viral video. or, more realistically, just video.

If you are on the Minivan Voorsts email list, you already saw that I'm looking to branch out a bit in 2018!  (And if you're not on the email list, you should be.  I can't tell you how to live your life, but I can try.  So go sign up to get the emails here!) 

I'm going to be experimenting with adding some vlogs to the rotation, in addition to the blog posts I'll continue to write, and I'd love to kick things off with a Q&A series.  No topic is off-limits - from marriage and family stuff, to practical homemaking or time management stuff, to homeschooling or pregnancy or newborns.  Heck, even if it's just a burning personal question, ask it!

So let me know what you'd like to talk about, and I'll make sure it happens.  (You can comment here, message me through the Facebook page, or email me at theminivanvoorsts@gmail.)  Look, Penelope's already in the process of emailing me all her most pertinent questions.

In the meantime, I wanted to let you know that I'll be live on Facebook tonight at 8:30 CST to chat about homeschooling.  This will be a super casual conversation, so if you're homeschooling, or even just thinking/wondering about it, pop on over there tonight with any thoughts, ideas, questions or comments.  Looking forward to chatting with you!

what was up this (restful!) weekly.

Oh, this week.  This wonderful, wonderful, glorious week.  It was so very normal.  And because of that, it was so very restful.  We didn't have a single appointment to go to.  We only had one daytime ministry commitment, and it was during lunchtime, so our mornings and afternoons weren't disrupted by anything.  We had nowhere to be, nowhere to go, and nothing we had to do, other than school.  And can I tell you, I could live every single week of life like this and be JUST FINE WITH IT.  Kind of like this:

Monday, what did we do?  Nothing.

Tuesday, what did we do?  Very little - a college gal came over for a bit, and then we had Connection Group in the evening.

Wednesday was a little busier - we headed up to the Amish, then on our way back into town, we stopped into Lowe's for a few things.  I got some supplies to shore up a couple of wonky closet systems I installed all wrong when we first moved in.  I got some paint samples for Callista's room.  I got a big shelf unit for the garage so I could start getting organized out there.  We also had a leaders' meeting in the evening.

Thursday, what did we do?  Nothing.

Today, what's on the schedule?  NOTHING.

Oh my word, I have needed this so badly.  The last six months have been so hectic with appointments and everything else, and I have been holding it all together, but I haven't felt rested.  I have felt ragged and worn thin.  I am really frustrated with how slowly Atticus' speech therapy is going, and frazzled by all the other """"necessary"""" appointments we have found ourselves having to navigate, and I miss the life we had for such a long time - a life that involved very little going-and-doing, and so much more staying-and-being.

I am working hard at reviewing 2017, noting my highs and lows from the year, and setting goals for 2018.  (I'm clearly a bit behind the eight-ball.)  This week has made me realize just how important it is for me to intentionally protect our time, and how I'll need to be proactive to keep the 'good' and 'necessary' from robbing from our 'best'.

Anyway, there were a few simple, sweet moments that I'm glad we got to revel in by being home this week.  Like Callista sitting in the Bumbo for the first time, and wearing THE. CUTEST. tutu-pants I've ever seen.

Because we had so much free time on our hands, we found ways to fill it.  I got so much done around the house - I packed up our Christmas stuff and rearranged the bedrooms a bit.  A bookshelf moved from our room to the girls' room, but not without some much-needed structural support being added first.  Atticus got to lend his handy skills to the job.

The girls' room is so close to being 'done enough'!  I got the bookshelf up and decorated, we recently hung another little bookshelf on the wall above Penelope's bed, and I'm working on getting a few things hung on the walls.  After that, it's just curtains and maybe a little ceiling paint, and that room will be crossed off the list for now.  I'll show you pictures when it's all done!  For now, here's a sneak peek at Penelope's new wall shelf - how cute did that turn out?!

I also made some great headway in the garage.  That place has been a certifiable hole.  We don't have any storage space inside, other than one narrow end of the laundry room.  (No attic or otherwise unfinished basement space.)  So instead of parking in our tiny one-car garage, it has been our catch-all room.  It's where I keep our homeschool and craft supplies, the décor I haven't yet found a place for inside (I'm a sloooooowww decorator), our yard tools, all our coats and shoes, Todd's dresser, and our deep storage stuff like Christmas decorations.  It's also where Atticus does all his woodworking, so everything is covered in pine shavings and sawdust, and the floor is littered with rogue nails just waiting to Home Alone my feet.

