Our House in the Middle of Our Street

Richmond view, just to the right is the landing strip at YVR  This month felt dry for me in a lot of ways. I think a lot of my downtime was taken up with things, stuff, and events. Don't get me wrong, I wouldn't put something on my list if I didn't want it to be there, it just so happened that moreso for me in January than December, everything started happening that first week and hasn't stopped! I'm writing this on Tues, Jan. 26, in prepartation for the 31st, and this last week of the month is still just bursting at the seams. When I look back at my list, though, I'm reminded that I did take a lot of time-in bits and spurts-to get into some deep and a few academic books this month, and for that I'm grateful. Here's what I read in January: * Satisfy My Thirsty Soul by Linda Dillow - I finished this in January, but read the bulk of it in December in preparation for my church's women's bible study. I'm going through it now a second ...

Our badges of honor (i.e. very dirty bums) Although it's been an extremely quiet month over here on the blog, I've been involved with a lot of behind the scenes work with school and church, and I'm proud to say that I've sneaked in a few bits  of my 16 in 2016 list ! Our family hiked the Abby Grind a few weeks back on a warm day that made for excellent mud, as you can see. The entire hike is called The Sumas Mountain Hike , and it's a long one, but a small version of that is locally known as the Grind because it's straight up the entire way.  Although we all had warm enough clothing, we did not have the one item that we would have really benefitted from-- shoe chains. Over 3/4 of the hike was completely covered in snow, ice, and muddy slush, and it was laughable just how ridiculous we probably looked slipping and sliding up and down the mountain. We will definitely be investing in these for all three of us (Stefan has some but for whatever reason didn...

 The 30 ft. pool at Lynn Canyon The list that I've tried to come up with has been a little harder than in years past but as I let it sit and brew for a bit, I had plenty of fresh ideas. The yearly lists (you can see 15 in 2015 , my 29 before 30  birthday list here , and 28 before 29 here ) help me focus on small/big, personal/family/friend, and creative/mental goals I have in any given year. Sometimes they are silly and sometimes I get them done before even writing them down, as you'll see below. They are just things I want to try, things I want to do, or things I want to enjoy with others. Some are big Bucket/Lifetime goals (1 below!) but most are pretty small things that niggle the back of my mind and writing them down helps me attain them quicker than forgetting about it 3 times.  16 in 2016 1) get a dog! (this didn't happen for various reasons last year, this year we're still considering it) 2) make ' sweet treat ' hair clips for the gir...

Thrift store scores and library books Every year I find immense joy in curating a good yearly book list. Resolutions? Nah. I'll just stick with books. 2015 proved to have a fairly easy list (with more then 30 tacked on in my journal) and I read a good 80% of them. A few I looked for but couldn't find locally, and two I just recently found at the thrift store! I write a small list for the beginning of the year--around 30 books--because I almost always find tons of books throughout the year I want to read and add to the list. I end up reading about 60 books a year, and 30 is a good jumping off point. Here's the list! *Packing for Mars by Mary Roach *Stiff by Mary Roach *All the Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr *What Alice Forgot Liane Moriarty *Essentialism by Greg McKeown *Imagine Childhood by Sarah Olmsted (H) *Satisfy My Thirsty Soul by Linda Dillow - Bible study book *Art of Memoir by Mary Karr *Being Mortal by Atul Guwande *Lila by Marily...

Alright guys, settle down. Yes, I read a lot this month but I barely did anything else. The three of us were 'off' school from Dec. 8 and aside from two wonderful Christmas dinners with extended family, the holiday season was pretty slow for us. I spent this month of no extracurricular stuff on the couch reading nearly every night. It was delightful! Stay tuned, since I have 2016's reading list coming up soon. * My Kitchen Year by Ruth Riechl - This half-memoir, half-cookbook was full of pretty color photographs from Riechl's year after Conde Naste shut down Gourmet , the magazine Riechl had been editor of for years. It's her year of grief over losing a job she loved, a year of confusion as she felt restless and like a wanderer, wondering what to do next, and of slow meals meant to satisfy herself and those closest to her, quiet in the sustenance of time and thought. It's a beautiful memoir, though I didn't have it long enough to try any recipes. Not a...

view from Ft. Langley bridge of Brae Island's chapel For many years I've set up some sort of a yearly list of things to do. They're sometimes small, sometimes big, sometimes silly, but always things I just want to make a little bit of space and thought to do and 'name it', if you will. I got 1/2 done on my 2015 list, but in my defense, I planned it around my birthday, which means I only gave myself 9 months in 2015, not 12. I'll have a new '16 in 2016' list soon, but for now, here's what happened, and what didn't. See the original list HERE .  I'll start and link to what did actually happen: I got professional family photos done , I wrote an actual Christmas letter and sent it to family, I * tried * turning Ani's bone & shell collection (it didn't look as great as it did in my head...) into artwork, hiked Deep Cove/Quarry Rock with my family, watched The Sound of Music with my kids , baked Confetti Cookies , and ...

The contents of the Kith and Kin sun prints box* For some reason, I tend to have a lot of luck in the giveaway department. I literally spend a total of 5-10 minutes a day entering giveaways that I find on instagram, blogs, facebook, what have you, and I have won quite a few of them. I was excited to win the Kith and Kin sun print craft box, because I knew my kids would be in heaven creating with it.  It was around the time we'd be heading to Nebraska for a few weeks, so I had Kith & Kin ship it to my mom's house, so we could enjoy the contents there. Turns out we had relatively no free time outside of planned grandparent & friend activities, so I brought the box home with me to BC and we did it during the kids' school day as an art project.  I don't know about you, but I love receiving Happy Mail...that'd be anything aside from bills or ads. The Kith & Kin sun print box was definitely happy mail. As you can see above, they include all the ...