My little poetic line for this month is simple. Just something I read while heading to a hike in the mountains.
“Linger Longer”
That’s it. “Linger longer” friends.
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Happy June friends!! I just came across this poem shared by one of my friends. I love the feeling it leaves me with. I want June to be full of fun, and freedom, and wild abandon. Jump!
Long enough have you dream’d contemptible dreams,
Now I wash the gum from your eyes,
You must habit yourself to the dazzle of the light and of every moment of your life.
Long have you timidly waded holding a plank by the shore,
Now I will you to be a bold swimmer,
To jump off in the midst of the sea, rise again, nod to me, shout, and laughingly dash with your hair.
Walt Whitman
For the desktop, click on the image below to view the large size image.
For the iphone wallpaper, navigate to this page on your phone and then click and hold on the image you want. Select ‘Save image to camera roll’. Then from your camera roll set your home screen/lock screen or both.
iphone wallpapers:
Two years ago we began homeschooling Lucy (8), Hattie (6), Beatrice (3), and Arlo (1). We’re including this on our Giants & Pilgrims blog as all our family adventures seem to impact our art & music so much! Also, we just like sharing the stories. So we’ll be sharing posts on the themes we’ve been covering each month and calling the adventure “ABACUS”! Our hope is that these posts will help spark creative direction and inspiration for your family as well as giving us somewhere to be document and record our experiences.
Because of the olympics, we thought this would be a great month to learn about ancient Greece.
We read D’Aulaires Book of Greek Myths and I made these peg doll representations of each of the main greek gods with help from the girls.
We also read Lightning Thief for the first time.
And enjoyed tasting Mediterranean food courtesy of our TopMunch subscription
Coloring Greek god and goddess trading cards
Drawing mythical monsters
A selection of the Greek books we enjoyed exploring
For our making this month, we explored the Book Arts – Marbled paper and Book Binding!
Making marbled paper for the end papers of our books –
Working on the covers for Asian stab-bound sketchbooks we made –
Harriet made an “un-tearable” tiny baby book for Arlo out of packing tape and her own illustrations
For science/nature this month, we learned about constellations (which tied in beautifully to our Greek Myth studies)
In our little impromptu science club, we tried our hand at making Magnetic Slime
Played with fractions
Learning about money – “Count It and Keep It!” was a big hit with the kids.
The Olympics are my favorite! So fun to get to share this with the kids. We made tiny flags and olympic ring shirts for the opening ceremony.
Lots of USA spirit over here!
Watched Cool Runnings too just for fun
Learning about color mixing using air dry clay and “Do You Know Colors”
Lots of help from Buzzy getting this art piece ready to deliver to Houston
Stamping Letters
The table for valentines morning –
We participated in a Homeschool Valentine Exchange. So much fun!
Lots of love notes were written to each other
A very chilly Valentine tea party out in the tree house
Some of our homemade Valentines we made –
Valentine party in Kansas with Grandparents!
While in Kansas, we got to learn about wood carving from my Grandpa Fritz. So beautiful to watch.
The blessings came in waves
and could be felt for days
O, how my bones still shake at your names
In sweat we set the stones
in blood we brick the roads
a holy breaking comes for every home
Give me your hand, we’ll climb up the balcony
Ditch the front row and sway with the symphony
Make as much noise and be as we want to be
Your voice in my voice and hands are the canopy
Feel the old rhythm play what’s inside of me
The fields are glories now, the fields are glories now
So guide your wild eyes down
The promise in the pain, the code that’s in the grain
We’ll move beneath the weight ‘til you raise
When I was a child, around this time of year on the orchard my dad would prune all the apples trees. I would help look for branches that were crossed, or growing in at strange angles. We would then clip off the offending branches and sometimes prop them with these little red supports to help them grow straight so that they could get the best light possible and eventually grow the best fruit.
Tim and I are moving to a new house in 10 days. We bought a “fixer upper” in the middle of town near a big park. It’s a MUCH bigger house in a nice quiet neighborhood. We weren’t really planning on moving yet, but then suddenly everything fell into line at the same time, like it does.
This whole moving thing is crazy… crazy exhausting, crazy nerve wracking, crazy exciting, and crazy scary.