So I spent a few hours out there yesterday, organizing everything.  I still have a long way to go, but it's getting there.  Once I can move all our clothing bins out there from the laundry room, I'm planning to install a family closet down there.  So much domestic activity!

Beyond all of that stuff happening, we've whiled away the hours with our noses in books.

This is Penelope's reading tent.  She is under there reading Tanglewood Tales.

I've been dealing with a lot of back pain over the last few months, and recently it's been flaring really badly.  This was the only way I could sit that was comfortable, if you can believe that.

And here's sweet Post-Bathtime Yacco to play you into the weekend!

i'm eating us out of house and home.

As you already know, I'm doing a round of Whole30.  I've attempted this two times before now (though I've only completed it one of those times, whoops) so I'm not totally new to the game. 

This time around, I was ready: I had learned a few lessons from the times before, like adapting meals that I already eat, rather than trying to look up a bunch of Whole30-specific meals, and I was feeling pretty confident.  Plus, I'd been doing Trim Healthy Mama for a while before this, so I wasn't dealing with a sugar addiction anymore, and I was used to loading up on protein and veggies.  So other than skipping out on a few foods I typically eat, like cheese and 85% dark chocolate, how much different could it be, really?

The first week and a half were pretty smooth sailing.  Other than the brownies I ate the first two days (which I don't even feel bad about because guests made them and brought them over, and who am I to spurn their generosity?), I didn't deal much with food cravings or feelings of deprivation.  I honestly hadn't thought much about it at all.

Then there was yesterday.  Dastardly Day Ten.  Not only did the food cravings hit (I have never wanted a glass of milk and a plain slice of bread so badly in all my life), but my metabolism decided to rev wayyyyyyyy up.  Yesterday alone, I consumed four cans of tuna, four eggs, and half a pound of bacon, in addition to all the fruits and veggies.  Plus like four cups of coffee.  (I think my body is trying to cope with the loss of chocolate by consuming copious amounts of coffee.  I don't know if that's a move in the right direction or not.)

I don't know if I can stomach the idea of this much tuna and this many fried eggs for the next three weeks.  They're pretty cheap, easy-to-prepare sources of protein, but one can eat only so many eggs and so much fish before one is egg-and-fished out.  I'm nearing that point.

So maybe with the today's projected mid-fifties temperatures, I can get outside and grill some chicken to keep in the fridge.  Maybe grilled chicken won't scratch the itch that a really cheesy, greasy piece of pizza would scratch right now (OHHHHHHHHH MYYYYYYYYY WORRRRRRRRRRRRRD) (also, when does grilled chicken ever scratch that itch?), but at least it's not eggs. 

And at least I live in Missouri, where I have the option to grill because it's 55 degrees on January 11th.  (Reveling in Missouri's winter weather will never, ever get old, so if you're getting sick of hearing about it, you might want to go read some other yokel's blog.)

this is apparently what i do with my free time.

In a weird turn of events, I am finding myself with a normal week on my hands.  I seriously have no idea when the last time was that we had multiple days in a row in which we had nothing too far out of the ordinary on the agenda.  The students are on break, so while I'll still get together with a couple of them, it won't be during times that take my attention away from homeschool.  Also, we're waiting on our insurance to approve more speech therapy for Atticus, so no appointments whatsoever this week.

I am embarrassingly excited by this.  I have no idea what to do with my time, so I'm doing idiotic stuff with it.

I may or may not have found myself on Monday with saw in hand, hacking away at some scrap wood so I could stabilize this janky old bookshelf we have.  Once it was stabilized, I was like, "Hmm.  This would look good in the girls' room."  So it moved.  But now I have to find a place for the dresser that resultantly got bumped from its spot, so I'll be moving it into the closet.  But there's already a dresser in there, so I'll be moving that to our room... and on and on and on.

Plus, the weather is supposed to be unseasonably nice today, so I thought it would be a good day to clean out the garage so I could get the Christmas stuff put away out there.  But in order to organize the garage, I need a new shelf unit.  No problem, since I got some Lowe's cards for Christmas, but that means I need to actually stop at Lowe's to get it.  And if I'm stopping at Lowe's anyway, I'll just grab the brackets I need to secure the closet shelves, and maybe some paint samples for Callista's room...

