happy new year!

 happy new year!

I wonder if I am the first person who I know personally to have experienced 2026?  I saw fireworks over the Duoro River.  I suppose that if the people I met in New Zealand and Australia in 1996 are still living in Australia and New Zealand then they entered 2026 before I did.   What do we count as knowing someone personally?  I mean I have met them face to face and stayed with some of them in their homes but haven't been in contact with them in over 20 years so is that still knowing someone personally?

I'd love to hear your thoughts.  

Kelly

p.s. Does anyone know the airport art pictured?  Know which airport we flew out of?

First Day of School!

This is my fourth year homeschooling our kids!  I can't really even believe it has been that long.  This homeschooling adventure has been and continues to be such a fun and interesting and full of opportunities to lean on Him experience.

Each year has been different in many ways including starting the new year.  It is fun to me to see the progression. Year one the house was just so. I had set up our “classroom”. I got up and got dressed in something I would have worn when teaching public school. The night before I was planning to start our school year, Adrian took the kids to Chick-fil-A to give me a quiet house to finish my prep. I was exhausted and the only thing that sounded good was bed. 

I have learned despite my tendencies to be a night owl that a rested mama is a better mama. So I went to bed with the book box half filled, the empty library crate, the huge collection of cardboard boxes that the kids created with over the weekend and David’s Lego train track, his inspiration of the day yesterday, still taking up most of the living room floor.  They didn’t care or notice as they opened a few fun garage sale find back to school presents and everyone is calm and happy!  

Silly as this sounds in some ways as I write it out, there was a time when it would have bothered me that when I was hoping for "tidy and organized" for "structure" to begin that David showed up for the first day of school in his too small and smelly from summer wearing and not enough depositing it in the laundry chute shark costume BUT I recently read Greta Eskridge's post that gave me wonderful perspective and is helping me calm down inside about such things.  

ha ha, when you buy a "new" drawing pad at a garage sale sometimes there is still a leftover drawing from the previous owner.  ;) 

After some morning time on the couch reading from the book of Romans (we have been making our way through the Bible, roughly a book a week since last August), finishing our Interlibrary Loan procured read aloud that is due, Will and Charlie Mayo, Boy Doctors, etc. I gave them some free time to play with the lego train and then we got ready to leave the house.  

We went to pick up our curriculum for the year at our one day a week school.  Cora has been SO excited to have her own math book like brother!  She was thrilled and immediately started working through the pages in the backseat as we rode in the car the rest of the day.  David was there to help read directions and check her work.  A bonus I hadn't previously thought about!  

 We went to a couple of different stores to try to buy a few fun school supplies like a spiral for each of them that we use throughout the year but those couple stops were not the highlight of our day.  There was wild silliness, crowds, lots of restocking carts clogging aisles, crazy drivers, etc.  David did stumble across a diary with a lock though and movable sequins that he was super excited about so that was good though.  

Then we hit up a STEAMfest at one of our local libraries, the Sand Creek library, a location that was new to us to visit.  We had been at our "home library" the day before turning in books and cashing in for Cora's Summer Reading prizes and we saw the poster.  It seemed like a perfect way to cap off our first day of school.  

There was an activity where you sorted items into recycling and trash bins . . . 

optical illusion tops . . . 

taste tests, sound experiments and 

probably David's favorite . . . 3D pens!  He has been eyeing these for awhile online having seen one advertised in a Scholastic catalog I think.  He wanted to buy one and then create an Eiffel Tower for me for a birthday present but the price was a little steep.  

The kids each had a ticket and at each station received a sticker.  When they collected five stickers we got to turn the ticket in for a sack full of fun school supplies AND a fidgit spinner.  I know the craze has been going on for a while but these were actually their first ones and they have had so much fun playing with them!  

They got to make buttons and control robots with ipads, build with cubelets, pet a blue tongued skink, etc.  

I got to meet and have nice conversations with a couple moms, one from Italy! and another who is just beginning her first year of homeschooling.  

We had a great day, came home exhausted, had a throw together dinner telling Dad all about it and hit the sack!  

One last photo, pic of Cora's math book taken by her in the backseat of the car.  😍

Kelly

today . . .

I got to hold and snuggle a BRAND new baby!  Less than 24 hours old!  It was an exquisite spot in my day!  

Kelly

ten on ten - August 2017

So funny that I didn't blog all "summer" (it's still summer but my last blogpost was about finishing our math book - hence homeschool year for 2016-2017 and today we began our 2017-2018 homeschooling year!)  

I wasn't planning to start school today.  I have been planning most of the summer and have quite a few things ready but yesterday due to a sewer back up at our house - bleh - we had to be out of the house for a while so I spontaneously took the kids school supply shopping.  

They each chose a spiral notebook, something fun to write with and some kind of adhesive (both ended up choosing glitter glue!) :) 

They were so excited about their new supplies that David asked if we could start homeschool right away so we did!  

This morning there was a scavenger hunt with clues to find their spirals.  I had written a note to each of them and David wrote me back today!  Yay!  I think this is going to be a neat avenue of communication for us in addition to a way of handling assignments, practicing writing as well as a place to cut and paste in things we are learning, etc.  

We have had a TON of rain lately!!!  It is mostly nice but I could also feel my mood lighten when the sun came out for a while this evening and was shining through the window as I was working on dinner.  

