making space for creativity
The other day my mom said she recently had a conversation with a life coach about the intentions she wanted to set for February. My mom said that she was hoping to do more things out of place of peace. And the life coach gently asked her about what practical steps she could take to…
Sometimes, finding a great children’s book is easy. You remember reading Make Way For Ducklings by Robert McCloskey as a child, and then you go to the library and ask the librarian where it might be. She leads to you to the right shelf, and along the way you see a display of new books and you…
I read some excellent books this year! I seem to continuedly learn over and over that I am happiest and feel most like myself when I am in the middle of a great book. My top five books from the year were The Quotidian Mysteries: Laundry, Liturgy and “Women’s Work” (Madeleva Lecture in Spirituality) by Kathleen Norris, Which…
Merry Christmas Friends! As I write this, we are happily a few days away from Christmas break, eating leftover Santa Lucia Day buns, and loading the harp up for a bunch of dress rehearsals and children’s Christmas performances at school and church and our local nursing home. We are happy to report that this school…
Merry (almost) Christmas, Friends! Here is an arrangement of passages from Isaiah, Luke, and Matthew interspersed with Christmas carols for a simple home Christmas pageant. (Click Here for a Printable Version) Who doesn’t love babies in bathrobes with wrapping paper roll staffs? But if your family is not up for using dictionary stands as…
Neither Evan nor I grew up celebrating Saint Nicholas Day on December 6th, but we wanted to start with our kids. Over the years we’ve figured out that what works for our family to celebrate St. Nicholas Day are three things: A new pair of boots (or shoes) A tiny orange (inside the new boots)…
This is my fourth year of putting together a list of books that Lily loved over the last year (and her older brother Jackson loved when he was four). Many four year olds really start to have longer and longer attention spans for books, and it makes finding read aloud books easier in many ways….
2023 Newbery winner (I know, you thought I was done with them!), Freewater by Amina Luqman-Dawson is a tale about Homer and Ada, two enslaved children running away from a plantation to a secret swamp maroon community called Freewater. Told from various points of view, Freewater follows many characters traveling to and from the maroon community…
I love children’s Bibles! And we have quite a few around here. A good children’s Bible helps children enter into the big story of God making and redeeming the world. From board book Bibles that you can read in five minutes to full text bibles that would take you 75 hours to read straight through,…
Happy Epiphany friends! For a long time, I wasn’t exactly sure what Epiphany was because it seemed sometimes to be a specific day, other times a whole season, and sometimes was more of a concept. It turns out it really is all three! The word means “a usually sudden manifestation or perception of the essential…
My favorite books from this year were heavy on theology and Christian formation. I loved The Dwelling of the Light: Praying with Icons of Christ by Rowan Williams, Liturgy of the Ordinary: Sacred Practices in Everyday Life by Tish Harrison Warren, Hearing God: Developing a Conversational Relationship with God by Dallas Willard, and The Genesis of Gender: A Christian Theory by Abigail Favale….
Merry Christmas Friends! This year I discovered that the Hays family tartan basically looks like a Christmas tartan. So we are all sporting Christmas plaid this year for Christmas. The big events of this year were our summer trip to Rocky Mountain National Park … and the kids starting school in the Fall! Doing both…
This Fall is my fifth year participating in documenting in pictures a regular day in the Fall. It’s really an Instagram challenge and hashtag (#OneDayHH), which I have done and enjoyed, but I really enjoy taking my time and reflecting on those pictures in a blog post. (You can see my previous blog posts from…
A generous family from Evan’s school invited us to spend four nights at their amazing Door County house just south of the little town of Fish Creek. Even though we love the Great Lakes and have traveled all over Wisconsin, we had never been to Door Country! I think that maybe I went when I…
Our big adventure this summer was our trip to Rocky Mountain National Park with our kids ages six and four! We stayed in Granby, Colorado for six full days of hiking. (Fancy hand drawn map of our hikes below.) It was nearly a two week road trip from Milwaukee, Wisconsin to Granby, Colorado. We drove…