Injera Sundays

Every Sunday, we take part in a family tradition involving food. My daughters are Ethiopian, and Ethiopian food is one way we keep a bit of their culture as a central part of our family life. Unless there is something unusual afoot, every single Sunday, we gather around our dining room table and eat injera and wot off a communal plate. It is one of the best parts of our week.

So Long, Summer

Today marked the end of our last week of summer break. On Monday, we begin our fourth year of homeschooling. I keep thinking that each year things will become more and more normal, with few surprises, but I'm usually wrong about that. This year, the surprise is that we feel very much ready to begin book work again. I didn't see that one coming.

My Only Fitness Goal

2006, about to run the Pikes Peak Marathon, like a lunatic.

I've been a runner for a long time. I spent years telling people why other modes of exercise were superior, but then I tried it, and I liked it. I'm not sure exactly what sold me on it, but there's something to be said for those rare runs during which everything seems to go right, and I feel as if I am sailing down the sidewalk instead of trudging away, waiting for the endorphin payoff at the end. Running was something that I hoped I'd always come back to, but that I feared I'd lost for awhile. After running the Pikes Peak Marathon, three times no less, it was hard for me to admit that I was at a point in my life during which I couldn't manage to run at all. But once I admitted it and allowed it, I was able to find my way back.

My Personal Style, Glasses Edition

Oh, hi. This is me, wearing glasses.

Long ago, or  two cities ago, at least, I used to get dressed up on Tuesdays and visit an elderly friend with poor eyesight who insisted I was a fashion model. She'd based this opinion purely on my winter outerwear, but when the weather warmed, I didn't want to disappoint, whether or not she could actually see what I was wearing. And thus was born my habit of photographing and posting what I wore every Tuesday for my visit. It has been requested that in this new space, I share a bit about my style and post outfit photos again, even though I am far away from my old lady friend and no longer dress up. Though I don't consider myself to be a particularly stylish person, I do enjoy wearing things that make me feel good, so here we go. I'm just going to kick it off by talking about what goes on my face. Specifically, my glasses.

Dessert for Lazy/Busy People (Recipe Included)

There are two things that I should tell you about my life as a stay at home mother/home educator/manager of family life that will help a lot of other things make sense. First, that I am often very busy, and second, that when I am not busy, I have given myself full permission to be lazy. When I don't take the opportunity to embrace the down time, I end up with the flu. And do you know what happens when you have the flu and you are the at home parent/home educator/manager of family life? Nothing. Okay, in our house maybe takeout happens, or my surprisingly capable eight-year-old makes dinner. But other than that, I still have to do my job. My job is way easier to do when I am not ill.

I've finally embraced this reality this past year, and so I've spent a lot of time figuring out the easiest way to do a lot of things, which leads to the third revelation about myself in these two paragraphs, which is that I love homemade dessert (okay, all dessert, but homemade most of all). And because I love dessert so much, it's obviously been a priority to figure out how to make it is easily and well.

Why We Homeschool

Like many other home educators, I come from a past in which I spoke things aloud like, "I think homeschooling is wonderful, but I believe in public education, and I'll send my kids to school." I remember wanting to be homeschooled myself, but when I started to think about what I wanted our family life to be like, taking our children to school was part of that fantasy. And then we actually had a kid in our family, and that changed everything that I thought about school. Homeschool was what she needed, and so it's what we did. Now I've been drinking the homeschool Kool-aid for three years, and I wouldn't have it any other way. Like most people, we have multiple reasons for choosing the type of schooling we did, and for choosing to keep doing it year after year. I'd say there are four main reasons we prefer to home educate, with about a million more little reasons that make it just right for us right now.

These are our four big reasons:

My Current Favorite Mom Trick

I am not a morning person, and neither are my kids. You may think that this means that things work out fine and dandy, and we all sleep in, but it doesn't exactly work that way. My kids do sleep later than most, but E wakes up hangry nearly every morning. I might wake later, but I am awakened abpruptly. E stumbles into my room, and before my eyes are even open, she barks, "I'm HUNGRY." Sometimes I can get to her to come and snuggle with me for a few minutes before we go downstairs together, but mostly she wants food, and she wants it ten minutes ago. You know, so she wouldn't wake up hangry in the first place. What is my problem, anyway, not being considerate enough to feed her while she was sleeping?