1. Honeycomb Earrings from oliveandcocoa.com that I love so very much.
2. Goat’s milk caramels’ from happygoat.com. These are awesome. Truly.
3. Adorable wicker backpack for picking apples on the weekend or as a very expensive toy picker-upper. brookfarmgeneralstore.com
4.Madeline Weinrib makes amazing textiles…that is no secret. madelineweinrib.com
5. Super-cute and cozy looking sweater-cuff boots from urbanoutfitters.com
6. How perfect is this marshmallow roaster? shopterrain.com
7. This camera has been on my wish list for a while. I do miss film. lomography.com
This Week:
I feel like I was able to take a deep breath in life this week. My husband was gone, but it was still a pretty good week. This was only because God helped me see it that way. This is a heavy travel time for my husband, mostly because he’s making up for a loss right now that wasn’t his fault. It’s a tough position for him and it also demands a lot from me. I don’t really watch TV with the exception of Project Runway and Top Chef, but I was able to watch the entire Mad Men series on netflix while he’s been gone. That a crazy lot of episodes. When my little buddy was crying this week , I was remembering what I said when he was a newborn babe in my arms. I told myself, no matter what, that I would take the time to cuddle him while I could and kiss his tears away. Someday he will smell like BO and will ask me what’s for dinner. My sweet girl is ridiculously distracted by birds during school. True, I created this monster by introducing her to the Audubon books, but it’s kind-of a problem. I’ve learned to help it by stopping for bird breaks in exchange for focus. It kinda works. My middle guy is constantly telling me I don’t play with him which is completely not true because I build him a Lego set (sometimes the same one every day) every morning before school. It still hurts my people-pleasing heart to hear those words but all I can do is my best. It seems that I am constantly hearing, “Let’s get together”. No, it’s not the song from “The Parent Trap”, it’s people that I care about who need a friend. I love and care about each one of my friends, but it’s so hard to have really good connections with people when you only see them every now and then. I can only have so many people over, ya know? We do so love to entertain, but it would be nice to take a break every now and then and be the company ;) It is great to see them when I can and this week I got to see quite a few. So, you see, at the end of the week, we can only do our best, every day, to pick out the things that gave us the most joy instead of the most pain. Sometimes my best feels like a failure, but this week God gave me the peace that it was enough and I am so very thankful for that.
28 is looking pretty good so far. Oh yeah, it was my birthday this week.
Another bright side to life: I’m thankful to still be in my 20’s a bit longer…
Orange is a beautiful color, not just because it is nice to look at, but because it is a glowing representation of the air turning cooler. When I grew pumpkins last year, it was fun to see how the chill actually does make the difference between a pumpkin that is a dull orange and one that is a bright orange. It’s like the chill gives it a little fall glow.
I like to go to this little pumpkin patch near our house every year because it’s the closest thing to a country scene as you can get in the middle of a city. We tried out a new one last year with Miss F’s Kindergarten class called Oma’s, but it was sooo far away and basically in another city. It was a cute little place with an awesome cottonseed hill for the kids to slide down. We got an invite again this year but it was so warm and last year the other parents were MIA, pretty much like every other field trip, so we opted for a local family trip. The kids always want to go for the parking lot set-up with the little ferris wheel and flashing lights. I’m pretty old-fashioned about stuff like this so chances are they won’t see me driving up to one of those places.
silly girl
When there is no pumpkin class being taught, it’s a great place to hop about.
He found out it ate leaves and was pretty thrilled.
This is so true to his character. One minute he’s here, the next he’s off to find trouble.
Love my sweet girl.
Everyone needs coffee for a walk in a corn maze.
We found this little Acrea moth caterpillar in the maze. We took him home and checked out his stats a bit. He also went on the hayride.
The haze is setting in at this point.
This sweet man in the yellow shirt has been at this pumpkin patch/Christmas tree farm for as long as I can remember.
I love that.
I missed InstaFriday so I changed the name to suit my needs :) This is where I make use of some of those camera pictures few people see.
Last week we had the privilege of going to the premier of “The Mighty Macs”. It was pretty cool because it just happens to be about my mother-in-law, Cathy Rush. The movie is the incredible story of her time at a little school called Immaculata University, as their women’s basketball coach. This was a time when women’s basketball was still an afterthought. Cathy managed to take a team with no gym and no equipment and turn them into a 3-time national championship winning team! Pretty amazing, huh? It just so happens that my husband was conceived during the first season, which is a fun little tidbit for our family. It was great to experience the energy of the premiere and 2,000 people filled to the brim with excitement. We all are excited to see what happens with this movie.
So, go see the movie!! We just took 20 people on Friday :)
Heading into Downtown Philadelphia.
At the premiere, standing in front of the team bus from the movie.
Cathy in one of her many interviews.
Miss F getting ready for an interview.
Telling everyone how proud she is of Gram.
The radiant Cathy Rush.
The actresses who play the team members: Katie Hayek, Kim Blair, Meghan Sabia, Kate Nowlin, Taylor Steel
Marley Shelton who plays Sister Sunday
David Boreanaz as Ed Rush, Mayor Nutter of Philadelphia, and their families
Carla Gugino as Cathy Rush
Miss F gets a better view from one of daddy’s buddies.
