Summer Projects

Perhaps it is simply the nature of time, that the more of it you have experienced, the more you realize its swift progression. The idea of “someday” and “eventually” have taken on a cynical slant for me lately, as I have come to acknowledge that if I don’t pursue something “now” or “soon,” it is likely going to go undone. There is a perspective shift on this that I know continues to progress through the decades, as I think about the classic older-womanly comments that “this too shall pass” and “someday you’ll miss this” and reminder to “enjoy every moment.”

Most of those thoughts apply to the niche of motherhood, of walking my little ones through their education, sanctification, and devotion until they leave our nest to gather their own twigs and build upon our shoulders for the next generation. Some of these thoughts apply to being a middle-generation: of being sandwiched between two faithful women above me (praise the Lord for my mother and grandmother!) and the faith-of-a-child daughter following after me. Some even apply to personal pursuits and projects.

One of my main goals for this summer had been to organize the basement storage area. I had been making good progress on that last year, but then when Olive Tree Bible Software (my husband’s company) went completely remote a couple of months ago, our basement inherited an entirely new category of assets. Let’s just fully admit, then, that any organizational progress I had made was immediately eclipsed. I had intended to spend any spare hours in my summer weeks down in the cool basement, listening to audiobooks, and finding ways to organize and store everything necessary.

But another case of “tyranny of the urgent” arose when I suddenly found myself thrown into the position of creating a homeschool co op from the ground up. I finally have all the groundwork well in-hand for that project, complete with class schedules and book lists: so after hosting a cookout this next weekend for 65+ people in the co op families, I will simply need to complete 31 weeks of lesson plans. Yep: that’s the rest of my summer’s free moments! Good thing I find it enjoyable work.

This is also my fourth year preparing the Paideia Northwest conference for encouraging mamas to raise & educate their children in the nurture and admonition of the Lord. I try to take six months off, and then May through November are my busy months for conference work. Registration for this year’s event should open one month from today, and this means I have to dig in now and finalize a bunch of details. This is all well underway, and I love the endeavor. But it easily eats up time and energy and heart.

Somehow, though, God has given me a few other opportunities for sharing my heart this summer. Besides having had a couple of recent speaking opportunities (with more peeking on the horizon), I have been given the blessing of a couple writing opportunities. In one case, I get to share about my passion of teaching my children to sing, and focus on memorization of Psalms. I can’t wait to share that here! In the meantime, please follow my little hobby on Instagram @SacredPsalmody

But today, I get to share my heart in a community effort put together by my friend Amy Sloan. Amy hosts a podcast called Homeschool Conversations, and writes a blog called Humility & Doxology. For a project with The Curriculum Choice this year, she has been creating a conversation with homeschooling moms from all points on the compass – ages, stages, and styles. To my delight, I was asked to participate in her Second-Generations post, which went live today. It was a joy to share my portion, and this morning I was blessed to read the perspectives of the additional participants.

Seeing God’s faithfulness in my own life is a gift, and something which needs to be forefront as I continue to carry on and build upon the shoulders of my parents. And so my summer projects this year are focused on sharing that faithfulness and harvesting/processing some of that fruit. Rather than organizing the basement, I am writing and speaking and singing and teaching and leading. There may be fewer audiobooks this year than I had hoped, and certainly fewer basement corners classified and curated… but there is just as much fruit. Different fruit. Beautiful and shareable.

Rejoice with me. Come see my disorganized basement if you must! But join me in the conversation of proclaiming the goodness of the Lord. He is on the throne! And as His people, we get to participate in the furthering of His Kingdom. Let’s do this by educating our kids for Him, by spurring one another on toward love and good works, by encouraging daily faithfulness in ourselves and our families, by repenting and forgiving and cultivating an atmosphere of grace. That’s the sum of my summer projects. (Stay tuned for more project reveals!)

Reading Aloud is Contagious

It was a little before Simeon was born that I caved, trading in my old handy flip-phone (“sorry, I don’t text – it’s way too hard on this thing”) for an iPhone, and then I think it was shortly after Simeon was born that I learned about podcasts. At first, I would literally just smile & nod when people would talk about listening to podcasts, because I honestly had no real idea what they were talking about but didn’t want to seem as ignorant and old-school as I truly was. But after I got hooked on Sarah Mackenzie’s blog, The Read Aloud Revival and fell in love with her upon reading Teaching From Rest – a Homeschooler’s Guide to Unshakable Peace, I decided that I needed to figure out this whole podcast thing and find a way to jump on that bandwagon. Because, ya’ll, Sarah Mackenzie had a podcast (was it like a sermon? someone reading a blog? webcamming? I was that clueless…) and I wanted in on that treasure.

That was over two years ago. I’m deep in treasure now.
Since then, I have listened to every podcast episode at least once, pored over her booklists and recommendations, and have seen her out & about in town (like at Nate Wilson’s movie release last week) – because, yep, we live in the same county and go to the same places and know a lot of the same people and use the same library. In fact, my kids and I have been known to compare the size of Sarah Mackenzie’s “hold” items stack at the library to ours! Because, umm, we’re awesome like that.

It was Sarah Mackenzie who somehow got me linked up with a lot of the authors and homeschooling resources that I have been in love with over the last couple of years. She is the one, thanks to her blogs and podcasts, who has trained me to recognize names of authors & illustrators, and how to choose great literature over twaddle or mediocre stuff. She helped us fall in love with The Rabbit Room, especially S.D. Smith and Andrew Peterson and Jonathan Auxier and Jonathan Rogers and Jennifer Trafton… She lead me to resources like IEW, Andrew Pudewa, CiRCE, Cindy Rollins, and Sally Clarkson. She is also the culprit behind the fact that even though my family has four library cards (with fifty checkouts each allowed at a time) we have actually maxed-out our limit before!

She speaks at homeschool conferences and women’s events, and I have wanted to participate in one of her events, but they honestly are usually a plane flight away. And y’all know how I feel about flying, right?
I might be a bit personally peeved that Sarah Mackenzie has not yet helped remedy the fact that we still don’t have a great homeschooling conference in our area… hehe… but maybe I need to help get that wagon started moving. I’m a communicator when I need to be – I can make phone calls and write letters and get details organized. So we’ll see. I so much wanted to attend the Great Homeschool Convention or even Wild+Free. Sigh. My city is growing, and we’ve got tons of homeschoolers who need a superb resource at our fingertips! And I think Sarah Mackenzie just might be our golden ticket.

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But anyway, her new book released yesterday and I got to attend her book release party tonight at a local bookshop called Auntie’s, along with a few friends. Sidenote: this was after I spent two hours reading aloud to my kids this afternoon, and they each read on their own for an hour, plus yesterday I read an entire novel (it was middle grade fiction, but still… the whole thing in one day doesn’t happen very often anymore in my life!) AND half of The Read-Aloud Family. My life is always bookish, but today was no exception whatsoever.
So anyway, she read us a chapter of her new book, answered questions, visited with us & signed books, and shared all over again how she fell in love with reading aloud with her kids to make connections with them & with literature. And since I caught the bug from her over two years ago, it was fun to spend some time with lots of other locals who caught the same bug. It was an energetic group of gals & a super sweet evening, and I am so thankful I got to spend time with these lovelies talking about one of my favorite things in the world!! (….books! but you knew that already, right?!)

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(L to R: Sarah G, my sis-in-law Ashley B, Sarah M, Tina G, and me)

Oh, and if I were cool and trendy enough to have instagram, this would be filled with all the hashtags.
#readaloudfamily #readaloudrevival #homeschoolmamasonthetown