Ten Years.
Ten years we have lived in this house I am sitting in right now.
I know where every light switch is and where to step over the crooked floor boards.
I know the name of every plant in the garden,
why there is a funny hole in the kitchen screen,
how to walk in the middle of the night so the squeaking floor doesn’t wake the children,
the funny trick to the bathroom door downstairs,
and the story behind most of the nail holes on the walls.
It’s where I found out I was pregnant for the first time and where I brought each of my four babies home to. It’s the place where we’ve had so many wonderful Christmases, Thanksgiving feasts, and simple, every day meals.
It’s where my children took their first steps, laughed their first laughs, and tried their first foods.
It’s also where Harriet broke her leg,
where the basement flooded too many times,
where I had my anxiety breakdown,
where Tim and I had our most difficult fights,
where we had belongings stolen off our front porch,
and had to call the cops on the neighbors so many times.
This house is old. It’s been around more than 100 years.
It really has seen its fair share of marital fights and make ups.
It’s flooded but it’s dried back out.
It’s been cold and drafty and also cozy and safe.
I hope it will be around for at least 100 more years. I hope it will be the same gift to the next residents as it has been to us. (Please take care of my planty’s!)
I am sure for this home, 10 years is just a blink. But it feels so significant to me.
Somehow leaving this house feels much more substantial then leaving high school or leaving college. I suppose if you look at it that way, those were only four year institutions. This home has been ten of mine.
Ten years of themed birthday parties and late night hard conversations with friends sitting on the kitchen floor (the best place for those kinds of talks),
nights pacing back and forth with wakeful babies,
ten years of pinching pennies to patch the wear and tear of everyday life,
of having tea on the front porch,
hosting cooking clubs and wedding showers,
play dates,
years with miscarriages, mistakes, and misadventures.
All the rhythms of our days and what I know have been centered in this place for ten years.
You can hear it in my lists… It is breaking me to leave. It feels like a close friend.
Like family.
And I am scared.
Scared this new home won’t be me.
Scared I’ll hate it.
Scared something will happen to the kids and I’ll somehow blame this decision.
I am scared it will change me. Change us.
And yet it’s time.
Time to move on, time to adventure out, time to try something new, try our hand at starting with a blank canvas, try this new place out. It’s time to move.
Time passes so damn fast, doesn’t it?
My babies are getting bigger. It comes to the end of the day and I wonder. Wonder if I did it right, wonder if I could have played it out differently, wonder if this is it, wonder are we centering our lives on the right things? Wonder if we are making the right choice.
10 days. We are moving in 10 days.
So I’ve been obsessing over this new place. This new house.
It’s not the one I would have picked. I did not like it at first.
I love old and history and craftsmanship.
This is black shag carpet which was recently cleaned by Carpet Cleaning Hendersonville and popcorn ceilings. And florescent lights. And 80s. On a cul-de-sac.
So I have created every pinterest board, design mood board, photoshopped room, shopping budget, detailed plan I can possibly do with out actually living there.
And I am starting to see it.
See the lovely that could be revealed there.
I know I can make it beautiful.
I know WE will make it beautiful.
I think about how it’s only about a block from a huge green space,
and a pool,
and how I found rhubarb sprouting up near the fence,
and how this one room feels like the barn I grew up in,
and how the layout is perfect for us,
and how we will have room to spread out,
and be able to have people over more easily,
and host house concerts,
and how I want to give every room its own theme,
and how we are going to start off by pitching tents and camping in the great room,
and so many other new things.
It will be a challenge to start from a blank slate.
But we can’t wait. We are so excited.
And still, the packing and processing all the memories and moments sucks. It is such an emotionally wrecking experience.
Is this pruning?
Pruning is painful but good. It helps us grow straight and true so we can bear more fruit.
The truth is that I am scared about not being able to find the light switches,
and whether I can hear the playroom from the kitchen,
and having to use a 1980’s electric stove for the next ten years,
and life on a cul-de-sac,
and even more that feeling of being exhausted and wanting to go home and not being able to.
But then I take that step back.
