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Outdoor Hour Challenge. V.
We’re up to lesson number seven in our Outdoor Hour Challenge. Despite the picture that may imply otherwise, the kids are still completely engaged. And – equally exciting – are coming to expect this Nature Walk as part of our Tuesday routine. This week we took our stroll through the woods surrounding our house. We practiced being quiet and listening.…
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Virginia Woolf Does It – Why Can’t I?
This weekend I made buckeyes. And it isn’t even Christmas. Our washer has been blinking E20 every time I try to wash a load of laundry. I woke up Sunday morning with a severe crick in my neck and my Hawkeye curled around my head. When I told him “good morning” he replied, “If I eat a vitamin and a…
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good words IV.
I would rather be ashes than dust! I would rather that my spark should burn out in a brilliant blaze than it should be stifled by dry rot. I would rather be a superb meteor, every atom of me in magnificent glow, than a sleepy and permanent planet. The proper function of man is to live, not to exist. I…
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The Bean Store
I don’t do a lot of sticker charts. I can’t remember to keep up with them. I’m not all that great at rewards systems. But sometime last year I found myself answering the same question one trillion and two times each day. “Can I play a game on the computer?” And I was always making up and then breaking various…
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fly like an eagle. (steve miller band reference anyone?)
Life is just full to the brim of change. Seasons of busy and seasons of slow. Years of diapers and years of dentist appointments and years of watching kids play fill-in-the-blank sport. Seasons of something. Seasons of nothing. And I have known days in my life that I have felt as if time was going backwards. Seasons of such slow…
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Outdoor Hour Challenge. IV.
Here’s what I have learned to love about the weekly Outdoor Hour Challenge: 1. My desire to complete a goal and write a post about it has encouraged me to be regular and routine in our Nature Hikes and Nature Notes. 2. The kids look forward to Tuesday walks more than I do. 3. The regular walks have been a…
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down for the count
Thursday Piper Finn got sick. In her bunk bed. In the middle of the night. Which is never good. Hair. Bedsheets. Eagle. All altered. The sound of bath water running at two a.m. has never been a welcomed sound. Friday morning Riley had all four of her wisdom teeth removed. She came home looking swollen and feeling dazed and in…
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good words III.
This is what He has given us to do, this task here on earth, not the task we aspired to do, but this one. The absurdities involved cut us down to size. The great discrepancy between what we envisioned and what we’ve got force us to be real. – Elisabeth Elliot
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yes. bananas. oatmeal cream cakes. my hawkeye.
The afternoon was caving in. I had desserts to make for a group gathering that evening and my culinary ambitions were far exceeding both my abilities and my time frame. Otto was napping and the girls were playing together and finishing up their school work. I tied on my apron, clicked om my Avett Brothers Pandora station and tossed out…
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she was impressed.
Looking over my shoulder as I typed on the blog recently, Mosely took in a giant breath of air. “Whoa, Mom,” she exhaled, “you’ve got your own dot.com?”
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Outdoor Hour Challenge. III.
The Outdoor Hour Challenge has really helped direct our time spent on nature hikes each week. And since we joined the challenge already in progress I decided to take their advice and walk though the “getting started” challenges listed on the website. It’s been good advice. It’s reminded me of the hows and the whys of using The Handbook of…
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words, not drawings.
These warm January days have been a gift. Sitting on our porch last week the kids and I were supposed to be working on our Nature Study drawings. The kids colored and drew steadily. But I didn’t draw that afternoon. Instead, I picked words over drawings. …… Blue, blue, so bright it burns. Mistletoe, woodpeckers and the sound of the…
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a real thursday.
What is it about a plan, anyway? Seems like whenever you make one, it goes awry. Our homeschool’s motto is stolen directly from Charlotte Mason. I am. I can. I ought. I will. I get the first three. No problem there. It’s the stinkin’ “I will” that always throws me for a loop. It’s not the man getting me down,…





































