A Little Accident

Earlier this week I was chopping veggies for dinner....I try to be very cautious and mindful when using a knife. I'd hate to cut off a fingertip and end my career as a violinist. This time was no different. In fact, I silently congratulated myself for not cutting myself. 

And then I went to wash the knife and it slipped. I ended up with 4 stitches and a very stiff finger!

Thankfully it was on my right hand - the hand in which I hold the bow. If it had been the left hand, I don't think I could play the violin at all for a while. Each day I'm able to play a bit more, but I've also been resting and doing quite a bit of reading. 

If you look closely you can see the stitches on my middle finger...

In other news....it's still snowing here. I think we are all desperate for spring and green grass again.

I'm linking up with Little Things Thursday

On Reading

Are you are reader? Our family loves reading...individually and together. I've been reading to my girls almost daily for their entire lives. Even now that they are 12 and 14 and completely capable of reading on their own, we start each morning with a read-aloud. Usually I get to choose what book we read, but this school year we are revisiting two favorite series that we have already read. Even in my own reading life, I'm re-reading quite a few favorites this year. Usually I focus on reading books that are new to me, but this year I feel like spending a lot of my reading time with books I already know and love.

This past week I took the girls to the library to do some research for school and found them like this...

Do you have a favorite book or author or series? If so, I'd love to hear about it in the comments.

I'm linking up with Little Things Thursday

Hearts

Happy Valentine's Day!

One of my weekly workouts is doing this set of 400+ stairs in our town...

I love the heart someone drew in the moss. 

a little heart shaped leaf with frost...

Just down the road from me is another road called Valentine Rd...

And when you put two violin scrolls together, you get a heart!

I'm linking up with Little Things Thursday

Orchards in Winter

We live in orchard country....I drive by orchards just driving from my house to the grocery store. The farther you drive out into the country, the more orchards you see, and they are beautiful in any season. 

I find their bare forms particularly fascinating. 

I'm linking up with Little Things Thursday

Top 9 of 2018

When it comes to social media, instagram is my favorite place to hang out. It's always fun to see which of my photos get the most "likes" throughout the year.  Here are this year's top 9.

I'm linking up with Little Things Thursday

School Books

Books are my favorite school supply, and we have quite a few goods ones we are using in school right now. 

To better understand our world's geography and the cultures of each country, we are using a cartography book (full of maps) and two versions of The Travel Book (one is geared towards kids, but both are full of great information and photographs). 

We've been working our way through the Penderwick series during our morning read-aloud time. We are currently on the 4th book. 

We also read one of Mr. Browne's Precepts each morning and the daily poem from our Nature Poem book.

I absolutely love how much we read together....how rich our educational experience is because of the stories we share together.

I'm linking up with Little Things Thursday

Thankful Books

Ten years ago I made my girls a "Thankful Book". I filled it with photos and pictures from magazines - things that represented the people and things in their lives. I would read it to them every day, and as you can see from the photos on the front, they were pretty little!

The next year I had them make their own book, and we have continued the tradition every year since.

They still have fun adding to their book daily. They usually work on it while I'm reading something aloud to them. But the really fun part, is when I get the past books out and they look through them. Each year they laugh at the spelling and drawings from when they were really young. They even laugh at some of the things they included (like the year my youngest daughter recorded that she was thankful for the flu shot - because she had just gotten it the day before).

And I love seeing how they have grown - a physical representation of their artwork and handwriting over the years. I'm so glad our family portrait has evolved from the circle headed stick people to a much more realistic representation.

I don't even know what I had in mind when I started this tradition. I think my objective was just to teach the girls to spend time intentionally being grateful. What this little annual tradition has accomplished, though, is so much more. I hope this experience is a memory that will stay with them through their lives.

I'm linking up with Little Things Thursday

October in Review

October was a pretty FULL month! 

youngest daughter turned 12

lots of time with friends - both here at our new home and back near Portland

tried 2 new wineries in the area

planted 5 new trees

ran 21.5 miles

read 8 books

played 6 gigs

(4 with family band, 2 with community orchestra)

played/practiced violin 41 hours

I'm linking up with Little Things Thursday

Party School

For a couple years now, we have used Bravewriter's Arrow book list in our homeschool journey. I have loved the book selections and am grateful for suggestions I would never had had on my radar. This year, however, I decided to work through my own list of read-alouds with the girls. 

One of the ideas I learned through Bravewriter was to have a party centered around ideas from the book upon completion. This is exactly what we did with our most recent read aloud, Absolutely Truly by Heather Vogel Frederick.

There is a recipe for pumpkin whoopie pies in the back, and of course we whipped up a batch!

We also read a very short summary of Shakespeare's play Much Ado About Nothing, which was mentioned all throughout the story.

And we played a bird memory game. The main character in the book loves birds and keeps a "life list" of all the birds she sees.

It's a very fun, simple way to wrap up the story and make a few memories!

