-
Dr. Eureka: A BlueOrange Game Review
I’ve said for a long time that the blue orange company makes almost all of our family’s favorite games. We love the Spot It series of games. They seem to be a steady favorite. We like YamSlam an awful lot. We’ve enjoyed Thumbs Up. And recently we received the game Dr. Eureka from the kind folks at blue orange to play and review for you guys. (Reviewing games? No problem. Happy to do it!) Dr. Eureka is a four player game and I prefer six player games just because there’s six of us, but that’s alright. Otto and Bergen were pretty stoked to open this box and get started playing.…
-
A Love Poem About Birthdays, But Mostly About London Scout
This month I attended a really spectacular workshop on teaching poetry. Incredibly valuable and really inspiring actually. As attendees and students, we were walked through how we could teach our students poetry and we practiced all the games/ideas/talking points to help lead the kids to positive and meaningful experiences with poetry. (I hope to take this new knowledge and do something good with it this year.) In one exercise we ended up writing our own poem based on a famous poem by one of two poets. I chose Carl Sandburg, because he’s my guy you know. I was influenced by the birthday of London – thirteen. Such a significant…
-
Five Finds Friday (a couple of Emma’s photos & an incredible dinner)
FUNNY Today at a birthday gathering for London – who hits THIRTEEN – she was blowing out her candles when a younger friend announced with enthusiasm, “London – now you can watch PG-13 movies!” FASHIONABLE Isn’t this dress Piper is wearing just too cute? We found it at Land’s End on clearance. Also – these last two shots are from some that Emma took while we were at the farm. Oh goodness, you guys. I’ll share the rest soon. They are just SO sweet. FLAVORFUL For my upcoming birthday I bought myself a little present. Because that’s what I do. Amazon Prime was going all…
-
. . . being left
The Heavy is actually not so much the literal parenting alone, although that has a weight indeed. But it is more the colossal burden of being the Left Behind. Different than the Scarlet A worn on the chest. In our culture that red letter carries so little weight. So little shame. It feels more difficult to wear the letters that spell Unlovable. Not Worth Saving. It’s not so much Being Alone as it is being Left Alone. ______________________________
-
Making Our Trail: KOA Hot Springs National Park, Arkansas
Our car load of passengers can spot a yellow KOA sign from miles away now. Driving back home from an adventure is always less exciting than heading out to an adventure. But if the KOA sign represented travel and distance and excitement on the way OUT to Colorado, then the KOA sign represented stability and comfort on the way home. (It’s probably why people love to stop at Cracker Barrel on a road trip. You have options for meal choices, but you know what to expect.) Our family has come to know KOA as a safe landing spot. We know there will be a comfortable bed. We know we…
-
Helping Your Friends Through Sad Stuff: A Primer (post one)
If you are breathing and you have even one singular human friend, then you have watched that friend suffer through something. A disappointing conversation. Job loss. The death of a parent. Drug abuse. Rejection from a family member. Physical injury. Heartache. Infertility. Divorce. Cancer. It is an oppressively long list of sorrows that mar the human condition. And we have all been on all sides of the list. The victims. The perpetrators. The onlookers. Until we’ve lived through all sides of sorrow, we don’t always know how to handle the pain and the suffering of the people we love. Even when we have lived through all sides of sorrow,…
-
six steps behind . . .
Crisis makes you weird. A different version of you. Like – kind of a foggy you. A you about six steps behind the regular you. A you who forgets things you never forgot before. And then, sometimes, when the crisis has ended, you sort of end up a mix of the you you once were and the you that crisis helped shape you to be. I’m not sure I am making sense. I over schedule lots of days now. I feel as if frequently life is happening to me and I am saying “yes” to this or “yes” to that and then suddenly the “yeses” collide and I furrow…
-
Five Finds Friday (photo booths gone wrong, Filipino food & fabulous people)
FUNNY The boys and I had a little afternoon excitement recently on a belated birthday date together at a local fun park. You know – one of those places where you ride go carts and step into the batting cages and play gigantic video games. I don’t mind admitting that I’m a sucker for photo booths. There was a giant one there and the boys were kind enough to oblige me since I had just treated them to lunch and batting cages and go carts and super intense air hockey games and some kind of gigantic fruit ninja video ridiculousness. The photo booth was sort of weird and…
-
junior high invasion
I’m plotting and charting the course for school this year – because it’s already that time again. I loved our first year’s attempt at year round school. (And we never did really land on a better name for this type of schooling – although “balanced” sounds so nice and optimistic and ideal.) I made my planner’s cover page and snapped a photo of it and shared it on all the social medias like we do and a friend pointed out a little fact that made me drop my pen and tear out clumps of my hair. Do you see what she saw? It’s right there — in the numbers.…
-
You Tell Me
When I ask God why all of these injustices are allowed to exist in the world, I can feel the Spirit whisper to me, “You tell me why we allow this to happen. You are my body, my hands, my feet.” – Shane Claiborne _________________________________
-
I hate divorce
In our family we don’t toss the word “hate” around. Partially because it’s such a strong word and it just sounds unpleasant coming from a child’s lips. Partially because when you use a word too much it loses its potency and you forget how harsh of a word “hate” can really be. The kids and I try to create a culture in our home where “hate” is unspoken. (Hopefully) you won’t hear the kids (or me) saying, “I hate tomatoes”, “I hate when we are running late”, “I hate the color mauve”, “I hate the sounds of fingernails being clipped”. So understand the strength of my words when I…
-
returning to real life: post farm realities
Leaving Virginia is never easy. The kids say exactly what I feel when they say, “I want to be at our home, but I don’t want to ever leave the farm.” No matter what, when you pull into that glorious driveway at Gray Mountain Farm, you enter a different dimension somehow. I’ve written about it before. Time moves differently out there in the green grassy fields in the shadow of Chestnut Mountain. You begin your stay thinking you have all the time in the world. You end your stay wondering where on earth the days went. No one goes to bed early and when you wake up, there’s still…
-
Making Our Trail: Pueblo South/Colorado City KOA Review
I felt a little sorry for whatever accommodations would follow our last night at Lost Valley Ranch. I mean, how can anything compete with turn down service and leather furniture and two bathrooms? I at least had the common sense not to schedule a tent night for our first KOA on the drive east. We still wanted to explore a tiny bit of Colorado and the Royal Gorge area before we trekked it back all those miles to our house so we chose to stay just a few hours away from the dude ranch in Pueblo, Colorado. That familiar yellow sign pointed us onward like a beacon. (Actually, I…
