Homeschoolers use their homes hard. What cleaning tasks give us the biggest bang for our time bucks? What chores prevent chaos best? That’s what today’s list is all about. If only I were as good at doing my lists as writing them. But this month, I’m doing the fun part: writing and sharing my homeschool…
This summer I read John Owen’s Mortification of Sin. I enjoyed the delve into older, denser English. There were several places where at first I was a little taken aback at his line of argument, but after continuing on and thinking about it, I realized it was more that he was not saying things the…
So, last week felt like a rough, terrible week. However, the school checklists got done, the house hadn’t really fallen apart, and we’d had no major disasters. Really, it was a typical week. Why did it feel so bad? This week has felt pretty good. Even though I am definitely not getting to everything I…
This is the first installment of what I hope to be a regular Monday feature: A Metaphor for Monday. Each Monday during our weekly meeting, I will be pep-talking my boys with a metaphor with which to tackle the week. I will be recycling the material here, and I hope by that to make it…
I was going through some old papers today and found a printed copy of this post I made a few years ago. I thought I’d repost it here, with a few minor editing tweaks. At a recent church bridal shower, a lovely older lady gave a devotional that stuck with me. She read Ephesians 6:10-18….
Not only was last week a school break week, but we also had and have a string of hosting commitments that gave me the added commitment and deadline to get the house into a little better shape. Of course I had an unreasonably long list, but if I think about what I did get done…
Is happiness an emotion reserved for those who have an easy life? Right now I have a child who thinks happiness is a life without math fact drill pages. And, he’s onto something that misery is dragging one’s feet and taking three hours to do what should take one three minutes. However, cause and effect…
Awhile back I was listening to NPR in the car, and they were speaking to a musician and athlete. I can’t find the segment and I don’t remember exactly what she said, but she was talking about the willingness to accept the drudgery of deliberate, painful, boring practice being an essential element to sucess in…
Although my friend and would-be companion ended up unable to join me, and although I had to get up at 4:30am and leave just after 5am, I attended the Dangerous Women conference put on by the “Femina girls“: Nancy Wilson and daughters and daughter-in-law. This was a pre-conference before the Grace Agenda conference, but I…
Review written in March of 2011 The Mother at Home by John S.C. Abbott was written in 1833. I have read it before, but it was something like 5-6 years ago — at the beginning of my motherhood journey. There were several times that I realized, “Oh, yes! This is where I got that!” Whether…