Tag Archives: busy family

Resources and Ideas for a Family Unit Study on Archaeology

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Well, the school year is starting to wrap up. Now that our Spring Break road trip is behind us, I’m focused on pulling together some unit study materials for the summer. Our family topics this year are marine biology and archaeology, and this year we’re really focusing on professions in those fields. We want the kids to start seeing and understanding what following your passion really looks like, day-to-day. What jobs do people do if they love history or ocean animals? Archaeology started out as a bit of a stretch for … Continue Reading…

Skylanders Birthday Party

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I’m taking a break from our Lambing Help series and sharing about Speedracer’s recent Skylanders birthday party. This whole party was an interesting quandary for me because our kiddos don’t play video games. At. All. We don’t have a Wii or a Playstation or an Atari or whatever. {grin} The closest they get is occasionally playing Wonder Zoo on the tablet. Our kiddos know Skylanders from colorful comic books and their friends at school. We bought them some of the toys at Christmas because I got a great Cyber Monday deal on … Continue Reading…

How to Make a Great Outdoor Space for Summer Family Time

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I’ve written before about how hard it can be to leave the farm for a vacation in the summer time. So we staycation a lot. And honestly, that’s probably more liberal than it deserves. We “staycation” a lot in the summer. On Friday and Saturday evenings. On our own back porch. After working all day. {smile} We’re blessed that the farm provides everything one could need to get a little rest and relaxation without having to go anywhere at all! It can truly feel like a “family vacation” with very little … Continue Reading…

Letting the Work Provide the Rewards

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It’s no secret that our farm kids do a lot of work and chores around here. They are preparing to manage their own family and property one day and hands-on practice is the best teaching tool I know of. Our goal is to send self-motivated, diligent, hard-workers out into the world. But it’s easy to get into the daily grind and start to feel like all you do it work, work, sweat, and work, and then you start to lose motivation. I know–I feel it too sometimes! Much like our preferred … Continue Reading…

Farm Life Makes Vacations Hard

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We just got back from a short family vacation over the 3-day weekend and I’m reminded why we don’t all go anywhere overnight very often! {smile} The farm is hard to leave. And the work is hard to come back to! We spent some refreshing time with family at the lake and the crew got to do all-things-water-sports for a couple days. Kayaking, canoeing, boating, some fishing, swimming, even paddle boarding. They got to stay up late and sleep in (a little bit!) and not have to do any chores. … Continue Reading…

10 Things Our Boys Need to Know

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I’m not a boy, but I’m raising these boys every day and I’ve realized that there’s a lot of things about boyhood I don’t understand. Just like there’s a lot of things about manhood that I don’t understand. And it turns out that these things I don’t really understand are usually better taught by their father, grandfather, uncles, and other men in their lives. It also turns out they are often taught simply by example, without any words at all (which is certainly not my way of teaching things!) But … Continue Reading…

10 Quick Heart-Checks for Busy Moms

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We’re about a month into our school year now and it feels like we haven’t even settled into a routine yet. It seems like it’s just going, go, go, all the time between work, home, farm, school, and soccer. But busy moms that want strive to be intentional parents can’t afford to let even these moments pass by! Here are a few quick heart checks for busy moms–all busy women, really!–to make sure you’re not missing these moments… 1. What are you writing? Do you journal? Do you blog? Do … Continue Reading…

Cowboy Days

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That post title could mean so many things when living with this little guy… But this time it’s actually someone else’s title. This weekend we went to visit Mr. Fix-It’s mom and step-dad for Cowboy Days in their little town a few hours away.  Mimi and Papa knew our kiddos would love it. We got to take our first train ride as a family.  Actually, it was my first time on a train other than at the zoo. We had Aunts and Uncles and cousins along as well.   The … Continue Reading…

8 Tips for Carefree Flower Beds for Busy Moms

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I love having beautiful flowers blooming all around the house in the spring and summer, but I’m no green thumb! And a lot of the DIY garden articles I love to read and google do not have the same definition of “low maintenance” or “easy-care” that I do! I don’t even bother with indoor plants anymore and I have a long history of killing outdoor plants by neglect. I just get too busy for all the weeding, trimming, deadheading, watering, splitting and replanting. Besides, our vegetable garden takes up most of … Continue Reading…

Nature Connections {Family Connections Summer 2012}

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Once again I’m joining Aurie, Lisa, Amy, and Connie to share ideas for fun, family activities for the summer. We hope you’ll stop by every Wednesday to share in our theme or link up your own posts about great summertime fun for the whole family! This week, our theme is Nature Connections–which my regular readers will know is near and dear to my heart!  Nature study is high on our casual summer study list this year and I’ve got some budding naturalists on my hands. One of the ways I’ve … Continue Reading…

School Days and Stay-Home Days

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Around here we don’t have weekends.  We have Stay-Home Days.  You can’t really have a weekend when most of the household doesn’t really grasp the concept of a “week” anyway.  But we’ve got “school-days” and “stay-home days” down. So what are we doing this stay-home day?  Well, as I type Mr. Fix-It and the Cowboy are setting up to process more chickens.  Fun.  (Not really.)  And I’m cleaning the house.  More fun.  (Not at all.)  Mr. Fix-It told the Cowboy he could help this weekend back on Tuesday and every … Continue Reading…

Presenting…Family Movie Night!

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I LOVE Family Movie Night. We all do. It’s the perfect, leave the work/school-week behind and transition to the weekend-at-home ritual for us. There’s tons of ideas for these awesome themed family movies nights on Pinterest now. I have a whole Family Movie Night board because some of them are so cool I want to try them too. But we do Family Movie Night every Friday, so ours looks a little different most of the time. It started out as me wanting one night a week where no one complained about what … Continue Reading…

A Day Together on the Eastern Shore

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Our family and home life has been pretty stressful lately. Just a lot of responsibilities…and a lot of duct tape and wire nuts. Turns out when you buy a brand new house–with all brand new appliances–eventually they’re all not brand new anymore. It also turns out that the lifespan of most major appliances is about the same. Which means all our brand new appliances from when we moved in are now all on their last leg. All. Of. Them. Bless his heart, poor Mr. Fix-It is resuscitating our HVAC on a … Continue Reading…

BeanBoozled Challenge…Activities for a Busy Family

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As I mentioned before Christmas, we’re always busy (like everyone else in the world!) but we’re also always on the hunt for family time activities to break out of the chores, work, school, chores, work school routine. When looking for fun activities, we’re usually on the hunt for something for all ages, with simple set up and clean up–or simple set up and no cleanup, like our puzzle activities! So while Christmas shopping with Mr. Fix-It, he grabbed a couple boxes of Jelly Belly BeanBoozled for the crew’s stockings. When … Continue Reading…

Just Let Them Play

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This past weekend the kiddos did their chores and were finally allowed out of the house to “go play!”  (Ah, the drama of an hour of chores and cleaning on Saturday morning!) At one point, as they trooped back for some snacks, I snapped a few pictures. Besides those moments (which ended up a little blurry because I’m out of practice) my mind snapped back to something from a few years ago… Same 3 kiddos. Same gate. Same yard. Same woods they were playing in back in 2012. And then … Continue Reading…