• Christmas Eve

    When we woke on the morning of Christmas Eve, a blizzard had just ended. This meant I spent a bit of time rousing everyone from their warm and cozy beds to shovel sidewalks and the driveway. I was not popular. (Dr. Peds was working at the hospital). On my way…

  • Board Games

    They’ve been playing a lot of board games these past days: Scrabble, checkers, Catan, Uno, Go Fish. I’m anticipating a Christmas break full of even more board game variety. Since school for the middles has involved many hours of screens all fall, I’m looking forward to a Christmas break with…

  • Grammar

    I love grammar analysis, and all fall I’ve been teaching it to Mr. TOF. He, unfortunately does not share my passion for it. Usually we lay sentence strips all over the floor and place grammar symbols next to each word as part of our homeschool morning, but the past few…

  • Pandemic Christmas Trees

    When I found out that we wouldn’t be able to go to the forest to cut our Christmas trees like we traditionally do because the Christmas Tree Cut day was canceled, I wondered what we would do about obtaining a Christmas tree this year. But then, a few days later,…

  • Some Things I’m Loving

    The tile next to the door in our family room was finally installed last week! I have been waiting and waiting. I LOVE the pattern on the tiles so much, although my family loves it a lot less. It makes me incredibly happy every time I walk into the room.…

  • Some Things I learned in November

    At the cello I have been working on chromaticism. It’s so tricky. It was standard practice to soak clothing in urine as part of the process of doing laundry during Roman times. In fact, urine was so sought after and valuable that special cisterns were placed around cities on the…

  • Watching Thankful Videos

    On Thanksgiving all of the cousins shared videos of what they were thankful for on a group text. Well, maybe more accurately, all of the parents of the cousins shared videos of what the cousins were thankful for on a group text. Each video was a lovely representation of the…