I'm linking up with Little Things Thursday

Learning Civics

Our homeschool plans changed big time this year, and we found ourselves having to find and choose new curriculum. While looking for a history curriculum, I ran across this Civics study. This is an area I'm pretty weak in and since we've done world history and US history a couple times now, I thought this might be interesting for all of us. So far it's been a great fit!

I absolutely love the foundation that Classical Conversations has laid for us (I guess that's why they call the early years Foundations!). This curriculum is written from a Christian perspective, which at times I appreciate and other times I cringe (I'm very wary of civil religion).

Anyway, one day we headed to our local library to find a copy of Oregon's state constitution, and then we headed over to the courthouse to look around. It's so nice to be able to do this easily now that we are in a smaller county!

And now we have local and state elections coming up - so much to learn about and talk about!

I'm linking up with Little Things Thursday

Poetry Tea Time

Poetry Tea Time is a fun part of our homeschool experience. We don't always get to it weekly, but we do try to do it a couple times a month. Usually it's just the three of us girls, but we also try to invite others to join us when possible. 

We usually bake some treats, make some tea and take turns reading poems.

I love finding and adding special things to our tea time. I found these "pinky up" teas and flavored sugars at a local shop.

I'm linking up with Little Things Thursday

Grammar Fun

This year I added a little grammar fun to our educational experience. 

These little "props" will probably make a bigger impact than any lesson I could teach.

We've also had a little fun with spelling, using some of these crazy sentences to learn the "i before e" rule.

I before E except when eight feisty neighbors become over caffeinated and seize a sleigh filled with counterfeit freight while being pulled by eight foreign reindeer.

I before E unless you leisurely deceived eight overweight heirs to forfeit their sovereign conceits.

Atheists don't believe in I before E. Neither do theists. Neither does 'neither'. No one believes in grammar rules.

I'm linking up with Little Things Thursday

Why Did You Move?

People keep asking us..."Why did you move?" 

My husband and I both grew up in smaller towns, and we wanted the same for our girls. The reason we waited so long was that my husband has a really good job and it's in the city. He looked at other job possibilities, but nothing seemed like a good fit. When he got clearance to work from home one day a week, and commute the other three...that's when we began searching for a house in Hood River in earnest. And the commute? - It's one of the most beautiful drives ever along the Columbia River through the gorge and takes less than an hour.

Living just outside a city has perks, but living in a smaller community offers peace. There is less crime, and as our girls get older we want to give them more freedom. We feel like we can do that here.

There are new opportunities for all of us here, and the big one for me is the community orchestra. I have joined and it's so nice to have this outlet. We rehearse weekly and I've met some fun people and great musicians. Our first concert is Broadway show tunes - Hamilton, Les Miserables, Sound of Music, West Side Story and more!

And the girls...they are doing great. My oldest might have preferred not to move, but she likes the new house and is doing well with the change. It's been a great shared experience for our family. We put in a lot of hard work to make this house ours, and the girls have been part of that. We've had a lot of fun times, too - sitting in the hot tub, jumping on the trampoline, star gazing and exploring our new town.

So why did we move? We moved for our family - to build memories and enjoy a fuller life together.

I'm linking up with Little Things Thursday

Wine and Pickles

We had some friends over on Labor Day. They brought us this bottle of wine because the grapes were grown in a vineyard that is visible from our backyard. If you look in the photos, you can see a hill in the background...that's the state of Washington, and there is a vineyard on the hillside. The actual winery this wine comes from is 1/2 from our new home.

We gained quite a few cucumbers when we moved into this house...not knowing what to do with all of them, we decided to try pickling them. We have no idea how it will turn out, but for the cost of vinegar and some spices, it was a fun activity.

I'm linking up with Little Things Thursday

I'd Rather Be Reading

Over the past 17 years I've become quite a reader. I started recording the books I read each month in 2001 and it's been fun to look back at my reading life. For many years I would read anywhere from 2-5 books a month. This year I'm averaging 10-12 books a month. I include books I read aloud to the girls for school and audio books (which are saving my life right now! I can read and paint the new house the the same time - it's brilliant!)

I push myself to read some classics - I usually choose 3 at the beginning of each year, and add them to my list. I also read quite a bit of children's literature, particularly books that have won the Newberry award.

I love bookstores and libraries. I love to wander through the displays and aisles to see what is there. Personally, I rely on the library for most of my books. I don't feel the need to own all the books, but every once in a while, I will read a book that I love enough to buy it.

I've just finished reading I'd Rather Be Reading The Delights and Dilemmas of the Reading Life by Anne Bogel. It's a delightful little book with essays about reading. I'm honored to be part of the launch team for this book that releases September 4th. I've enjoyed Anne's blog, The Modern Mrs. Darcy, for a  couple years now and absolutely love her podcast, What Should I Read Next?

I also love that this was my 100th book I read this year!

I'd love to know....are you a reader?

I'm linking up with Little Things Thursday