Circling Through This Life

I'm back again with another update!  Did you see the A update?  A is for Academics . I'm wanting to get caught up to fully participate in the newest round of Blogging Through The Alphabet which is now hosted by the lovely Amanda at  Hopkins Homeschool  and Kirsten from  Doodlemom . This part of my "Update Alphabet Style"  series of posts since I did not have a blog posts for a very long time! B is for Bug! No not an insect.  Bug is a young, adorable, black, domestic short hair cat that we adopted Mother's Day weekend.  She was Honeybear's gift to me for Mother's Day. During Holy Week, our beloved George the Cat got very sick.  His bladder was blocked and he spent the night in the vet hospital.  We brought him home on Tuesday evening and the vet was hopeful that he would recover, but over the next few days he began to decline.  On Holy Friday we made the difficult decision that it was time to say good bye. His bl...

I am seriously behind in blogging. Where oh where did the time go?  Yes, I set blogging aside just before the Holidays. It didn't start out intentional. I still have several drafts of posts that I intended to polish and publish. Maybe they'll see the light of day someday. I thought I would do something easy like a Random Five since I am typing this on Friday but I think instead I'm going to stick with the letter theme.  I made it through the letter D so here I'll pick up E, F, and G. Maybe I'll get through all the letters at some point. E.   Electricity ~ Electricity is something that I take for granted. We rarely lose power and when we do it is often only out for an hour or less. We've had some longer stretches and, in December during the darkest weeks, we lost power for over 6 hours. In the big picture that isn't a long time but it felt like eternity (see another E word!) when I realized how completely dependent we are on electricity.  We couldn...

I missed the letter D (and E and F but those will post!) in the Blogging Through the Alphabet link up hosted by Cristi and Meg . Daughters.  That starts with D and I have four of them. I am biased because I am their mother but I have four amazing, wonderful, and beautiful daughters. Each one different from the other but all special to me. Talented in different ways but each possessing something that sets them apart. Each one is so different in personality from her sisters that it can be so hard to believe that they are all related. I see so much of me and at the same time so much of my husband in each of them. Sometimes, I joke that each of them inherited all of my traits and all of her father’s bad traits. Each of my daughters have the ability to make me smile, to make me laugh and to make my heart swell to bursting with pride. Sometimes I look at them and I see the little girls they were and then I blink and I realized that they aren’t little anymore. I still ...

This week it is the Letter B. My friends Cristi and Meg are co-hosting Blogging Through The Alphabet. Of course with the letter B, I have to blog about books! I have not been reading nearly as much these past couple of months as I was earlier this year. Advent is starting for New Calendar Orthodox and I plan to read more during the Nativity Fast. So what am I reading? I have about 9 books on my Goodreads currently reading shelf but I am only going to list the ones that I am more actively reading. By that I mean that I have actually picked up and read at least a few pages in the last couple of weeks. I did borrow Immortal Reign from the Kindle Owner’s Library and I started it. I think I am on Chapter 2. If you didn’t catch my blog post from earlier in the week you can read my thoughts about Immortal Plague which is the first book of the series. I also am still working through The Sorcerer's Stone , the first book in the Harry Potter series. My goal in 2016 is to re-read t...

A is for Adventure. It’s also for Alphabet Blogging. This week my friends Cristi and Meg have started a fresh new round of blogging through the alphabet. So without further ado (see another A word!) here’s my A is for Adventure or Let the Adventure Begin! post! It’s completely and totally official.  The Adventure has begun!  What adventure? I’ve actually mentioned it a couple of times when I talked about How Much I Love the Crew and hinted here and there. I should say a new adventure has begun! This reviewing gig with the Schoolhouse Review Crew actually began sometime in 2009 when Debra started reviewing for the crew and would tell me all about the products she was using. And in the spring of 2010 she convinced me that I needed to be a part of this amazing group of ladies. In June of 2010 I came on board and wow! I have lost count of the different vendors and products I have been blessed to review over the years. I think I’ve written over over 200 reviews for the Crew...

Last week I had some not so random thoughts about Holy Week .  This week I’ve organized my random thoughts to fit into the last 5 letters of the alphabet so that I can say I actually completed a full round of Alphabet Blogging.  Next week, I plan on starting another round of Alphabet Blogging and I really hope to keep up with the hostess this time! V is for Vegetable Garden ~ It’s spring.  Time to think about yard work, flower beds, and vegetable gardens. Last year we had our first garden. It was my husband’s baby and it was wonderful!  Well the stuff that grew did wonderful. It was a learning experience and I’m excited to try again. Last year we grew peas, green beans, carrots, zucchini, cucumbers of some kind, some kind of squash, and tomatoes. The plan this year is to expand the garden. W is for Wasting Time ~ I feel like I do a lot of time wasters and then I get all grumpy and then I look around at all that I need to do, get overwhelmed and then waste more tim...