I woke up at 5:50 this morning and texted my neighbor who I have been walking with weekly to say that maybe we'd better reschedule since I heard rain and thunder from my cozy bed but after deciding that we would reschedule, both of us ended up texting back and saying "let's do it!"  The thunder had stopped and so had the rain mostly.  

When I got home we ate breakfast and did our Bible story about the 12 spies over breakfast and did a small feast of books, cleared the table, free time, scavenger hunt to find spirals, reading what I wrote and then writing me back with ideas of field trips he wants to take this year.  

Next we did math and it went great today!  One page together, Cora wanted right in there too so we did math together on the abacus.  

Then I sat outside on the swing and prayed and read my Bible while they played an improvised game of soccer inside. 

We ate lunch.  Cora made a fruit salad for us to enjoy! We read more/watched some YouTube and then Mama was done!  We have just finished a big road trip, plus three sets of company and the aforementioned sewer back up + starting school so I finished a novel I started yesterday and took a nap while they had quiet alone time. 

drying out the carpet after our incredible carpet cleaner enzyme treated it for us!  

We did laundry after that and they watched Wild Kratts and then we did some math aloud on the white board all together during dinner and Adrian did one page with him as we were finishing up.  I'm really thankful for how this first day went and am looking forward to the different things that we are going to be adding in this year!  

I was so wiped out and not planning to start today but I realized that this is such a sweet reminder from our God that I don’t do this in my strength!  *I* feel like I have absolutely nothing to give right now but I feel quite confident that all of this is in His Hands!!  I feel excited that He is leading the charge on this journey and that He took our day and will take our entire year and make it what HE wants. 

Happy beginning of school to all of the rest of you reading who are teachers, students and administrators!  

Kelly

one day, zero dollar bathroom refresh

Our downstairs bathroom is fine but it has never been one of my favorite parts of the house.  It is fairly small and feels dark.  These are photos from shortly after we moved in.  

Four years ago, just a day or two after we came home from the hospital with Cora, a leak sprang in the plumbing between the upstairs and downstairs bathrooms (which are stacked on the two floors).  Adrian had to tear out the drywall above his sink and disconnect the electrical to the light fixture and take it out to work on the leak.  He was more than willing to redo the drywall and fix everything then and there but I begged him to just leave the gaping hole in the ceiling and just hang out with us and help me with a new baby and an almost three year old!  

Those days were super sweet times and I wouldn't trade our afternoons of sitting on the couch snugging a newborn during David's naps and watching movies together for a finished bathroom these past four years.  

sweet boy two years ago 

My amazing mother-in-law showed up for under 36 hours in March, a quick stopover visit between two other destinations and announced on the morning of her full day here that she knew what we should do that day, redo the bathroom!  What a fun announcement!  I do not know where she gets her energy and stick-to-it-ness but she is astounding when it comes to projects!  

We emptied walls and took down towel bars bent from children hanging on them and mismatched to begin with. 

I began to rummage through my storage area to dig out various decorative treasures amassed at flea markets, garage sales, etc. and not currently in use elsewhere in the house.  

glue gun and drill employed together!  

Rebecca (my mil) concocted a sort of chalk paint from leftover paint plus a package of milk paint that I once upon a time picked up at an estate sale for $1 and had never used.  She painted all of the dark "wood" - in reality it is plastic - panelling "polar bear" which is the same white we used in the upstairs bath in the fall.  

The original to the house, 1950s towel bars that had previously been in the upstairs bath before the remodel (where I used hooks instead) were lined up side by side for this bathroom.  

The metal grate on the wall is from the original screen door from the house into what was at first the backyard before they added on our sunroom in the 1980s.  I picked up the wooden arch somewhere along the way and have displayed it different places but never yet on a wall and I like it!  The pressure gauge was an estate sale find that has always been one of my favorites.  

We used the mirror that was original to the upstairs bathroom that we had taken out during that remodel downstairs and my MIL wired this neat basket onto the black scrolly metal brackets that I have had forever and never really used much and it became a spare toilet paper holder.  

The Ansel Adams photo was found at the Arc thrift store ages ago!  It is framed in a garage sale frame and hung with some black ribbon over an old sewing machine drawer knob screwed into a neat looking old metal square plate.  

Unfortunately, the leak doesn't particularly want to be fixed once and for all (60 year old plumbing!) so we have left the ceiling open still but I strung up white bulb lights on S hooks leftover from our pot rack when I took everything out of the kitchen that doesn't get used weekly and it is now either gone or in secondary storage.  We also put up a black and white stripe strip of fabric in front of the open ceiling portion which masks it nicely.  The big black iron hook is awaiting a hanging plant, preferably string of pearls.  

This hanging basket set that used to be in the nursery holds bathroom stuff and a plant but I would love to find a more permanent solution but for one day and zero pennies, using what we had works!  

I bought this fabric to cover the swing outside but then I didn't like it and used a 25 cent remnant from one of my favorite thrift stores in town, the Bargain Box run by the Assistance League and benefitting many wonderful projects.  We made it into a "window mistreatment" as the Nester would say and I got to use this pulley that I have had FOREVER and never used.  

My brilliant mother in-law rigged up this pull system with an old knob I had in my collection an an old door plate.  I love it!  

It is not perfect as we did not repaint the top of the walls, etc. (we only spent a day on it afterall!) but it looks SOO good compared to what it has been and I am enjoying using it (and honestly am more apt to clean it) than before!