2013 Year in Review

This year has been pretty busy... Here are some new things I tried in 2013.

365 Photos: For many people, the challenge is to actually take a picture every day of the year. For me, the challenge was to choose the best picture of the hundreds I take each day. What a wonderful exercise in restraint! Amazing how each picture evokes emotions from particular days and events, no matter how mundane I thought them to be at first.
Check out my 365 Project!

100 Day Streak

I haven’t had much time for blogging lately after my pre-scheduled posts all posted themselves while we were out of town, but I have been faithfully keeping up with writing my 750 words every day!

When I wrote about it way back in January, I thought it sounded like a fun idea. I grew to enjoy it, but I didn’t know how long it would last. I had signed up for the monthly challenge, which I am sad to say I did not complete that month (February) – I completely forgot about it one day, and I looked at the clock and it was already midnight. Since then I have set my phone alarm to go off every evening at 11:03 to remind me to write if I haven’t already. It seems to be working – all the other monthly challenges I have since signed up for, I have been successful at completing!

Toddler Stars

I have so many things to blog about and ideas to share that I am just now getting around to our toddler class’ shape for December, which was predictably the star. (My new full-time job is a little bit of a distraction too… in a good way!) Anyway, as with our other shapes of the month, it is all about fun and learning through play. Here are 4 things we did with stars in addition to all our other Christmas activities.

Secret Church

This Good Friday, I had the opportunity to join with 63,000 Christians worldwide for a “secret church” service via simulcast. It was an incredible, humbling, life-changing, instructive, awesome, worshipful, overwhelming experience. I will be doing it again next year if at all possible!

Children Are No Mere Mortals

“It is a serious thing to live in a society of possible gods and goddesses, to remember that the dullest and most uninteresting person you can talk to may one day be a creature which, if you saw it now, you would be strongly tempted to worship, or else a horror and a corruption such as you now meet, if at all, only in a nightmare. All day long we are, in some degree, helping each other to one or other of these destinations. It is in the light of these overwhelming possibilities, it is with the awe and the circumspection proper to them, that we should conduct all our dealings with one another, all friendships, all loves, all play, all politics. There are no ordinary people. You have never talked to a mere mortal. Nations, cultures, arts, civilization—these are mortal, and their life is to ours as the life of a gnat. But it is immortals whom we joke with, work with, marry, snub, and exploit—immortal horrors or everlasting splendours.”    – C.S. Lewis, The Weight of Glory

This has always been one of my favorite C.S. Lewis quotes, but it’s hard to keep at the forefront of my mind. Last night I was imagining what the world, and my life, would be like in 5 years, and my thoughts naturally turned toward my students. In 5 years they’ll be 6 or 7, in first grade. What about 25 years? They’ll be my age!

750 Words Every Day

I’ve filled up my fair share of journals over the years.

 

Not all my writing has been full of deep, meaningful thoughts, of course. When I was 10 years old, I purposed to record all the food we ate. It lasted for 2 days.

Why Blog?

This has been a long time coming. I’ve been told I needed to make a blog, and I’ve wanted to for awhile. I’ve longed for a way share ideas, recipes, and project instructions in a more personal and widespread way than a Facebook photo album or Pinterest board. 

family "princess days" - Pocahontas

I have definite extravert tendencies, and connecting with people is a high priority for me. I’m also big into chronicling. As in, I write down the things I do every day and take pictures like a maniac. A blog seems like a good place to keep track of things, where other people can enjoy them too. 

pies of the month: French silk pie