I am clearly in denial about the fact that I have only three days left of this wide open week, so even though I have more time than usual, I don't have an eternity.  Plus, knowing me, I'll get all the supplies I need and then end up spending the afternoon reading instead of doing anything more productive.

Ahh well.  By the end of the week, I'll at least have a torn up house and a bunch of half-finished projects to show for myself, and no time or ambition left to complete any of it, so I have that to look forward to.

Onward and upward, friends!

how homeschool is going for us this year.

I've recently had a couple of people ask me how school is going, so I thought I'd share: it's actually going really well!  Here's a rundown of a typical day.

The kids eat breakfast around 9:00, and then get to their morning chores.

Once all of that activity has subsided, everyone disperses to tackle their assigned activities.  Big kids grab their school binders and piano lesson notebooks and hit the books.  Little kids head to the basement (more on this in a minute).  The big kids' morning work involves math, handwriting, assigned school reading, and piano lessons.

For math, we're still using Math-U-See.  I can't recommend it highly enough for many reasons, one of which being (as I ranted to a friend recently) that it's mastery-based, rather than spiral.  That may or may not mean anything to you, but it basically means that the focus is on making sure the student understands one math concept before moving on to the next.  Duh.  It seems like that should be an intuitive strategy, but apparently we've reached an era in which you have to clarify you'd like a curriculum that actually teaches a kid a linear concept in a linear way.  (And, as we all hopefully learned - ironically enough - in math, The Shortest Distance Between Two Points Is A Straight Line.  Not a spiral.  NOT A SPIRAL, ARE YOU HEARING ME, COMMON CORE??)

Anyway.  Enough ranting.  The kids are doing well in math.

Handwriting is getting better and better each day, and I've moved from using a reading program with readers and workbooks (Pathways) to simply requiring thirty minutes of reading time during school hours.  (They have an assigned list of books to choose from.)

Piano lessons are going pretty well!  The kids are using Hoffman Academy, which has been a major godsend.  Real-life, face-to-face piano lessons are crazy expensive - too expensive for us by any stretch of the imagination - but I really, really wanted them to know the basics of how to play.  I could teach them myself, but realistically I knew I wouldn't likely be all that consistent with it.  And then the clouds parted, and the angels started singing, and someone posted about Hoffman lessons in a homeschool group I'm in.  The thing is, it's all online, and I was kind of elitist about the idea of online lessons at first.  I really didn't think they could be as good as 'the real thing'.  But these lessons are really so thorough and helpful.  Penelope is especially fond of piano practice each morning.  (I'll do a more in-depth review of our experience with Hoffman Academy soon!)

While the big kids are upstairs working, the little kids are down in the basement playing.  I do occasionally let them watch Leapfrog Letter Factory, or a series of sight words videos that focus on the Dolch word lists.  Might as well use the time to make my job easier when they start school, right?

After morning school is over, we break for a bit of play time, and then lunch.  During lunch, I read poetry, our Bible passage for the day, and a section from Pilgrim's Progress.  Sometimes I'll also read from our current Literature pick, the Wind in the Willows.  OH MY WORD I LOVE THIS BOOK.

In the afternoon comes my favorite part of school: read-alouds.  Here are our current books:

(Not pictured: Lamb's Tales from Shakespeare)

One of my favorite parts of homeschooling has been learning alongside the kids, and one of my favorite parts of Charlotte Mason homeschooling has been learning from genuinely interesting sources.  The kids could probably be juggling more of our afternoon reading independently, but I don't want to give up reading the stories myself, so we still do it all together.

We will sometimes do simple crafts here and there.  Penelope has really enjoyed weaving this year, and when the garage isn't freezing cold, Atticus will spend hours out there, whittling and carving and sawing and nailing and painting a plethora of little wooden creations.  They like beading necklaces and bracelets, and we even made some candles and soap this semester.

I will say that our schedule is still really wonky.  With random appointments and ministry commitments that fluctuate every week, plus our standing schedule commitments like our morning at the Amish each week, or regular discipleship times with younger gals, our days are somewhat irregular.  It is rare to have a day in which both morning school and afternoon school are accomplished without interruption, delay or postponement.  We have missed out on a lot of the 'riches' this year: nature study, artist and composer study, tea time.  I'm trying to keep it all juggled, but that's the first stuff to get squeezed out when time gets tight.

