the bookshelf
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days 1 and 2: driving west, laura ingalls wilder home.
Hello from the open road! I’m writing from the rolling prairie farmlands of Kansas, with the highway stretching straight in front of us as far as the eye can see under an enormous pale sky. We’re in wind turbine country, with the tall white towers rising all around us, and when I stepped outside the van at a rest area just now, the wind whipped my face and hair. What would it be like to live in this wide, flat, windy land all of the time? After a whirlwind weekend packing and cleaning and making last minute trips to Publix, we hit the road at 7:15 Monday morning. We had…
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summer bookshelf.
Happy end-of May! Can you believe we nearly made it to summer? This week our family will be busy finishing up school, celebrating Gabe’s 7th birthday, and starting to pack for our Florida beach trip. I love summer. I’m ready to just be mom again for awhile, instead of mom-and-school-teacher. I’m ready for after-breakfast walks in the neighborhood before the heat spikes to 99 degrees, homemade popsicles, and cheese toast topped with red pepper flakes and a slice of tomato straight from the garden. If you’re like me, you’re compiling your summer reading list, so I hope this post helps. I’m way overdue for a booklist, so this is…
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books, books, books.
Hi there! I’m overdue for a bookshelf post. If my last list of book recommendations contained a lot of heavy reading material, I think this one will be more comforting. When life feels heavy and stressful, I do one of two things: 1. Re-read the Mitford series 2. Read children’s fiction The lovely thing about great children’s fiction is that while the language is simple, it’s also spectacular and moving. The best writers of children’s fiction know how to wrestle with real life themes in a compassionate way that doesn’t crush readers. They leave us feeling hopeful. So you’ll find a good bit of it dispersed throughout this post. Maybe…
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book club for kids: the lion, the witch, and the wardrobe.
The Chronicles of Narnia, by C.S. Lewis, are one of my favorite series ever, so I was happy to be assigned to help lead the book club with two other families from our homeschool group. Our group reads and discusses three books a year together, and The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe is our first for this year. Families can choose between reading the novel aloud together, having older kids read it to themselves, or listening to the audiobook. We kind of did all three because we read the book before together awhile back. Last month, Judah and I brushed up on the story by reading it alone again,…
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summer 2017 bookshelf.
Happy August, my friends! How are you doing? Thanks for your patience with me and the blog. How is it already August and I haven’t written you a summer book post? Sigh. The good news is that even if I haven’t been writing about books, I’ve been reading them! So I have quite a few to share with you today. I hope there’s something in here for everyone. There are others I read but haven’t included in this post because I value your time (you can find me on Goodreads for a complete list). These are some of my favorites. As always, I invite your book recommendations! First I need…
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a review of my first bullet journal.
Friday morning David took the kids on some errands and I spent a happy (quiet!) hour at the dining table starting my new bullet journal. I did it! I finished my first bullet journal in its entirety! I didn’t lose steam and shelve the thing halfway through the year as I’ve done with so many day-planners. I got my money’s worth! Sorry. I read somewhere that exclamation points should be used very sparingly by blog-writers, and clearly I’ve broken that rule. But I’m just really excited report that this system works for me The bullet journal I use has 249 pages, and I used it for 7 months. I know,…
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lessons from anne.
Hello there, friends! Forgive me for being MIA. Quite honestly, I haven’t had the energy for blogging. But I miss you all! I plan to give you a nice Spring Bookshelf post soon, but for now I thought I’d write about what I’m currently finishing up: the Anne of Green Gables series. I was poking around for comfort books to read, and right around that time my Mom and I watched the movie Anne of Green Gables with Judah and Amelie for their first time. They adored it! Amelie said, “Oh Mom, I just love Anne. She has the best imagination, doesn’t she!?” And Amelie has had a “window friend”…
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winter bookshelf for the kids (and kids-at-heart).
Friends!! I’m so sorry this took me forever, clearly I overestimated my ability to hammer it out really quick. I hope it’s worth the wait. I had so much fun writing this post. Children’s books are an unending source of delight to me, and the most amazing thing is how many wonderful books I’m discovering these days that I never knew existed. I read middle grade and young adult fiction to myself for fun (books my kids may not be ready for yet), but when I find a new picture or children’s book title I like to wait to discover it with them for the first time. C.S. Lewis said…
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winter bookshelf.
(photo credit) Thank you, dear readers, for the all the book suggestions you’ve passed along since my last post. I always love new ideas and can’t wait to begin checking them out! You know what, I promised you a Winter Bookshelf post, and then realized I felt largely unenthusiastic about recent novels. Never have I returned so many books to the library unfinished. Barbara Kingsolver says that she gives a book 20 pages, and if it hasn’t hooked her, she puts it aside. Life is too short to read books you don’t enjoy. To be honest, I’ve spent a lot of time lately reading backing through Jan Karon’s Mitford series.…
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prelude to a winter bookshelf.
We’re full in the throes of January, and, like many of you, this is a time of year when I have to fight a little harder to be happy. Overnight it seems that the well-lit warmth of the Christmas season gives way to a succession of cold, gray days when the very walls of this brick house seem to close in on us, and active kids cooped up too many hours wear a whole family’s stir-crazy frustration on their faces. This results in more bickering all around (Mom and Dad included), punctuated with exasperated cries of “What were you thinking!?” (my part) and sullen blank stares (my kids’ part). Just…
