WayfaringStrangers

We finally settled on our new home! After 10.5 years away, we are back in Delaware. Our early married life took us from Delaware (where we both grew up), to beautiful Virginia (still my favorite), to Southern MD, to northern MD, and now back to Delaware. We are actually only moving 20 minutes away this time, from our MD rental over into DE. It's not the area of DE where we were raised, but it's perfect for us. We needed s p a c e, and you just cannot get that in northern New Castle county. Plus, we are plugged into our church and homeschool community and didn't want to make more changes. This is home, probably for a long time. The house is move-in ready, but we have big dreams for the house and property. On over 3 acres, we have wishes for gardens and animals. The house itself is a bit small (well, compared to many American standards... But not compared to world standards). We have lots of improvements and renovations we hope to make over time... Although we also want t...

Today is the first day of Advent for this season. Usually, this time of year overwhelms me because of all the expectations and extra "stuff" going on. This year, I am overwhelmed for many different reasons, and I long for the simplicity and beauty of Advent and Christmas. As we enter December, we are anticipating: - A move to a new home -A 5 week winter break from our co-op -Our oldest son's birthday -Christmas and holidays -The birth of our 4th child The move in itself is a lot. We are moving locally- buying a house on 3 acres only 20 minutes away. Still, we've been (sort of) packing for weeks and nothing is in order anymore. This house feels messy and chaotic, and I long to be in our new home with a Christmas tree lighting up the living room. Once we get there, we will anticipate settling in, eventually making changes and improvements, and making this a very long-term home. We anticipate the birth of our baby. I'm 34+ weeks now. I'm close enoug...

We've been living in our (rental) home on the Upper Eastern Shore in Maryland for one year now, so I thought it would be a good time for an update. When we moved here a year ago, we were generally unfamiliar with the area. While Behn and I both grew up in Delaware- which technically is only a few miles away- we did not grow up this far south in the state. So the towns, shopping, roads, and other attractions were generally new to us. Since then, we've really established our stomping grounds. We live in a tiny  one stop-light town in a neighborhood stuffed with great kids and neighbors. Let's start there. Our rental is a roomy Cape Cod on a quiet street. We have firefighters/EMS on one side of our house and a state Trooper on the other side. While we haven't met everyone, most of the neighbors are so super friendly and the kids have a huge group of kiddos to run around with. I've made one especially close friend, which has been a blessing. The kids run around the ac...

Hi there, how are you? How is that thing going, how is she doing, how was your trip? I can listen right now. That must be hard, that sounds wonderful, I understand, I don't know how that must feel. Me too. I can listen some more. We are all Eleanor Rigby sometimes. I'm ok (you didn't ask, but if you did, thank you). This thing is going well or not. I know we are all busy. Can we get together with the kids? Oh, they have camp/VBS/school/an appointment/visitors/you're on a trip? We have stuff going on, too. Another time then, when things calm down (they won't). You didn't see my text, my message, my SOS? Oh yeah, life has been crazy, I get it. (Does it always have to be crazy though? Can we turn down some noise?) I don't want to read that article you shared. You don't want to listen to the podcast I shared, either. I get it. There's a lot of noise. Too much noise. Maybe we can be quiet and talk in the fresh air. Do you want to come for lunch some...

Only if you peer into the creek, still and quiet, might eye and brain in a flash discover a small turtle in your palm. You both blink, surprised. Only if a toddler's chubby hand bumbles persistently for the black ant in the grass, dropping it over and over, finding it again, does the ant finally realize its mortality the moment the toddler discovers its mighty bite. Only if I scan the sky, against cirrus and azure, can I begin to distinguish wingspan of eagle, buzzard, hawk, heron. There's a world up there. Only if one sits on a tree stump, alone, no earbuds, that in five minutes time one may hear the unmistakable slither at one's feet. One was not alone. Only if he must conquer creek will he find a stick to measure depth. Cautiously first, then charging on. Creek is known, joy found. He's a Navy Seal now. Only if we step to edge of pond, clear on top, muddy bottom, there's nothing here- then we toss the pebble and a thousand fat...

Blogging has taken a backseat to real life. In the past 3 weekends, we have celebrated Easter with my family, then I went on a Girls' trip with my mom and sisters, and then Behn and I ran the 10-mile Broadstreet Run in Philadelphia with some family. The weeks fly by, with homeschooling, work, commuting, and making big life decisions (house-related...more on that another time). Besides lots of running to train for the race, I've also been taking some riding lessons again. Samuel is still in preschool for another month, and the other two have schoolwork and tumbling class. Whew! Thankfully our calendar is clear for the foreseeable future. We need a break. I did want to pop in on here to share a few thoughts about homeschooling and something Graham said yesterday. He and Patrick caught TEN toads in the yard and put them all into a giant plastic bin, full of dirt, rocks, weeds, etc, creating the best habitat that they could. In the middle of it all, Graham exclaimed, 'This is...

It is spring. Perfect, lovely, green spring. Today is especially glorious- rain followed by sun and everything is alive. Last night we celebrated the end of our Classical Conversations year. My boys still have a couple months of regular schoolwork to do, but it felt like an accomplishment wrapping up CC. Those 24 weeks were rich in fellowship and learning, and I'm already looking forward to next year. We made it through the winter- long, cold days where school felt like a drag and we were all trapped inside together. It was hard. I started researching local schools because...gosh, homeschooling is hard work! I've been worn thin. But we made it through the tunnel and slowly it seems like we know what this looks like for us now. The boys know what we need to do each day (not that they don't still complain sometimes) and in the past few weeks they've gone off to play together and I'm hearing much more, "let's pretend..." than I have before. They have ...

Behn and I started watching Dave Ramsey YouTube clips and listening to his daily radio show in January 2017.  Dave lays out the 7 steps to Financial Peace and they made a lot of sense to us. We listed our debts from smallest to largest and discovered how much we truly owed- a little over $55,000. Most of these were educational loans. Behn and my undergrad, as well as Behn's Master's Degree. Years of paying minimum payments meant we had paid a ton in interest and the principle balances were stubbornly high. This is not hard to understand, but for years we'd only been able to pay the minimums. Now we were looking these financial statements in the eye. We were "sick and tired of being sick and tired," as Dave Ramsey likes to say. It was time to run from debt. We went ahead and bought Dave's Financial Peace University and committed to watching the DVD's and doing the workbooks together every Tuesday night. At some point we planned on going to a community cla...