I am reminded of my white privilege and how we are going to be living in a mansion compared to the rest of the world, and how millions of refugees can’t ever go home again, and I feel stupid. Stupid white suburban mom. Ha.
You make it work and you make it beautiful and you invite people into the mess,
because it is NOT about it being beautiful.
And it is NOT about it being ugly.
And whether it is HERE or THERE doesn’t matter.
It is about WE. And US. And TOGETHER. And HOME. And LOVE in the best way we can.
And so, let’s adventure on family.
My good friend Wes Sam-Bruce shared this poem at his film screening for The Wonder Sound. It has been floating around in my head ever since. So good.
“Widening Circles”
I live my life in widening circles
that reach out across the world.
I may not complete this last one
but I give myself to it.I circle around God, around the primordial tower.
I’ve been circling for thousands of years
and I still don’t know: am I a falcon,
a storm, or a great song?
So here is to living our lives in ever widening circles. Migrating outward…
More on that soon. It’s been crazy around here lately….
For the desktop, click on the image below to view the large size image.
For the iphone wallpaper, navigate to this page on your phone and then click and hold on the image you want. Select ‘Save image to camera roll’. Then from your camera roll set your home screen/lock screen or both.
iphone wallpapers:
Two years ago we began homeschooling Lucy (8), Hattie (6), Beatrice (3), and Arlo (1). We’re including this on our Giants & Pilgrims blog as all our family adventures seem to impact our art & music so much! Also, we just like sharing the stories. So we’ll be sharing posts on the themes we’ve been covering each month and calling the adventure “ABACUS”! Our hope is that these posts will help spark creative direction and inspiration for your family as well as giving us somewhere to be document and record our experiences.
We continued our world tour this month with a “trip” to Japan. This was definitely one of our favorite countries/cultures yet! I surprised the girls by setting up a Japanese style low table in the middle of our dining room with zen inspired decorations and gave them each a silk kimono (twelve dollars on amazon!).
We had a Japanese tea party –
We practiced calligraphy and mark making with these lovely Teagas water scrolls –
We played with origami –
And REALLy loved getting to try all these yummy Japanese snacks from our TopMunch box!
Watched fascinating videos about silkworms and zen gardens –
We of course went out for sushi at the end of the month!
A reoccuring theme for January for us is “Snow”! Thanks Colorado!
A day at the best sledding hill –
All the snow books –
Building a funny snow man (snow deer?)
Painting snowy scenes
Lots of letter play for this little one –
The two big girls joined the Secret Society of Letter Writers
And for Harriet this month we worked REALLY hard to read every day. She has been doing so great!
We had lots of fun making some little stop motion videos with my iphone and also made lots of oven bake figures.
So many fun art projects this month. Buzzy helping me do the underpainting on a canvas –
Painting owls inspired by Owl Moon
Painting our to-do list clip boards
Face painting fun
And a really cool art show up at the university
For book club this month, we read Where the Mountain Meets the Moon by Grace Lin
We got to experience Chinese Hot Pot
Went on a journey to find the Old Man of the Moon
Had a great discussion
And celebrated the Year of the Dog
Our Natural History Museum at a really cool touring exhibit of dinosaur skeletons, so we adventured to Denver to check it out.
Digging for dinosaur fossils
Some days, when the chaos is winning, it is best to take the morning off from normal homeschool and learn about the lost arts of homemaking. Headphones and fun music help (Annie soundtrack all the way for these girls)
Harriet came up with her own recipe for Orange Cake. Turned out pretty tasty!
A dinner Lucy and Harriet made.
One day Lucy really wanted to build something. So they designed, built, and painted this shelf with a cup holder for next to their bed.
We almost bought a house last week. We put an put an offer in, dreamed about flipping a dusty ugly place into something beautiful, had our offer turned down, put another offer in, cried a lot about the emotion of leaving a house we love, started the process of getting ready to list our house, talked to the kids about moving, talked the kids down from both crazy excitement and mourning, worried about all the money bits, and worried more. And then, after all that, had our offer turned down in favor of a lower one (without a contingency).
Still not sure why we had to go through all of that emotional wreckage, or where it will lead. Obviously my hopelessly optimistic heart would like it to mean there is something better out there waiting for us… But that is yet to come.
