Mindy's Non-Adventures

You might not realize this, but August is over halfway over. In my mind, I'm still in July. My internal clock is hopelessly broken. The good news is that this week is the first week I haven't felt like I was detoxing from vacation. I actually went to the grocery story today and did a full grocery trip. Up to now I was stopping by the store every day or two to buy just enough to get me through the day. I'm even considering cleaning out my bag of all the travel detritus. And...okay. This is bad, but I've been walking around with my passport in its adorable RFID protected holder for weeks. I know. I know. What if my bag was stolen? All of my ids would be lost. You know what? People in Europe keep their passports on them all the time because it's not a big deal for them to hop around countries. I was living like a European!  Sigh. In any case, Tommy starting back to class with Challenge was the next push I needed to move on with my normal life. Also, it's muc...

As I've already mentioned, my focus is continuing to turn to school. Tommy starts class next Monday, and I begin tutoring my class next Tuesday. This all means that this week is the week to prepare for the next. As I stand and stare at all of the books I either will use or am still pretending I'll use this year, I can't help but think about the things that have worked and the things that have gloriously bombed in our homeschool journey. I thought it might be fun to list them out to 1. Remind myself of what didn't work so I don't try it again (You'd be surprised how many times this happens) and 2. Maybe save someone a little bit of mommy guilt when those beautifulschool plans melt into an October puddle of "I'm ruining my kids!" The problem isn't necessarily you; you just need to find your own homeschool mommy mojo. First, what's worked! Classical Conversations works for me. It makes me do the things. I need a little bit of structure t...

I'm going to give you an update that is completely unrelated to France. Except for this one thing. We were on this ship with all kinds of people from varied backgrounds. We found common ground with all of them, but a few times we'd connect with a couple and discover that they're also Jesus lovers like us. And then we'd all relax a little more because we knew we had a deeper connection than just four people that happened to be sitting at a table eating amazing French food while cruising down the Seine. I don't know exactly how to describe it, but it's kind of like meeting part of your family you didn't know existed, but you realize you all have the same nose and eyes. But let's talk about school. It's August. You've seen the school supplies for weeks. It's almost time for school to begin. I've tried to summer the heck out June and July...okay and May, but it's almost time to get down to business again. Although I have to do some prep...

I've been trying to put together a photobook on Shutterfly of our trip, and it's slow going. I'm on page 8 of the book, and I'm still on Day 1 pictures. I feel like I'm ruthlessly leaving out pictures, but I have so many! Okay, I took 624 pictures in 8 days. It's a little excessive.  In any case, I'll get it done, and I promise I won't even make you look at my masterpiece unless you ask to see it. =) Anyway, today's France post is all about food and service. I was going to separate the two, but they really go together. But first, food. Y'all. I have spent most of this year kicking my butt into shape. I've been exercising regularly and looking at every bite of food with a critical eye. You all have read/listened to me talk enough about my pre-trip food. Although I knew I'd needed to do this for awhile, this trip was the impetus that finally made me do something. I did NOT want to be the chubby girl in France, and the number on the scale ...

Hi friends. So I've been trying to write something about this trip I just returned from that you might have heard about? You know, France? And I'm having trouble. I can't get the words to say what they need to say to even attempt to convey how beautiful, relaxing, and life altering this trip was for me. So instead of trying once again to do that, I'm going to tell you why this trip was so important to me, how my perspective has changed on a few things, and a few random moments that stuck out as memorable for whatever reason. Many of those heart snapshots were not the iconic moments I expected. They were random small moments that for whatever reason made the trip seem so real. First, I have wanted to go to France since I was maybe 6 years old. I have no idea why the idea of France buried itself in my heart, but I'm not kidding. I was in first grade in my class one day with Mrs. Linville. For whatever reason, she told us about this place called Paris, France and thi...