However, we're doing well staying on course to finish our hours without cramming, taking breaks when we need to, and moving forward at a restful pace.  We were on break between Christmas and New Years, and will be taking our midterm break next week, at which point we will have completed half of our scheduled work for the year.  I'm encouraged by this!  We're halfway done, which means we're on the downhill slope from here on out.

(Sorry for the weird photo - these sheets are printed on blue paper, and it is weirdly hard to get a good, clear shot.)  I use the Ambleside Online curriculum and schedule, and build these planner pages to help myself envision it all, and check it all off a little more easily.

This is the log I keep of their hours and activities.  I keep all our logs and weekly sheets together in a spiral bound book, along with their exam sheets for each term.  This will be so very easy to stick in their portfoliosat the end of the year.

This is our fourth year of homeschooling, and I finally feel like we have enough of a framework to our weeks that I don't feel stressed or behind, though I would like to better mitigate scheduling conflicts, and better prioritize the humanities.  I have figured out a (mostly) non-annoying way to keep the required records without wanting to die, and I'm feeling pretty good about where the kids are at.  In all, I'd say we're in a pretty good spot!

2017 reading log (and book recommendations!)

You guys.  I am so proud of this year's reading list.  I not only crushed last year's accomplishments (eight measly books last year! EIGHT.), but I broke my own personal record.  In my thirty-one years of life, I have never before read this many books in a single year.  I feel victorious.  And, on top of just looking at numbers, I read some really good books.

I have highlighted ones that really jumped out at me, not necessarily because they're the only good books on the list.  (I didn't highlight any re-reads; only first-time reads are in bold.)

The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe by C.S. Lewis (1/5)

Prince Caspian by C.S. Lewis (1/6)

The Curious Charms of Arthur Pepper (1/11)

The Glass Castle by Jeannette Walls (1/12)

The Underground Railroad by Colson Whitehead (1/13)

The Voyage of the Dawn Treader by C.S. Lewis (2/2)

Teaching from Rest by Sarah McKenzie

Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince by J.K. Rowling (3/08)*

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows by J.K. Rowling (3/27)*

A Long Way Home by Saroo Brierley (4/1)

A Chicken in Every Yard by Robert and Hannah Litt (4/10)

Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: A Year of Food Life by Barbara Kingsolver (4/21)*

The Queen of Katwe by Tim Crothers (4/26)

On Becoming Babywise by Gary Ezzo and Robert Bucknam (5/1)*

An Amish Garden: A Year in the Life of an Amish Garden by Laura Anne Lapp

Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood by Rebecca Wells(6/17)*

Let Me Be a Woman by Elisabeth Elliot (6/20)

Into the Wild by Jon Krakauer (7/1)

A Woman After God’s Own Heart by Elizabeth George (7/2)*

Boundaries by Henry Cloud and John Townsend (7/7)

The Heart of a Woman Who Prays by Elizabeth George (7/15)

Seven Women and the Secret of their Greatness by Eric Metaxas (7/16)

A Natural Sense of Wonder by Rick Van Noy (7/18)

Disciplines of the Home by Anne Ortlund (7/21)*

Just Do Something by Kevin DeYoung (7/22)*

All the Pretty Things by Edie Wadsworth (7/23)

When You Rise Up: A Covenantal Approach to Homeschooling by R.C. Sproul, Jr. (7/25)*

Hannah Coulter by Wendell Berry (7/29)

Crazy Busy by Kevin DeYoung (8/4)

Grit by Angela Duckworth (8/8)

The Silver Chair by C. S. Lewis (8/11)

O Pioneers! by Willa Cather (8/13)

50 Women Every Christian Should Know by Michelle DeRusha (8/26)

Listen! The Art of Effective Communication by Dale Carnegie and Associates (Audio)

Surprised by Joy: The Shape of My Early Life by C. S. Lewis (8/31)*

Diastasis Recti by Katy Bowman (8/31)

In My Father’s House by Corrie ten Boom (9/7)

The Middle Place by Kelly Corrigan (9/9)

Home Grown by Ben Hewitt (9/21)

A Handbook to Morning Time by Cindy Rollins (9/23)

Women of the Word by Jen Wilkin (9/29)

The Road to Little Dribbling by Bill Bryson (10/8)

A Simple Way to Pray by Martin Luther (10/12)