This past week was Holy Week.  It is my favorite week of the year . We joke in my family that Holy Week is the week that we live at church.  It is during Holy Week and Pascha that we experience the longest services. It can feel like unending church services. Palm Sunday begins the week long remembrance of Christ’s  last week or His Passion Week. Holy Week technically begins during the Vespers service on Palm Sunday.   Except that my parish doesn’t do that service. I  just happened to read in my Palm Sunday Service book that during Vespers the bright colored cloths are changed to black.  It reminds me of Forgiveness Vespers.  During that Sunday vesper service we enter into Great Lent.  The bright gold is exchanged for the purple of Lent. Starting with Lazarus Saturday, which is a foreshadowing of the Lord’s resurrection and a foreshadowing of our own future resurrection, and ending with the Agape Vespers service one could spend up to 38 hou...

I cannot claim to be the most organized person in the universe.  I cannot claim that being organized means you live in a clean and tidy house without clutter and chaos. Well, ok, I could claim those things but they wouldn’t be true.  It would be false advertising.  I can however give you Four Organizing Tips I am using to help keep my sanity as I work towards developing better routines and habits and tame that clutter monster. Tip 1  Pin Your Socks For a variety of reasons, not the least of which is “ew I don’t want to share socks”, we don’t do the “buy all the same girl socks and don’t worry about matching” thing.  Each of us has our own style and for at least one of my daughters, socks is just one way she expresses herself.  I refuse to fold socks.  I hate mating socks.  I hate having to dig through a drawer or a basket to find two socks that match.  I also hate “old maid socks.”  You know those lonely socks without mate that sit in ...

I have lots of organizing and re-arranging and regrouping type topics on my brain but couldn’t quite find an R topic that worked for me to use for Alphabet Blogging .  I asked Turtlegirl for some suggested R words. Without hesitation she said “reading.”  Hmm. Yup. That works for me. At the beginning of 2013 I decided that I wanted to read more books.  Let me clarify, more books that I wanted to read . When the girls were younger, I read a lot of books. I read great books aloud to the girls and for awhile I pre-read readers to hand to the girls and I read history books aloud and science books too. So in 2013, according to Goodreads, I read a total of 22 books. That number seems so tiny. So many books in the world that I want to read and I only managed to read 22? But it’s a start, right? 22 books is better than no books.  And those were 22 books that I choose to read for me . So moving on to 2014.  I decided to set the goal for 40 books. That’s nearly double w...

This past weekend we had snow.  OK I know most of the country has been getting snow and lots of it. We weren’t.  While the Polar Vortex wreaked havoc on the Midwest, South, and Eastern parts of the US, we here in the Pacific Northwest experienced very mild and unusually warm January weather.  February arrived and that pesky short month brought cold weather and snow! The first snowfall did not amount to much.  What little bit stuck didn’t accumulate to any kind of measureable amount and our school district (that tends to cancel readily) didn’t even have a late start!  The snow was gone quickly.  That snow was no big deal and is fairly typical for us: just enough snow to look pretty but not mess up life.  I can deal with snow like that.  This past weekend?  Well it’s been a couple of years since we’ve had snow like that! It started Saturday during the late afternoon.  Big beautiful flakes of sticky snow.  And it kept falling and it ...

When trying to think of a topic for the letter q I seem to always want to gravitate towards quotes.  Last week I combined Ben and Me’s Blogging Through the Alphabet Meme with my Favorite Anything Series. I decided to combine my Favorite Anything Series with my alphabet blogging again this week.  I couldn’t narrow it down to just one quote so I’ve picked a few of my favorite quotes to share this week. When I was in high school I decorated my notebooks with doodles and hearts and names and quotes.  Usually the quotes were song lyrics. One of those quotes still frequently comes to mind: “ It’s from yourself that you have to hide .” It’s from a song: “Come up and See Me (Make Me Smile).”  I first heard the song as a live version recorded by Duran Duran.  “It’s from yourself that you have to hide.”  It just sounds so profound.  So deep. I found it thought provoking and sometimes true. I don’t think we hide just from others but sometimes from ourselves a...

