by a former employee. Now that a formal investigation has begun there was a statement made, a press release, words uttered by the sheriff himself, the man accused of sexual harassment and abuse of power. The sheriff issued a statement admitting an “incident”. Confessing to an extramarital affair. A “slip of judgement”…
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Five Finds Friday (cozy pants & days you would live over again)
It started with such good intentions – this week. Looking at the calendar I planned for a week of stay stay stay. Life heard about that plan and laughed and instead I wound up with a week of go go go. It’s alright but I feel as if I’m crawling across the finish line, except – the finish line really isn’t Friday, it’s more like Sunday and I’m not even close. And there you have it, friends. My week. funny I like when my kids leave me written notes that begin with the request, “Please read this with a British accent.” fashionable I finally…
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An Ode to Autumn
A simple part of our Nature Study for the past several years has been to simply pick a spot outside (each of us in a different location) each week and for just a short time to sit still and observe. While you are observing you may lie still with your eyes closed or you may draw what you see or record what you hear or let nature inspire you to draw or create in some other manner. Recently, this is what I heard and what I saw and what I wrote after one of our observation times. _____________________ When a bird makes a noise that distinct I…
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needy people
The day my friends and I visited Charleston we found street parking near the ice cream shop we wanted to visit. The meter required actual coins and the four of us were digging around in our bags, searching for quarters and coming up mostly empty handed. A lady was standing nearby as we hopped out of the car, wallets opened as we searched. She said words to me but I had no idea what they were. She was rather difficult to understand. I stepped closer to her in an effort to understand what she was saying. The mumbling was so thick her words were basically incoherent. With my ear…