So this months image is about homes – past and future. The bones that we live within. Our migration of moving. Packing our belongings and moving from one structure to the next. Taking and making home where we land.
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The poem this month is one that Tim found while running when we were first married. It was taped to an overpass on a scrap of paper. It was only recently that we discovered that it was from a Jewel lyric.
Joy, Pure Joy, I am
What I always wanted
to grow up and be
Things are becoming
more of a dream with
each waking day-
The heavy brows of Daily Life
are becoming encrusted
with glitter and the shaking finger
of consequence is
beginning to giggle
Grumpy old men
have wings
Burns sport Halos
and everyday dullness
has begun to breathe
as I remember the
incredible lightness
of living
Jewel lyrics from “On Moving into my Van”
For the iphone wallpaper, navigate to this page on your phone and then click and hold on the image you want. Select ‘Save image to camera roll’. Then from your camera roll set your home screen/lock screen or both.
iphone wallpapers:
And don’t forget! Our new album is finally available for preorder – here!!
Last year we began homeschooling Lucy (8), Hattie (6), Beatrice (3), and Arlo (1). We’re including this on our Giants & Pilgrims blog as all our family adventures seem to impact our art & music so much! Also, we just like sharing the stories. So we’ll be sharing posts on the themes we’ve been covering each month and calling the adventure “ABACUS”! Our hope is that these posts will help spark creative direction and inspiration for your family as well as giving us somewhere to be document and record our experiences.
With all the Christmas shipments (and a couple of new tool purchases for art projects), we found ourselves with an awesome stash of large cardboard boxes.
As well as revisiting this favorite book –
We made all sorts of fun structures.
A castle with multiple rooms and a draw bridge –
A gingerbread house –
We had a lot of fun making homemade gifts this year. For grandparents, the kids designed and made wood cut out paintings. It was neat listening to them decide what image to make for each person. A fish for grandpa ed because he loves painting, a pie for grandmama because she is the queen of pie making, a girl with a dress for grandma DiDi because she loves buying little girl’s dresses, etc.
As part of our science club, we made bath bombs. So easy and fun! Next time I want to try hiding little surprises in the middle!
Our homeschool bookclub is turning into this magical much anticipated event. This month we read Benjamin West and his cat Grimalkin by Marguerite Henry. A historical fiction story about the father of American painting.
We experimented with making our own colors our of clay and charcoal, made quill pens out of turkey feathers, and practice life drawings of cats.
We feasted on homemade porridge at the “Door Latch Inn”
And even tried Peas with Honey (a funny reference from the books)
And learned how to play Blindman’s Bluff
Hydraulics, robotics, and engineering. What a fun world we live in. So many cool topics to explore and neat things to make. And so thankful for grandparents gift subscriptions, uncles sending cool robots, and libraries sharing their resources.
We have started having one day a month of learning about simple home making skills – how to fold laundry, how to iron, things like that.
We didn’t make huge batches of Christmas cookies for neighbors this year because our kitchen was torn up for most of December (an unexpected dishwasher replacement) and an expected and much anticipated new countertop and backsplash!
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But when it was finally done, we broke the new kitchen in with a glorious sugar cookie explosion of awesomeness with the help of Grandma DiDi.
I love this time of year so much it makes my heart hurt. Here are a few moments from December that I want to remember.
Instead of heading to KS this year, we had a little staycation (and played ALOT of Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild and Super Mario Odyssey) and then had a fun night with friends on New Years Eve
Happy New Year Friends! May your 2018 be as fresh and beautiful as these paper whites, but hopefully not nearly as stinky.
Happy New Year friends! It’s a new day. A whole new year. Everything is waiting for you.
I am going to try something a little different this year for my desktop wallpapers. The theme of “MIGRATION” keeps coming back to me, so I am going to try out having a connecting thread for the wallpaper artwork. I love this idea of movement from one place to another, of traveling great distances, of coming back home. Each desktop this year will be exploring that theme.
Secondly, I want to include a poem/writing that inspires the artwork – a centering writing to reflect on for the month. We heard this piece by David Whyte on the On Being podcast. It is a beautiful piece for a new year. “Or the window latch grants you freedom” is the line that inspired my artwork.