Trim Healthy Mama Plan by Serene Allison and Pearl Barrett (10/17)*

Total Money Makeover by Dave Ramsey (10/20)*

Ragweed by Avi (10/25)

A Love That Multiplies by Michelle and Jim Bob Duggar (10/31)

Ten P’s in a Pod by Arnold Pent III (11/6)

Cheaper by the Dozen by Frank B. Gilbreth, Jr. and Ernestine Gilbreth Carey (11/18)

Practical Theology for Women by Wendy Horger Alsup*

The Shaping of a Christian Family by Elisabeth Elliott (12/2)

Growing up Duggar by Jana Duggar, et al. (12/15)

The Story of My Life by Helen Keller (12/29)

The Vanishing American Adult by Ben Sasse (12/30)


*Subsequent read-throughs of books I've read before.

There you have it. Fifty-four books! I read seventeen in the first half of the year, and thirty-seven in the second half, after deciding to set some ambitious reading goals. I'm a converted believer: setting goals really does help me accomplish more!

Now, for my absolute favorite "Books of the Year," by category:

On Homeschooling:

Teaching from Rest by Sarah Mackenzie.  This one absolutely has the potential to be a perennial re-read.  Biblical, practical and refreshing.  I'd absolutely recommend it to anyone who homeschools, or is considering homeschooling, regardless of method.

On Parenting:

The Vanishing American by Ben Sasse.  I've sung the praises of this book before, but I can't recommend it more highly.  With the scope of an historian, the passion of a senator, and the vested interest of a parent, Ben Sasse covers the history and trajectory of adolescence and adulthood in America (including the role of public schools), and offers tons of practical help in catching a vision for our kids as they grow to adulthood.  I am so excited to read this again soon.

The Shaping of a Christian Family by Elisabeth Elliot.  While this isn't a how-to parenting book, it's a really beautiful look into Elisabeth Elliot's childhood, her parents' marriage, and how they raised their six kids.  I just love the close-up look at a couple worth emulating, who loved God and each other, and whose children all grew up to dedicate their lives to sacrificial service.

Random excellent writing:

The Road to Little Dribbling by Bill Bryson.  I know I am getting annoying with how much I rave about this book, but I just love his writing.  He's definitely not a Christian, and he uses profanity, so there's that heads up (or incentive?) if you need it.  But the storytelling and humor are excellent.  I'm looking forward to reading more by him in the upcoming year!  I've already checked out every single book of his my library has...

Fiction:

O Pioneers! by Willa Cather.  I don't even know how to describe this.  I don't even know how to summarize the plot without giving anything away.  So all I'll say is this: it was really moving, and I just loved it.



Go read one of these awesome books, and then come back and tell me what you thought!  And, if you've already read some of these, how would you review them?

what's up weeeeeeeeeeeeekly. (woohoo, it's friday, y'all!)

*Prepare yourselves for only-slightly-related photos.  Oh well.*

This week has been glorious, if only because we are finally sleeping around here!  I moved Callista into her own room last week, and less than ten days later, we seem to be completely cured of the issue of the elevensies....and then the twelvesies, and the twosies, and the three-thirtysies, etc. etc.  It took two nights of training, and she's now sleeping beautifully.  While she will often cluster feed between 7:00 p.m. and 12:00 a.m., which is fine with me since I'm up until around midnight anyway most nights.  Then she conks out until 8:30 or 9:00 the next morning, only waking once to eat, if at all. 

This is huge, you guys!  Two nights ago, I got eight straight hours of sleep, and she never even cluster-fed: she slept from 9:00 p.m. until 9:00 a.m.  The flowers are blooming, the birds are singing, and I am making up the deficit in the sleep books.

I mean, I COULD remove her hat while we sit in the waiting room... or I could leave it on because she looks SO CUTE I COULD DIIIIIIIE.

A post shared by Paige Van Voorst (@theminivanvoorsts) on Jan 4, 2018 at 8:15am PST

What else was going on this week?  Nothing quite as wonderful by comparison, but some great things nonetheless.  Todd taught at church on Sunday, which I always just love.  I could listen to him every week and still never get tired of it.

Sunday night, we had some friends stay the night.  We know them from all the way back in Ames, but they currently live in North Carolina and were on their way back home from visiting the Midwest over the holidays.  It had been years since we'd seen them - they had never met Rocco or Callista, and they have a son we hadn't met yet.  So it was so great getting to catch up!

