Keiglets
The littlest birds sing the prettiest songs.
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Progress That Is Slow Is Still Called Progress
So much of homeschool seems like a Grand Experiment to me. I mean, I won’t really know if my work was a success or a failure until the kids graduate. Maybe not even then. I might not know until Berg is thirty or Mosely is married with kids of her own or Piper Finn is running her own small country. In other words, I won’t know if this project called homeschool worked until it is too late. Tell me, what other job works that way? Anyway. I feel as if some school projects seem as open-ended as school itself can seem. Take, for example, our School of Keigley Nature Notes…
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Wanted: Your Ideas
Now that she can write, London loves to express herself through words. And you know I love that. She has started keeping a journal that she writes in while she is in bed at night. It is precious to me. Filled with paragraphs of ideas and thoughts. A page filled to bursting with a retelling of her day and how she thought it would turn out one way when it really turned out a different way. A listing of all the places she would like to visit on her upcoming daddy-daughter date. And lately, she has been leaving little notes for me all over the house. And I love finding…
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Not Too Early
March has literally just begun. We’re talking – the earliest of the single digits of the month. Spring has not officially started. Does that mean that it is too early to drive over to Lowe’s and buy five of the cutest little green resin Adirondack-style lawn chairs? Is it too early to let my adorable toddler son lounge in the lawn chairs set up semi-circle in the front lawn for a windy breakfast of a warm bowl of oatmeal? Or to hang out in the warm afternoon sun with Bergen and take a long series of silly, mostly unusable camera shots? Tell me, is the beginning of March too early…
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The Two Tiniest
Dear Fox and Finnian, Can you please stay small forever? Love, Momma
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Let Them Eat History
First copyright – 1931. Newspaper clippings of Paul Harvey articles slid between the thick, yellowed pages. A postcard dated 1969 and addressed to my mother before her last name was the same that mine used to be. The Searchlight Recipe Book. The binding is almost off the black and red cover and the paper tabs denoting recipe categories are torn and rugged. This was first my grandmother’s cookbook. And then it was my mother’s. And now it is mine. “Who will get this cookbook next in our family, Momma?” London asked. “I guess you’ll have to take turns with it,” I answered, hopeful that one day my girls would want…
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Yesterday
Yesterday London wore a shirt that was a size 8 for the first time. I bought $24 worth of groceries for $8 at Harris Teeter’s super doubles sale. A large rectangular glass cutting board was sitting on the stove top. Kevin turned on the wrong burner. The glass cutting board slowly heated up. Until it exploded in a million miniature shards all over the kitchen. Piper said, “I cannot let anyone else use my swing outside. It is fragile.” To which Mosely replied, “Actually, Piper, ‘fragile’ means easily broken, which your swing is not.” I drove forty minutes to Asheville to visit a huge consignment pre-sale. Upon entering the…
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love. in all its many forms.
It’s not all glamorous. Oh, actually, it’s hardly ever glamorous. Guarantee it would not make the cover of any glossy magazine. But here’s to the many ways love is shown at our house. Quietly refilling Mommy’s empty glass with ice and water because you know she loves drinking cold water all day long. Keeping the towels clean and folded so Kevin does not have to touch them straight from the dryer. Riley unloading the dishwasher every morning before she leaves for school. Kevin leaving the best tweezers at home when he attends business trips. Handwritten notes in crayon slid under the door of Daddy’s office. Wrapping up your favorite stuffed…
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Art. Found.
At the School of Keigley we probably place a heavier-than-some-might-consider-necessary emphasis on art. We like to smear our many small hands across canvas and hang it on our walls. We like to listen to music and draw what we think we hear. It’s how I want our homeschool to look. It’s what I want it to be about. This week we tried Found Art. Art that requires no money and no trip to the supply store. (Partly because it fits our budget, partly because we have all been too sick to attempt heading out in public and partly because I think it’s important to use what is in front of…
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We’re Still Here. (Except When We Weren’t.)
If you follow our lives primarily through this blog, then it might appear as if Mosely turned seven last week and then life stood still at our house. No posts. No comments. Internet silence. Well. Life did probably stand basically still at our house. But we did not. Stand still, that is. In fact, we were on the move on Mo-Town’s birthday too. We were headed south. (For an event I will probably write about tomorrow. I say “probably” because I can’t ever really guarantee if my day will include writing or cleaning up vomit or playing board games or baking dozens of blueberry muffins.) We landed near the ole’…
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Gingerbread Houses at Grove Park
The Christmas Chain has been ripped open every morning with eager anticipation. The words on the little paper strips have led us to watching a few more Christmas classics – like Pee Wee’s Christmas Special. (Yeah, I don’t believe that’s considered a classic at any home but ours. It’s an insane little piece of 80’s/90’s television. Please, please, confide to me that someone else has watched this show so I won’t feel as if our family is odd alone.) We’ve baked banana bread and drawn Christmas cards for our neighbors. We’ve visited our local children’s museum and created gingerbread houses. But there have also been some paper requests that have…
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the flip side.
When I have an afternoon (or a day or a week or a . . . you know) that I camp out in the Feeling Small Acres here at this home place I sometimes let my mind wander to all the jobs I could be doing instead. Teaching high school. Writing for a newspaper. Raising goats. And all the other places I could be instead. On a mountain in Colorado. At the beach. Canada. (Eh?) And, thankfully, it is usually at those very precise moments God gives me eyes to see exactly where I am sitting. Most recently, I was sitting at our kitchen table. With a kid eating a…
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Stitch Fix: We Tried It!
a little this, a little that
the weekend ramble (it’s back)
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mmmmm . . . good
Raise your hand if you think a peanut butter and Nutella sandwich makes a delicious lunch.
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Is this funny yet?
This story I am about to share actually happened last week. I had to wait that long to tell this story so that I could find it funny. I don’t know if it’s been long enough yet for me to think this day was all that humorous – but I’ll give it a shot. The scene: Two or three days in to a week where Kev was at an out of state conference. The set up: 1. Two kids with a total combined savings of $11.00 and a burning desire to purchase a Webkinz. (Webkinz = Marketing scheme designed to rob parents of cash cleverly disguised as a cute stuffed…
