Simplify Explore Learn Together
We long for a time in our lives when outdoor adventure, travel and exploration will be “normal life” and not just vacations. We are actively working to pursue that dream, but we’re not there yet. In the meantime, there’s dance class and meetings and stopping for groceries on the way to pick up one and drop off the other. Don’t……
With the details of travel, lodging and budget out of the way now we can move on to the fun part! Subtracting travel time, we had three full days in London. Here’s what we did, plus a few tips for other families interested in exploring this amazing city with kids. Bridges Between the old classic song and the scenes that……
After a summer of exploring our local area, discovering new places that we never knew were nearby, and writing all about our reasons for staying local and what we did, we hopped on a plane and spent four days in London. I know. We said we wouldn’t. And we weren’t planning to. We really weren’t. But then we did. As……
Finally at the end of July Staffan was able to take a bit of vacation time from work and we hitched up the camper and hit the road. We adore road trips, and for us they are usually measured in weeks, not days, and we tend to cover a lot of ground. This year, though, since we decided to stick……
In July, we were all still searching for signs of summer to arrive in Sweden. They were few and far between. Meteorologists have offered their explanations (it’s linked to the record-breaking heat and drought the European continent has experienced) but sunny, warm-ish weather has been rare and most days have been cloudy, full of chilly breezes, rain showers and mutant……
This space has been a little lonely and neglected lately. It seems that the seasons when I have the most to write about are the same seasons when I find very little time and energy to actually sit down and write. There’s a very simple explanation for this. We are out and about, exploring, learning and trying to live in……
We love to travel. Really love it. If we could, we’d do it full-time. I hope someday soon we will. But right now is not that season. Right now we have an apartment that we call home and commitments to things like a job and a preschool and a church. We have routines. We shop at the same grocery store……
We have continued to spend time in the refugee community and I continue to learn so much from my time with them, not the least of which being how much I still have left to learn. My previous post, though true and honest, barely scratched the surface. As rich and deep and overwhelming as my experience had been, there was……
The Beatitudes are hard. I’ve always thought so. That part of the Bible, recorded in both Matthew and Luke, where Jesus counts off the laundry list of human suffering and tells us they are blessed. Blessed. That’s a word that gets thrown around a lot in Christian circles and I’m pretty sure most of us are using it wrong, but……
A decision to live with less stuff brings with it a series of other decisions. Obviously one of the first decisions is what to get rid of and what to keep. Actually, this is often more of a process than a single decision, but nevertheless, hard on the heels of the decision to get rid of something comes the question……
A few weeks ago, unceremoniously and without even knowing it, I washed my last cloth diaper. Of course I knew we were in the midst of potty training and naturally I noticed we were using fewer and fewer diapers. But on that day when I washed the last one, I didn’t know it was the last. Packing, changing, rinsing, washing,……
“A place for everything, and everything in its place” has always been a bit out of reach for me. While I like it in theory, it always evokes an image of a woman wearing those stereotypical librarian glasses on a chain with her hair pulled tightly back into a bun, as though nothing out of place refers just as much……
“Okay, now that I’ve seen your house it feels okay to invite you over to mine.” She said it with a sigh that was something like relief but also with a smile that invited me to friendship. I laughed, my heart warmed by what is still one of the best compliments I’ve ever been given. We met at a church……
One of my favorite things about homeschooling is the flexibility to learn from what is happening around us and I’m always on the lookout for opportunities to do that. So when we heard there was going to be a solar eclipse visible from where we live, we dropped everything and shifted our focus to the science of eclipses. The eclipse……
No Dr. Seuss week would be complete without spending a little time with Fox in Socks. We pulled out the tattered, well-loved copy that Emelie got for her first birthday and read it together. This one is a little harder for her to read by herself, because there are so many made up words and tongue twisters. But it’s always……