On Monday night, we had some friends over for dinner.  We know them from Cedar Falls, and they recently moved down to help with this church plant.  This nomadic ministry life can be really rough sometimes, and it's so good to be in a community where people just understand the hardships.  I'm really grateful for friendships like these.

On Tuesday, a friend watched the kids so we could go on a date.  Since I'm doing Whole30 (well... I'm kind of doing Whole30.  I'm on Day 5, and I may or may not have had brownies two of those days.  So I'm basically doing Half30)... anyway, since I'm nominally doing Whole30, we went to Hu Hot so I could load up on the veggies and meat.  I abstained from the sauces, and it still ended up being really good!  If you somehow have insider information on how I technically could not have eaten a sanctioned meal there, please don't tell me about it.  Let me live in blissful ignorance.  Plus, it wouldn't matter anyway, since I came home and indulged in aforementioned brownies.

On Wednesday, I got to chat books for an hour with an old friend, which is the best kind of phone call.

The rest of the week was pretty normal.  Amish.  Speech Therapy.  Also, I cleaned out the linen closet and hung a bookshelf in Penelope's room.  I swear, decorating always becomes a "If You Give A Mouse A Cookie" situation around here.  Now I want to hang the pod swing in there, but if I hang the pod swing, I'll have to paint the ceiling.  And once the ceiling is painted, the trim will probably need a fresh coat.  And if I'm painting the trim, I might as well just do the whole thing.  And once the walls are painted, I'll need to hang some art and curtains... you see how this works.

Anyway.  Love to you all: I'm outtie to go dig out the curtains I have in storage.

our mornings up at the Amish.

Every Wednesday morning, we drive up to the Amish to pick up many of our weekly staples.  (If you saw yesterday's Facebook video covering our Amish haul, you saw we get a lot of milk each week, as well as cream, butter, bread and eggs.)  It's about a forty minute drive from our house, and I like to get up there no later than about 9:30, so we shoot to leave the house around 8:30, so I can stop for gas and/or cash if need be.  (Obviously, they don't accept debit cards, so I have to make sure I have enough cash on hand.)

We're comparatively late risers in this house, and on normal days I don't even start the day with the kids until about 9:00, so it's a bit of a scramble to get out the door this early.  We do breakfast in the van to save time, so I usually pack things like applesauce pouches, nuts, string cheese, and raisins for the kids to munch on.  I'm currently doing a round of Whole30, so this is what I grabbed for myself yesterday:

In addition to packing breakfast, I also need to make sure to pack all my containers to bring things home in.  I bring fourteen glass half-gallon milk bottles, two glass pint jars (with lids) for cream, and empty egg cartons to return, along with any plastic containers I'd received butter in previously.

I also pack lids for the milk bottles.  Always pack lids for the milk bottles!

I've forgotten lids a few times in the past, and have had to borrow massive buckets to haul all the milk home in.  Like I said, always pack lids for the milk bottles.  It was kind of a nightmare trying to figure out how to get these into the fridge.

I remembered to bring all my milk bottles to fill at the Amish today, but forgot to bring lids for them! So I borrowed some buckets from Marie and dang, it's sobering to see how much milk the kids drink each week when it's measured by the bucketful. This is what seven gallons of raw milk looks like. I think we need our own cow.

A post shared by Paige Van Voorst (@theminivanvoorsts) on Nov 8, 2017 at 9:11am PST

Anyway.  Once breakfast is packed and containers are rounded up and loaded, I get the kids wrestled into the van.  We have a serious clown car situation going on.

Yesterday morning it was cold, but not as chilly as it was the week before, which was nice for two reasons: 1) because you do a lot of standing around outside and/or in woodstove-heated buildings once you get up there, so it makes for a cold morning, and 2) the front blower and defrost vent in our van isn't working right now.  The kids stay warm in the back, but the front can get cold.

In order to use some of our drive to get something done for school, we listen to audiobooks on the way up.   We've listened to Mary Poppins, Peter Pan, Mr. Popper's Penguins, and many of the Little House books during this time.  Yesterday, we wrapped up On the Shores of Silver Lake.

I love the drive once we start entering Amish territory.  It's peaceful, with open fields and pretty houses scattered around.  All the houses and stores are white, and the barns and outbuildings are all red. 

