Happy Easter 2016!

What we're loving now {February 2016}

Some of the things we enjoyed in the month of February:

Rainbow Magic Fairies books - Cadence has been reading these for her independent reading homework each night for a couple weeks now.  There are fairies, and jewels, and some girls who become friends with the fairies, and she loves them.

A Chef's Life - I watch this PBS show on my Kindle when I run on the elliptical in our garage.  (Which I don't do as much as I should, so I'm still in season 1).  It follows chef Vivian Howard and her restaurant in the eastern North Carolina town where she grew up and swore she'd never return.  Each episode focuses on a quintessential Southern ingredient (sweet potatoes, rice, collards) and she visits farms and family friends while also using the ingredient in her restaurant.  Part reality show about running a business, part cooking show with recipes and demos, and part homage to life in the South, it's really fun.

Peaceful Parent, Happy Kids by Laura Markham and Parenting the Wholehearted Child by Jeannie Cunnion - God's been doing some work on my mama heart, rooting out my desires for perfection and control that come out in unfortunate ways.  I finished the first book last week and am currently reading  Cunnion's.  I'm not sure I agree with everything, but the focus in both books on connection and grace is very helpful to me.  I've been thinking about how misbehavior can signal a need for love and connection and an opportunity to deal with big feelings.  I think this is so often true not just of my girls, but the "big kids" that I work with.  Some of the most negative and unruly students are in need of someone to notice them and build a connection.

1969 Mustang Grande - After almost 6 years as a one car family, Matt bought a classic car for a hard-to-argue-with low price.  He's excited.  Whatever.

{this moment}

What We're Loving Now {January 2016}

What we've been watching, reading, eating, living:

Sofia the First - the second season of this show went up on Netflix recently and the girls' just finished it.  "I'm finding out what being royal's all about..making my way, it's an adventure everyday."  The theme song is REALLY catchy, but Piper won't let me sing it.  

Bunk Beds - Cadence may not always be super excited to have her little sis in her room, but the bunk beds have none the less proven to be a lot of fun.  Piper figured out how to hang blankets from the top bunk in optimum fashion, so...

Downtown Abbey - You know, it's been a lot of ups and maybe more downs with this show, right?  I'm watching on the pbs website since we don't have TV, so I'm at least a day behind.  I'm really glad that Carson and Mrs. Hughes are married and that Edith has such fabulous headbands.

Homemade popcorn - I can't eat microwave popcorn anymore; I just can't.  We eat my homemade popcorn frequently and it kinda saved the day during the snow extravaganza.  I've developed my technique: popped in coconut oil, sprinkled with kosher salt.  Or tahin.  Or popped with coconut oil and sugar, then sprinkled with salt, which is kettle corn-y perfection.

The life changing magic of tidying up - I already wrote about this.  It feels really good to be letting go of things that we can send to a better home.  Or the dump.  The bookshelf in our living room has never looked so good.

We're tidying up!

 At the end of December, I read The Life Changing Magic of Tidying Up by Marie Kondo and got very excited.  There are some crazy parts of this book, for sure, but I loved Kondo's thorough methods for going through your stuff and paring down to what sparks joy.  The amount of stuff in our house had really started to bother me - it was hard to clean and hard to put things away.  We have only sporadically decluttered after moving here, and we still had stuff like we lived in a much bigger house.

She recommends going through each category of item in your home and looking at them all together and touching each one.  So, that's all my shoes.  (Clearly, I owned two many pairs of shoes.)  It seems like a simple thing, but gathering all the things makes it much easier to see what sparks joy and what's just a duplicate and what I actually forgot I had in my closet.

This is all our cups on the kitchen table.  There are 4 people in this house.  I don't believe we've ever had more than 8 people eat a meal here.  I had no idea we had so many until I pulled them out of the cabinets.

13 bags/boxes have left our house so far.  Matt and I have done clothes, books, and papers, and started slowly on the miscellaneous stuff, like DVDs and cups.  We haven't even started on the rest of the kitchen cabinets or the girls' massive wardrobes and toy collections!

{this moment}

First Snow 2016

This is just the first taste...it's still coming down!

Merry Christmas!

Here's a bunch of pictures from our Christmas celebrations this year.  Actually, this is just pictures of the opening presents part.  We DID, in fact, eat several nice family meals and read the Christmas story and light candles and listen to music and many things that had nothing to do with stuff.

Piper got a giant stuffed horse!

{this moment}

What We're Loving Now {October 2015}

*Downtown Greenville.  We got to go for a few hours a couple weeks ago and loved it.  Clean, and pretty, and there was a free trolley.

Cadence on the trolley

Piper on the trolley

At Falls Park - so lovely

*Fixer Upper and Jane the Virgin on Netflix!

*Visits from Aunt Pami and Nana while Matt was SUPER busy with work

*Speaking of Matt, he made a cameo appearance as Doctor Who (Matt Smith) in the school Cirque show this year, and was charming and hilarious

Matt in costume, in profile
"I wear a fez now. Fezzes are cool."