beauty that moves

can you do me a favor?

If you can, please take a moment from your day and hop over to my cousin's blog to give her family a big heartfelt "woo-hoo!!" It'll mean so much. You'll see... xo

she thinks it's "so cute!"

She's been saving. Now we have a ukulele in the house... and she's following ukulele loving people on twitter. Who knew there was such a culture? This morning she came down the stairs strumming a tune. I think the soft and warm Hawaiian sounds will be even more beautiful come February. 

Wishing you a beautiful weekend!

irene taught me a few things

 

It was a good idea to bake all that bread before the storm.

 

 

Trust my instincts, always. I sensed this was going to be a bad one.

 

 

Trees close to the house can sometimes be a problem.

 

 

The basement is not nearly as neat and organized as I thought.

 

 

Twenty years of owning this game and it's still loved by kids of all ages.

 

 

Control is an illusion.

 

 

My husband is the kind of guy who heads out into the height of the storm when a tree crashes into a neighbors front yard and an electrical fire blazes - to offer his help in any way that is needed.

 

 

He is also the kind of guy that will head back inside just as soon as the neighborhood post storm folk music sing-a-long begins.

 

 

For a few hours that day, I knew fear.

 

 

Gas cookstoves are wonderful. So is ever-running (albeit cold) city water.

 

 

Headlamps make for good light shows.

 

 

Canning all the produce in the fridge before it went bad was a resourceful idea.

 

 

The guitar will always play. The girl will always sing.

 

 

In the days that followed life moved at a different pace. I loved that pace.

 

 

The poor lighting I complain about in my kitchen is actually kind of pretty.

 

 

There was time to get acquainted with the film camera my mom loaned us.

 

 

I will go to great lengths to keep us in green smoothies.

 

Living two blocks from a university library with great hours, wifi, and electricity is nice. It helped keep my course going.

  

 

As did a borrowed laptop and incredibly patient workshop attendees.

  

 

Although wouldn't you know it, the very day that I decided to take the plunge and invest in a laptop so I could more easily keep my course on track...

 

 

... utility trucks arrived on our street and worked non-stop until power was restored.

 

It happened to be on my birthday. That was pretty sweet.

 

Eight days without power. I learned a lot about myself, about how our family lives, and the sort of things we find necessary. We really did fine. My work was the biggest challenge but I managed to only be 'absent' for two days, and everyone was so understanding.

For a long time now (years), I've said the three most important elements of modern day living (for me) are indoor plumbing, the internet, and antibiotics.

I realize that's kind of a weird list. And certainly I appreciate many other points of modern life, but these are the three that I would choose if I ever needed to. 

This extended power outage has confirmed that list. 

I'm still pretty off schedule, the inside and outside clean up continues. In less than a week I'll wrap up this session of 30 Day Vegan (a little sad about that) and officially begin our homeschool year (a little overwhelmed that I don't have it all together... that's overrated, right?). 

Mostly, I'm just happy to be back here. 

checking in

Taken standing in my driveway, this is my neighbors house. That final standing trunk is leaning towards Emily's bedroom.

A quick note to say hello, we are all safe and sound. Irene hit here pretty hard, no power since Sunday, no power in sight. Lot's of clean-up ahead.

Adam wrote briefly about the storm (cannot believe they are not calling what we experienced a hurricane), I'll have more to share soon.

Hope you are all doing well... hello!

yesterday afternoon

 

 

 

 

Spent a little time getting out pre-storm groove on... now we're ready.

Bummed about our cancelled camping trip, but such is the way things go. Stay safe.