There's always something going on - many days there will be families hanging laundry or mending fence.  We've gotten to watch construction happening on a barn, and have found ourselves in the middle of a community fish fry.  Yesterday, many of the men were out cutting ice from the ponds into blocks, to keep in their insulated ice houses, which are essentially refrigerated outbuildings behind most houses.  The ice blocks keep the ice houses cold all year, until the ice is replenished the following winter.

Our first stop is Irene's house. 

It's been fun getting to know her.  She's my age, with five kids right around the same age as mine.  We get butter, cream and eggs from her, and frequently bring her things from town - most often it's white sugar, but I've also found myself trucking bananas, cottage cheese, pipe cleaners, and barbecue potato chips.  I've gotten to see how she does laundry: with an old-fashioned, generator-run Maytag, which she fills with water heated in a huge tank over a wood fire.  She then wrings it all out and hangs it on a line, even in zero-degree weather.


Our next stop is up the road a little way at a bakery run by The Maries. 

Little Marie got married this fall, so we haven't seen much of her in the last few months, and most of our recent business has been handled by Big Marie.  We bring our empty bottles (with lids! always with lids!) in a folding wagon I keep in the van for this very purpose.  The empty bottles aren't all that heavy, but once they're full, they weigh about one hundred pounds in total.  Hence the wagon.

Grocery shopping with some of my very best buds. #latergram

A post shared by Paige Van Voorst (@theminivanvoorsts) on Dec 3, 2017 at 5:07pm PST

In the summer, we unload the bottles on the ground outside the ice house and fill them there.  In the winter, when they don't need to keep the milk in the ice house and when it's too cold to stand outside in the wind to pour it, we go inside the kitchen of the bakery.  I hold the funnel while Big Marie (who is actually quite wiry and small) pours it from huge buckets.  Finneas caps the bottles, and Atticus loads them back into the crates in the wagon.

In addition to the milk each week, we also get eggs and cream from her, depending on what she has and what we were already able to pick up at Irene's, and the girls get to go inside to pick out cookies for the car ride home.  Then we load up and head out.

In all, we're usually only up there for about forty-five minutes other than driving time, unless I want to run into one of the bulk stores to pick up salt, or drive around in search of houses offering produce.  Once we get home, I'm totally tuckered out, but I still have to haul all the milk into the house and get it put away. 

While I'm doing that, Penelope makes tuna salad for lunch, and once all the kids have eaten and the little ones are down for nap, I basically lapse into a two-hour-long coma before one of my college gals comes over in the afternoon.

And that's how we end our typical-yet-unusual Wednesdays.  If you're ever in the neighborhood on a Wednesday, you should join us!

my january reading goals.

This month's book list has me really excited, but I guess that's true most months.  Either way, it's a good-lookin' stack staring at me from the corner of the console table.

1.  The Holiness of God by RC Sproul.  This book has been staring me down for months.  (In fact, in reading through old reading lists from previous years, I discovered that I had it on my To Read list for 2012, after not having gotten to it in 2011.  It's been a long time coming.)  I'm about halfway through it, and loving it, so I'm determined to finally finish it this month!

2.  The Abolition of Man by C. S. Lewis.  This one has been eyeballing me for a while as well.  I've really enjoyed what I've read of it so far, but as this has been my 'purse book', the one I bring with me to Atticus' speech appointments and whatnot.  But I'm finding I should just start over with it at home, since I think I'll retain more of it if I'm able to read it in longer, less-frequently-interrupted stretches.

3.  A Walk in the Woods by Bill Bryson.  I am so stinking excited to read this.  I read Bill Bryson's, "The Road to Little Dribbling," and just adored it.  His travel narrative, his insight, his humor.  Just excellent.  This one is in a similar vein, but instead of documenting a course through Britain, he writes about his travels along the Appalachian Trail.  And y'all know how I love a book with a sense of place, and how I especially love it when that place is somewhere in the South.  This is going to be so good.

4.  Travels with Charley in Search of America by John Steinbeck.  I love love love Steinbeck.  And it's another colorful travel narrative.  Count me in.

5.  The Life of Prayer by Edith Schaeffer.  I swear I've been slowly working my way through this since like August or something.  It's excellent stuff, and I have a girl crush on Edith Schaeffer, but if there's one present difficulty in reading her work, it's that she's not terribly succinct.  It takes me a while to wade through all the words, so I need frequent rest stops.  But this is the month I finish, friends.  This is the month I finish.  Lord willing.

