Our House in the Middle of Our Street

The most recent stack Although this post might say it's March 1, 2022, I am currently sitting half-way through March while trying to get this done in the next thirty minutes that I have to myself. It never lasts long enough! Only half of this stack got finished, though I've completed a few since this photo was taken, my reading has mostly been for the kids' school book stack. That is just the reality these days as they are reading novels (or I am reading them aloud) and to keep up with all of it just takes most of my (slow) reading time. I'm a quarter of the way through my most recent Plough magazine issue, and have high hopes for reading Joy Clarkson's Aggressively Happy over the course of the next month, but even my book club reads are suffering.  January The Four Winds by Kristin Hannah - This was my book club's January pick and it was long and not my favorite Hannah book. If I never read another Dust Bowl book I'll be happy (I think this was #4...). It...

  Anikka on the Vancouver Island ferry Anikka has fully become a young lady this past year. She is no longer a kid who likes to play, and that means my baby's 'childhood' is a bittersweet memory. I will always miss her chubby elbow dimples but the young person she is transitioning into is such a beautiful mixture of her little self and the horizon of the future dreams she has. She is a goal-setter and a quiet achiever. She takes care of people, and shows affection by spending her time and art skills making things for others. She knows what she likes, and what she doesn't, and trusts me enough to take my advice if she's hesitant but feels I might be right about a new experience I'm gently pushing her into saying "yes" to. She loves just about any TV show I tell her about from my childhood (love that!). She's a strong introvert that needs hours of downtime a day, which works for her because  it's helped her become accomplished with her art!  We ...

Let's just get it out of the way first thing that I took very few of these photos--pictures from my friend Emily! Her photos are so dreamy and you can see more of them on her Instagram page .  watching the Albuquerque Balloon Festival take off just after sunrise ( amazing ) This trip was somewhat insane. Four states (5?) in under a week, multiple national parks, and a few of "once in a lifetime" experiences. We hit it hard this week and looked like Doc Brown from Back to the Future when we were done.  Above was the Balloon Festival- an annual week long festival where hot hair balloonists and enthusiasts gather in one of the largest crowds of humans I have ever seen. We woke up around 3AM to get on a bus by 4? and be at the field when it was still very dark out and the first balloons were just filling up with air after the pilot turned on the burner. The flames were enormous and loud!  Watching the sky fill with balloons over the course of the next few hours (not to men...

  Only half of these were completed, while the bottom two played the game Library Chicken November and especially December were probably two of my best reading months since the entire pandemic started! Why is this of note? Because I thought the lock down would mean so much more time and reading, it actually dramatically cut my attention span and I couldn't finish paragraphs, let alone books, without falling asleep or becoming distracted! I have lots of little books (under 300 pages) on this list that were certainly easier to get through than say, a 500 page tome, but every little bit helps, and I'm taking the win. I can't particularly remember which books were completed in November and which in December, so I'm plugging them in together, in no particular order.  All books with the (*) beside the author name can be found at the little bookshop I work at, Classical Education Books. It's a great way to support a local (BC) "mom and pop" shop that I love! 30...

One of my favorite spots to stop and take a picture in Ft. Langley: Brae Island on the right hand side I had every intention of getting all my titles together before the end of October and...here we are on November 10th. Ideally I'd love to catalog and share my two vacations from this prior year; our family one in Sooke, BC, and my girls' trip to Albuquerque I did in September. Here's hoping!  One thing I've noticed is that around the middle of summer, my book reading became 'easy' again. I had such high hopes when the lock down first started, but my attention span quickly grew frizzly within a month. My sleeping took a turn for the worst and anytime I sat down to read I just couldn't get anywhere with it. Apparently, it was a common thing with lots of book readers. The low-grade stress eked into my favorite hobby, and I wasn't pleased. Thankfully, my book reading seems to have really had a kick start these last few months, and I've been happy with ...

Well, it appears that my July post wasn't even thought about until mid-August, which is why I'm combining another two months of book lists. I had a decent reading summer, an even better thrift-store book-score, and I'm hoping a relatively relaxed Fall with many hours spent with a book in my lap (edit: It's mid-September and I'm trying not to breathe into a paper bag about my Fall...). So far, our homeschool planning is busy, but only one evening a week out fully. That's good odds! Now for the book blurbs... July * Circle of Quiet by Madeleine L'Engle - This is my second read-through of one of L'Engle's first Crosswicks Journals memoirs, and I read it along with Joy Clarkson's patreon group . I love how Clarkson teased out some themes in each section, and it was fun to read it with a very vocal group who would always put their thoughts on the message board.  This book is really about L'Engle's theolgy, living at Crosswicks (their summer h...

 Finally, I'm sharing just a few photos and bits about our 2021 family vacation to Sooke, BC (only 18 months later!). Sooke is on Vancouver Island; near the southern most tip. It is about an hour's drive to Victoria, the biggest city on the island, and about an hour's north-westerern drive to Port Renfrew, which touches the tip of the Carmana Walbran Provincial Park .  We stayed at this wonderful little house (fawns! quail chicks! hummingbirds! in the morning) right outside and it had a great ocean view and was so tranquil on a bit of property. Because we found this listing last-minute and it was brand-new, they had offered it at a discount and we scored big. I think we paid roughly 100$/day. It's now quite a bit more, but if you have the budget, it's a beautiful house.  an orca skeleton at the Royal BC Museum Orcas: Our Shared Adventure exhibit was at the Royal BC Museum, and the first section was all about the science of the whales, and the second part was about...