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question. answer.
“Momma, why don’t we ever eat at Burger King?” some back seat voice politely inquired over the gentle strains of Bach playing on our car’s stellar sound system as our family traveled the highway to yet another culturally enlightening event. Wait. Most of that first sentence was a lie. Can I just start over? “Momma, why don’t we ever eat…
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treasures, surprises: the makings of a childhood
It’s been too rainy to be outside most days this week. So when the sun finally came shining through, the kids did not find it a difficult task to convince me to let them play outside. Despite the fact that we all knew (although none of us spoke of it) that outside play would probably end in mud and mess…
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Oh Finn. You Never Stop Being Funny.
I’m sorry. I try to represent all six of the kids (mostly) equally here. But that’s pretty tricky. Okay. It’s basically impossible. And here I am again. Sharing a Piper-Finn-said-this story. Please accept my humble apologies. A few days ago, at the sink, having not seen a ladybug nor while having a conversation about anything remotely related to insects in…
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The Burgess Animal Book For Children: A Book Review
The majority of books that I read to the kids for school purposes come from a list on Ambleside Online – our primary homeschool curriculum source. Last year we read Thornton W. Burgess’ Bird Book for Children so I was already familiar with this author’s style. Burgess creates animal characters and a storyline for his creatures. In The Burgess Animal Book for Children the…
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baggage
We’ve all got baggage – right? Actually, I’m not even talking about the emotional type. (Remember those little red wagons?) I mean, to be people who live and breathe and eat and drink and to care for other people who live and breathe and eat and drink, requires a lot of stuff. It was definitely worse back in the days…
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Over The Weekend
This weekend was rainy. Which resulted in a lot of extra inside time. There were a lot of forts made of blankets built over the last few days. (Which means the floor is still currently littered with those blankets along with the random paraphernalia stacked on the tables to hold those blankets together.) And the Lego spaceships and houses and…
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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.…
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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…
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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…
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Try This At Home
At heart, I want to be a no television, live in the woods, everybody drink from a shared tin cup we dip in the stream outside of our door, type of family. Or so I like to imagine. But I married this guy and he likes movies and big televisions and gadgets. And, uh, I sort of have found that I…
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“(insert expletive) yes, I am.”
This weekend I went running again. It was maybe the first or second time I laced up my grey running shoes since November. Seems like it was always too cold or too busy or too many kids to teach or too many Cadbury eggs to eat. But the sun had been shining for too many days to ignore and the…
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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…
