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Doodle Lit: A Timberdoodle Review
Oh you guys, this book hits on all the fun things for me. My favorite parts of homeschool. It’s called Doodle Lit and it comes in Timberdoodle’s 8th Grade Curriculum Kit or you can buy it solo on their website as well. It’s a pretty straightforward book that is a fun take on literature. Lots of classic authors are included – Mark Twain, Shakespeare, Charlotte Bronte, Herman Melville, Jane Austen and so many more. For each author there is a cleverly drawn portrait of that author and then a handful of pages for your student to doodle, draw or create in unique and interesting ways. …
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Parenting Teens: Say Yes
Going to Guatemala
spring madness. it has descended upon us.
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What To Tell Your Friends When They Tell You Their Marriage Is Broken
Maybe I’ll be writing about stuff I don’t want to write about until the day I die. That’s probably kind of true. Last month I wrote a post about Helping Your Friends Through Sad Stuff. You guys – why is there always SO MUCH sad stuff? If it isn’t in the news (and it is ALWAYS in the news) then it’s on your living room sofa and at the coffee shop and it’s showing up in your gmail account and dripping into you phone via text and emoticons. A lot of bad stuff goes down. At church last weekend there were some guys wearing t-shirts that said “share your…
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birthdays and broken dryers
A lot of good went down this weekend at our home. The house has once again been redeemed from its brush with Reorganizing and Rearranging With Lacey and the rooms are in basically pretty good order and walking around at night in the dark is no longer a fear-inducing obstacle course. One of my friends with a pretty high tolerance for disorder stopped over during the height of the insanity and commented something like, “Wow. Even for you – this is crazy.” (Yeah, it wasn’t a compliment at all, of course.) School ran pretty smoothly and we are already half way to our first six week break. (Whoever suggested teaching…
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Five Finds Friday (chocolate pudding and head wraps on sale. also cookie pigs.)
Friday comes in on little cat’s feet. No – wait, that’s the fog, right? It comes in on little cat’s feet in a poem – correct? Yeah, who knows. That was probably a nerdy literary reference that only I think is funny. That’s fine. Let’s not mention it – okay? FUNNY This is a real cookie that one of our favorite bakeries sold to us. What is happening here? I don’t even know what it is I am supposed to be looking at. A mama pig? It’s too weird to consume. FASHIONABLE Babies need fashion too. And babies need spit/drool/sweet potato puree…
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Fast Flip: A Blue Orange Game Review
Here it is. Fast Flip. It’s a little triangular metal container that stores a game made by the clever guys and gals over at blue orange games. (Which, by the way – I love that the games made by Blue Orange generally have the name of the game designer and creator on the game itself. I like al little credit where credit is due – I think that’s cool.) The cards are triangular shaped too, which Otto and Piper liked. (I found them a little tricky to shuffle due to their shape, but not impossible.) At first I thought this game was too similar in style…
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list the good and share it.
It’s almost always late at night when I write. (Sometimes I commandeer an afternoon or a rare weekend morning, but generally it’s after kids are put to bed and the house sounds like whirring fans and humming dishwasher and sleeping dog.) And I think differently at night – a lot of piled up and poured out and held back can come out all through my fingers in the dimly lit rooms of my home. (And the rooms are ALL dimly lit, you guys. I don’t especially care for the dark.) Tonight I sat at a table with my daughters and some grown ups. We laughed and we talked and…
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Dear Lady After Me at the Checkout Counter at Trader Joe’s,
My daughter was watching your face as you watched my kids and I bag our groceries. As you received a phone call and chatted loudly, noting your annoyance at how long it was taking to get out of the store today because it was soooo slow. Saw your face as you grimaced and barely maintained civility when my EBT card functioned improperly. Watched your face as you eyed our grocery choices and our clothing choices and whatever other choices you decided didn’t measure up to your standard on your exceptionally busy Sunday afternoon. Hey. Maybe you were having an incredibly hectic day. Maybe it was awful and a burden…
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I still hate divorce
There’s a word I hear people use when they talk about divorce. Freedom. Whether they are implying a freedom for the person leaving the marriage or a freedom for the person being left, I don’t even know. Or a freedom for both people if they are both looking to leave their marriage. But I tell you what, from my vantage point, it does not feel like freedom to me. That seems like the wrong word choice. It’s not freedom. It’s a different word entirely. More like bondage. All of the best parts of marriage are dead to me now: intimacy, partnership, mutual friends, shared history, someone else to make…
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Five Finds Friday (green woods, red carpets, golden donuts)
Someone tell me how many Fridays we get to have with our kids before they turn eighteen. I’m sure it’s a number that’s too small and will make us all sad. FUNNY My friend Micah has been joining us at the table for more than six years. Tonight a couple of my big kids (I had to wear heels to be taller than them) and a couple of friends donned some fancy duds and headed downtown to a red carpet premiere to support Micah’s latest project – a series entitled UnSuper about the lives of a handful of super heroes. Our family loves Micah and his…
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It’s The House’s Fault
Does your own life ever just carry you away? No, I mean – for real. Like – I’m asking myself, where did my entire last week GO? My answer is – honestly – I think my house ate it. My house ate my entire last week. That – and school. Guess what friends – it takes a lot of a day to homeschool FIVE children. Who knew? (Oh wait – I sort of knew. But then summer made me forget. And now I am learning again. Math times five is ….. too much math.) When I forget to look at home education and my role in that as…
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surprise & delight: Okee Dokee Brothers
Last Friday I surprised the kids with an adventure. (surprise & delight, it’s so much fun.) I am sure I have mentioned one of our favorite bands – The Okee Dokee Brothers – before. They aren’t really brothers. They are really a fantastic duo from Minnesota who write and perform clever music with a target audience of kids but with witty lyrics and catchy tunes and a folksy bluegrass feel that I actually WANT to listen to on repeat car trip after car trip. (Look up these songs first – “The Good Old Times”, “Hard Road To Travel”, “Out of Tune” and “Thousand Star Hotel” for starters.) I told…
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a couple weekend notes and THE CONTEST WINNER (!)
This weekend the dryer broke. There was a load of mostly beach towels in it. They smell so bad right now. I also decided to rearrange the kids’ bedrooms. And by rearrange the kids’ bedrooms I mean ….. move the giant heavy wooden bunkbeds to another room, relocate the girls beds to entirely new spots, drag every old bed frame to the front lawn, move desks upstairs from downstairs, put every single bedroom item into the hall, completely change out the school room, visit IKEA and deep clean random closets, shelves and drawers. One thing always leads to another, you know what I mean? I’ve got another weekend story…
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the directions. and where our stories take us.
this train of thought ….
here we go …
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Five Finds Friday (incredible sauce & lifetime friendships)
FUNNY Our world is full of funny things. Outside of a store in our little downtown I saw this mannequin with this name tag. FASHIONABLE You don’t have to wear all of your fashion, now – do you? Whatever. I’ll share what I feel like here. I make the rules. (In this tiny square footage, that is. Just here. I make the rules right here. It’s tiny, but it’s mine.) My friend Beth (who named my bag Sean Penn) is a super talented artist and probably a super talented nurse. I say probably because I’ve seen Beth’s art. Her nursing – well, I’ve never been…