6.  The Sonnets of William Shakespeare.  I just started these the other day, and I have been surprised by how much I have loved them.  Like, all-in adoration.  I find myself thinking about them when I'm doing the dishes, and going to back to re-read them in order to find some especially satisfying line or thought.  Who'd have thought Shakespeare would prove to be good and interesting?  Not me, but that's because I'm a Cretan at heart.  But here I am, finding my Cretan heart being melted and civilized and won over.  I'm about to become one of those priggish farts that calls him the Bard and refers to him like we're best friends.  "Well, just this morning, the Bard mentioned blahblahblah."

7.  The Daily Stoic by Ryan Holiday.  This is a year-long collection of readings from ancient stoics, so obviously I won't be finishing it this month.  I'm enjoying it so far.

8.  The Town that Food Saved by Ben Hewitt.  Ben Hewitt's book, "Homegrown" was a favorite among last year's books, and this one seems to be kind of in the same vein as one of my perennial favorites, "Animal, Vegetable, Miracle," by Barbara Kingsolver.  I'm a sucker for agriculture/food systems journalism, and this falls right in there, but I'm about fifty pages in and I'm still waiting to get really engrossed.  So we'll see.

9.  Mother and Son: The Respect Effect by Emerson Eggerichs.  This is by the same author that wrote Love and Respect, if you've read that.  I'm really excited to dig into some of the ways the principle of respect should affect how I'm parenting my boys, especially as they get older.  Should be good.

10.  (Not Pictured) The Call of the Wild by Jack London.  I'm listening to this on audiobook when I walk on the treadmill.  I'm enjoying it so far!


And in case you'd like to read any of them along with me, I figured out how to make this fancypants thingy.


On to conquer January's books! What are you reading this month?

the best monday of all the mondays.

It is no secret at this point that Monday is my favorite day of the week, since I kind of can't shut up about it.  Mondays offer a fresh start, a 'back-to-reality' return to the relative calm and stability that 'normal' offers.  I am never better rested and more ready to get to the task of real life than I am on Monday mornings.  And yesterday was not only a Monday, it was also January 1.  Talk about a great Monday. 

While I've always liked the fresh start of a brand new year, and have been what could be called a Realistic Linearist, with a clear understanding that the choices I'm currently making will inevitably lead me somewhere, I've never been an Optimistic Striver Toward Things, which meant that some of the gleam of the new year was frequently lost on me.  But last year I allowed hope to spring eternal, rather than simply acknowledge that realism puddles at the bottom of the hill, and I caught the goal-setting bug.

So now I find myself to be not only a lover of Monday Present, but a lover of Monday Yet to Come.  And I'm wet-my-pants giddy at the idea that fifty-two more Mondays stretch out before me this year, just waiting to be conquered.  So I'm making plans to do just that: to allow this year's weeks and days to count for something, and to know that what I do in this upcoming year could be used to shape who I am at the end of my life, and even how well I die.  If that's not a cheery thought to you, then you need to drink the New-Years-Was-On-A-Monday Kool-Aid.

I'm wanting to get a good start on the year by diving into this month head-first.  I don't have any hard-and-fast resolutions set yet for the year, but I do have some positive goals set for the month, like:

1.  Blog each weekday in January.  (I realize the irony of posting this goal on January 2, after not having blogged yesterday, but I'm okay with my choices and would gladly roll my eyes at you and make mocking gestures if you want to pick a fight about it.)

2.  Have weekly meetings with Todd to sync our calendars, budget, lives.  More on this to come.

3.  Complete another round of Whole30.  I'm one day in and have been mostly successful so far.

4.  Keep on reading books.  I'll go into more detail later about the number and quality of books I read last year, but I can tell you now that I read more books in 2017 than I've ever before read in a single year.  And I can tell.  I feel like the wheels in my head spin a little faster, a little more often, and a little less like they're rolling through cottage cheese than they used to, which I consider a win.

I have so much to tell you (which is good, if I'm planning to log more writing days this month), but this post is already long and I'm starting to get the too-much-enthusiasm shakes and resultant spittle at the corners of my mouth.  So for now, I'll leave you with this photo, and the promise that I'll be back tomorrow to tell you more about my reading goals for January (and beyond).