For the desktop, click on the image below to view the large size image.
Your great mistake is to act the drama as if you were alone. As if life were a progressive and cunning crime with no witness to the tiny hidden transgressions. To feel abandoned is to deny the intimacy of your surroundings. Surely, even you, at times, have felt the grand array; the swelling presence, and the chorus, crowding out your solo voice. You must note the way the soap dish enables you, or the window latch grants you freedom. Alertness is the hidden discipline of familiarity. The stairs are your mentor of things to come, the doors have always been there to frighten you and invite you, and the tiny speaker in the phone is your dream-ladder to divinity. Put down the weight of your aloneness and ease into the conversation. The kettle is singing even as it pours you a drink, the cooking pots have left their arrogant aloofness and seen the good in you at last. All the birds and creatures of the world are unutterably themselves. Everything is waiting for you.
For the iphone wallpaper, navigate to this page on your phone and then click and hold on the image you want. Select ‘Save image to camera roll’. Then from your camera roll set your home screen/lock screen or both.
iphone wallpapers:
Last year we began homeschooling Lucy (8), Hattie (6), Beatrice (3), and Arlo (1). We’re including this on our Giants & Pilgrims blog as all our family adventures seem to impact our art & music so much! Also, we just like sharing the stories. So we’ll be sharing posts on the themes we’ve been covering each month and calling the adventure “ABACUS”! Our hope is that these posts will help spark creative direction and inspiration for your family as well as giving us somewhere to be document and record our experiences.
As part of our history reading, we learned about Cuneiforms which then led to making our own fonts and lettering.
Harriet had her first show and tell at her Homeschool Access kindergarten class. She worked very hard filling out her “Read All About Me” Poster.
On November 18th, this handsome, ornery, little dude turned One!! I can’t even believe it. He has discovered the joy of food.
He always seems to have a mischievous little twinkle in his eyes.
His tiny makeshift snowman birthday cake made out of cake pops.
Enjoying his cake pop under his new name banner (a one year old tradition for all the kids)
And another birthday celebration with grandparents in Kansas.
Playing with a birthday gift from his Aunt and Uncle. 
To learn the continents, we made our own fun version of pin it maps, really enjoyed this Hopscotch song about the continents, and played map games.
We kept adding to our museum of world monuments by making a great wall of China, a Statue of Liberty, and a Sphinx.
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We took the Statue of Liberty downtown to visit our own tiny Statue of Liberty (right after reading Her Right Foot – which was so great).
We enjoyed another Top Munch box – this time from Germany!
We started an impromptu science club. Our first experiment was to remove the chlorophyll from leaves, then we did some experiments with old Halloween candy, and finally we made lungs out of old plastic bottles and balloons! So fun!
Lucy immediately decided our house was not festive enough and added tiny hats, trees, reindeer antlers, and presents to all the photos/artwork.
We made handprint turkeys
Someone got over her fear of the hot glue gun.
I made a ridiculous thing. Peg dolls for days….
Lots of late night sketching
Decorating paper christmas trees
I like for November to be our family game night. So I usually add a few new games to our collections. This year I found these beautiful spectrum cards.
This silly but awesome game called “There’s a Moose in my House”
And my current favorite, Qwirkle
Would it even be November without lots of wonderful goodies to bake?
Two books really dominated our kitchen decision making this November. Baking Class for the kids, and Bravetart for me. Both are great.
Homemade graham crackers from Bravetart.
Practicing knife skills
Lucy baking braided bread
And Lucy making her first original contribution to the Thanksgiving feast
Music always together. Usually with a little brother crowding in on the fun.
We got to go home to Kansas for Thanksgiving this year which meant lots of beautiful walks on the farm/prairie.
A couple of woodworking projects –
we built a teeter toter just for fun out of random scrap boards.
And I worked on cutting pieces for an upcoming project in Houston
We feasted and celebrated. It was beautiful. We are full.
Matching Thanksgiving outfits from Grandma DiDi and Grandpa Ed
Discovering and Rediscovering the magic of Calvin and Hobbs together.
Our thankful tree
And an adorable pilgrim girl
Much love from us,