A sweet girl asks for an interview
Visiting with some of the nuns.
Miss F and Miss Immaculata
Getting ready for the movie! We are excited!
Miss Gugino and Miss Shelton being recognized for their work in the film.
Mayor Nutter
All of us with Cathy and James Malinchak.
Ed Rush/ Papa Ed talking with Tim Chambers, Director and Writer
The two fashionable ladies.
Some of the refreshments, pictured here in our parking garage. We had to get our 6 year-old home, but managed to snag some soft pretzels and mustard and a few mini cheesecake sandwiches.
I love this picture because it demonstrates a lot of what I’ve been feeling lately. You might see this pumpkin pirates arm and see strength and determination. You might see the cute little potted plant and see order and neatness. When I first look at this picture, I see the pumpkin that had all of his pieces torn out over and over, got rolled down the entryway steps, and then went rotten just a few short days later, making this sight no longer existent. For the most part, I am a happy person. When things get bad I don’t usually mention it to many people, I try to move on and focus on the good points if I can. Lately, I’ve been feeling like this pumpkin. I feel triumphant in many areas of my life that God has allowed me to grow and learn in. However, sometimes I feel like I have had my arms torn off and somebody tossed me down the stairs. I mean that figuratively and literally. I have 2 boys, ya know. When I look at this picture for while longer, I see this pumpkin pirate put back together and whole again. This makes me smile because I know that’s the way God sees me. Whole. Even when I am feeling broken, he sees me whole.
Now, I feel pretty thankful.
“Perhaps we shall best use this wonderful power of reasoning by giving it plenty of work to do, by asking ourselves what is the cause of this and that; why do people and animals do certain things. Reason which is not worked grows sluggish; and there are persons who never wonder nor ask themselves questions about anything they see.”
*Charlotte Mason*
One thing I am very thankful for right now is the time to teach my sweet girl. With all of the difficulty that has come from my boys, I think it’s such a great privilege to see her light up as she learns right before my eyes. When I sent her off to school last year with hesitation, I started doing the math of how much time we spend in the car driving to and from school, how long she was at school, how exhausted she was when she got home, and how much she missed being a part of the learning that we do every day a home and in our city. I remember during the first week of school, I was told over and over that I would “get used to it”. What? God put this child in me to grow for 10 months, she grows 5.5 years and I send her away for the next 13 years (with the exception of college) to go to school for 7 hours, 45 minutes in the car (1.5 hours for her brothers and mom), and nothing left at the end of the day. I was looking around at everyone saying, “Doesn’t anyone else find the evolution of the school-day a little unsettling, to say the least?” I’ve been talking about this with so many people for the last year (read: for as long as I can remember really). Everyone admits there is a problem but no changes are being made, in fact it could be getting worse. Think of the phrase, “Yeah, ___ had a bad teacher last year and ___ is going to have her next year. Oh well, what can you do.” Craziness. Yes, you CAN actually do something. Nobody said it was an easy solution(it’s been rough for me), but we have to make change. For now, I intend to teach my kids at home and continue to be as much a part of my communities as ever…if not more. I have to make the choice that the “we” has to become “I”. I have to make change. I don’t want them to be a statistic from 2011 that could have been changed but wasn’t. I know there are exceptions. I have friends who are just wonderful teachers. There are also great schools across the country. Just think about it and try not to look at good change over your shoulder as you walk past it, even if change means difficulty.
With all of the difficulties, Miss F is full of life in her learning now and doesn’t have a dead part to her day. The only exception would be when she is so disappointed we don’t read another chapter of what we are reading or we haven’t seen a Black Phoebe bird in the yard that day.
For this date, my husband had taken the boys on a camping trip so we had the whole day to ourselves. We went to the museum of art to see some of the paintings from the artists we had studied that week.
Matisse, Monet, and Degas were 3 of them so we were excited to find this Monet here for a short time. We don’t get a great showing of famous paintings here but this one was lovely enough for 2 giddy girls. We have LA to go to for the famous ones.
My little ballerina was thrilled to find this Degas since we had read the very interesting story of how these paintings came to be. The girl in the most famous sculpture was a very talented dancer. She said she was going to be “the most famous dancer in the world”. Her family could not keep up with their payments for her classes. She started posing for Degas to earn some extra money but could not continue to attend. Eventually she grew up and her sculpture had become the most famous dancer in the world. So sweet. Too bad Degas was a grumpy, angry sort of man. It was a happy ending though.
We also got to see the Stickley exhibit which was sweet. It was cute strong and adorable, just like the furniture is. I loved that they had pieces of the wood to fit together so they could understand the way the furniture was made with no nails. It was pretty cool.
I loved this carpet and this clock. My picture is a little blurry because I was taking it 5 seconds while the security guard was around the corner. I never saw a single sign about not taking them, but their body language was suggesting serious business so I didn’t tempt trouble. The Louvre had less security surrounding the Mona Lisa, for crying out loud.
Visiting some of her favorite fish.
These are special days.
|
|
