I know I’m about three weeks behind on blogging this, but I still thought it would be fun to share what our dinner table looked like for our first-day-of-school celebration. I wanted to pull off something special without spending a lot of money, so I scrounged up a few things we already had in our…
We’re all about routines in our home, the newest of which rolls out each school day morning between 7AM and 8:35AM. It goes like this: Breakfast, brush teeth, make beds, get dressed, wait for Mom to pour her second cup of coffee, devotions, free play (in separate rooms when possible to promote a bickering-free morning),…
“You are the salt of the earth…you are the light of the world—like a city on a hilltop that cannot be hidden.” ~Matthew 5:12-13 When our boys were babies we hung the letters “s-a-l-t” on Evan’s bedroom door (which eventually became Selah’s door) and “l-i-g-h-t” on Landon’s door as a visual reminder that it…
“The common but very bad habits of repeating commands and raising the voice not only exhaust the parent’s patience so that he then punishes in anger, but they also teach the child that he need not pay attention until he has heard the command many times, and heard it shouted. Examples are all around us…
The plan was simple (wonderful even): hop on a trail we haven’t been on yet; walk a minute or two to a shady spot; eat some lunch; do some sketching of what we see. We had our sunscreen on. The cute lunch tote was full of goodies. I had the special sketching pencils and a…
Kids: they dance before they learn there is anything that isn’t music. ~William Stafford In my better moments, I’m a pretty cool mom. (For the sake of this post, we’ll ignore those other moments when I’m…um…totally lame). For example, every week I make sure our kids have a fresh basket of library books to devour,…
After a lunchtime display of diva behavior, Selah was sent to her room to play alone and simmer down. When I tried to open the door to check on her fifteen minutes later, I bumped into this. Mission accomplished, I guess.
Before we left Minnesota, I promised a couple people I would compile a list of some of my favorite free or inexpensive spots to hang out with young kids in the Twin Cities. Most of these places are pretty ordinary, but somehow they belonged to us, and that’s what made them special. So, please, get…