I’m combining my Favorite Anything Series post with my Alphabet Blogging post this week.  P is for Planner: My favorite homeschool planner. It is possible you already know what my favorite planner is for home school but just in case in case you don’t know or you’ve forgotten: Homeschool Tracker Plus . It really is much more than a lesson planner as I can track time spent (or sessions), assign grades, keep a reading log, keep a resource log, journal, create report cards, and generate a transcript.  I’m still using the Plus version which I purchased in 2005. It doesn’t look the same now as it did then as the amazing husband and wife team of TgHomesoft did many upgrades and updates over the year (for  free!!!  I paid ONE price and every upgrade and update to the program was free!!).  They do still offer HST Basic (not my cup of tea) and they now offer subscription based program HST Online . I have not bothered to even look at HST Online because I am still so i...

I know that some people think I am organized.   I think I’m fairly organized with a few things but I long for being more organized or rather to be organized in more areas. I’m currently reading yet another book about organizing your home: Organized Simplicity by Tsh Oxenreider. She even has a website with some free downloadable forms . I started reading the book, because I needed some inspiration and motivation. I do really know what needs to be done and how to do it but . . . well sometimes I get stuck and I need to have my hand held.  The book didn’t really tell me anything I didn’t already know, but she did get my creative juices flowing.  I’m evaluating and pondering and finding some solutions.  Some seem so obvious and simple now but they’ve plagued me for ages. {Think of the catch all drawer where all those kitchen gadgets like apple corer thing.  How on earth do you keep that thing organized???!!! Read on and I’ll share what I’ve been doing!} Ms. ...

I set some lofty reading goals for 2013 that I didn’t quite attain.  I ended up adjusting my reading challenge on Goodreads and managed to read 22 books.  I decided I want to be more intentional with reading so I’ve set my 2014 Reading Challenge to 40 books.  Knowing me, it will be mostly novels.  My list of novels includes: Meg Langslow Mysteries by Donna Andrews ~ I started reading these several years ago and read all of them up through 2008.  I discovered Ms. Andrews has continued to write more.  Currently I am reading Some Like It Hawk and I just picked up Duck the Halls . Several historical novels by Sharon Kay Penman ~ She did a trilogy about Henry II and Eleanor. I’ve got book 1 on hold through interlibrary loan and book 2 is coming through paperback swap.  I’ll read book 3 from the library eventually. The Hobbit The Hunger Games Trilogy Re-reading the Harry Potter Series As I look over all the books that I want to read, I’m starting th...

One of the goals I have for my blog is to keep it real. So I’m going to be real here. There are days.  You know the ones I mean.  Days where you’re positive that a jury of your peers, your real peers, the stay-at-home-homeschooling-mom peers, would find homicide of your offspring justifiable. A favorite quote of mine is “The days are long but the years are short.”   I loved that phrase.  Those days when I had only little ones and they all needed me.  Four of them, one of me and no helpers.  The day seemed to drag on and on and on forever. How soon until Daddy gets home?  What??!! It’s only been minutes?  But the baby’s found the cat litter and the preschooler found the scissors and one twin got lost somewhere between the kitchen and the dining room while pushing her screaming twin in the baby seat.  I can laugh now.  I assure you I wasn’t laughing then.  I was thinking murderous thoughts as I collapsed on the kitchen floor a...

I decided to the follow the advice that a friend gave to someone else: make a list for the letters that you are missing.  So with this post I hope to be on the same letter as Marcy over at Ben and Me. This my Merry Christmas Edition of Alphabet Blogging:   I is for Icon of the Nativity of Christ For information about the icon: the symbolism and theology you can read the Orthodox Wiki article: Nativity Icon J is for baby Jesus in the Manager: The phrase “baby Jesus in the manager” brings two things to mind or rather I hear two things.  I hear the song “Away in the Manager” (which bugs me with the line “no crying he made.”  He was a baby.  He cried.  He was fully human. He did not sin.  Crying is not a sin.  Crying is a human baby means of communicating. Rant over.) and the other is a CCM song.  Casting Crowns?  Third Day?  Oh it’s Third day and the song is “Born in Bethlehem.”  I always hear “baby Jesus lying in a mana...

Today in the van we started discussing our Thanksgiving menu. It seems like I make the same things every year. I thought maybe we could change things up a bit.  Try something new or different.  Nope.  There are certain food traditions that must be adhered to or else apparently it just isn’t Thanksgiving at our house. I guess I can relate to my children.  There were certain foods that my mom always served on Thanksgiving and if those foods were not on the table then it couldn’t really be Thanksgiving, right? Right! My mom always served turkey, stuffing, mashed potatoes, gravy, brown and serve rolls, this candied yam with marshmallow thing [it was so not my favorite but it was my sister’s favorite], cool whip with fruit cocktail salad thing [always a big hit with children] and pie, usually pumpkin.  Some years she baked the pie and some years she bought the pie but we always had pie. We also always had a “relish tray” with different kinds of pickles and olive...