My oldest daughter teases me about how I spell things out for people. She insists I learn the correct Army-person-military-right way of what word to use to explain which letter I’m referring to (you know, A as in “Alpha”, B as in “Bravo” or something like that). Well, I’m a mom, so I have my own alphabet. It goes something… Read More »My Alphabet (Not the Army Way)
Goodness, my son is 16 today. Sixteen! I really and truly don’t know where the time went. Seems like only a couple of years ago he was born. His birth was the paradigm shift for our family – the day we started to question how we lived and how we wanted to live. I became a stay at home Mama.… Read More »Happy Birthday, Son
I’ve been working on saying Yes to more of the kids’ requests. I can easily get caught up in all there is to do around our home, both work and play, and I’m a bit of an introvert these days. I’m perfectly content to just be home. But my children? Well, there’s a whole world of adventure out there for… Read More »Just Say Yes
Our family has a birthday season. Between myself, my husband and our seven children, all our birthdays are from April – September, and four of them are within three weeks of each other. Our wedding anniversary is also within that season. Most recently, we celebrated Maddie’s 14th birthday. She wasn’t home for her actual birthday, as she was at the… Read More »Birthday Season
This weekend my oldest granddaughter had her ballet recital and since they are very far away, we couldn’t go. My daughter sent us a video of it so we could see Ali dance. I was in the garage, helping my husband when the video came through on my phone. We pulled it up to watch, and on the screen were… Read More »Ballet Blessings
My experiment with some natural dyes have led me to want to experiment more. I found some information on using spent daffodil blooms for yellow, so we get to accomplish two things at once – remove the shriveled blossoms so the gardens look prettier, and collect the shriveled blossoms so I can try some dyeing experiments. Emma loved the idea,… Read More »Work to do
I read just the other day that the U.S. has 3.1% of the world’s children, but buys 40% of the world’s toys. That’s pretty eye opening. We’ve been doing our own sorting and purging here for the last long time. We still have toys, but sometimes I wonder why. Especially when Silas and I play with a couple of Olaf… Read More »who needs toys
Last week when the Littles asked if they could please sew, I wasn’t too hard pressed to come up with something. A couple of colors of felt, a bit of embroidery floss, a cookie cutter set for the pattern, and we were off stitching away for the afternoon. Emma had a bit of trouble remembering to put her… Read More »sewing hearts
(Babcia. It’s Polish. It means Grandmom. There are other ways people spell it, and lots of ways people pronounce it. We say “bah’-chee”. I love hearing my oldest granddaughter call me that.) Over five years ago, when I was just a few months pregnant with Sophie, my 6th child, our oldest daughter and son-in-law announced that they were expecting their… Read More »on being Babcia
Winter arrived late in Maine this year. Well, actually, we had a lot of snow early in November, and then it stalled, even warming a bit, and revealing the bare ground – such a strange sight in January. But now that there is a blanket of snow on the ground, and the temperatures have dropped to the much chillier, but… Read More »Inside Now that Winter Arrived