While I haven’t shopped for clothes for a couple of weeks apart from updating one of my bathing suit, but I have been working on updating some things in my kitchen. I am constantly reevaluating which tools I use, how I am organizing things and how my cleaning works for me or not. Well the cleaning was not very exciting and here is where my first favorite comes in. Mrs Meyer’s Multipurpose Spray I bought a 3 pack on Amazon but I do not see it it there right now but am linking the Lemon Verbana scent that you can find at Target. I wanted a 3 pack in case…

My kids don’t like to hike! My kids won’t play outside! My kids never play board games! Many a time, I have heard parents make that statement about their children when I share what we do. Yes, my children do grumble sometimes when I announce a hike or they whine when I tell them that it is time to play outside. They do not always jump at the chance to play board games with me. However they usually do all of these things and they enjoy them. How have we arrived at that point? By creating habits and expectations. Start Young! Do not wait till your children are 5 or…

Today is the last day of school work for my children. The school year ends on the 22nd but no new work will be assigned giving students time to catch up on past assignments if they need to. Our routine will not change much this month as we stay close to home and kept our social distance. We will continue to enjoy the outdoors as weather permits and figure out later on how June and July will look like. Will the neighborhood pool open this summer? Will we visit our friends on our usual road trip to Missouri? And will we have our long weekend in the mountains with my…

Well, I sure haven’t been the best about curbing my shopping this month but I also was able to stay on track with saving too, so April was a good month. After the first couple weeks at the end of March adapting to our new routines, we all settled into a school, play and eat routine. State Park and Natures Top of my list of favorites has to be the weather we have had and the opportunities for outdoor walks, picnic (only one so far) and blog picture in pretty locations. If you missed Wednesday’s blog with part 1 of a 3 part series featuring the beauty in nature we…

This is not the first time that I share an outing to the Etowah Indian Mounds. After 6 weeks of walking around our neighborhood, I decided it was time to walk at the nearby state parks. Our neighbor told me that the mounds were open and that that while the building/museum was closed, this historical site was open to the public free of charge. We have been once or twice as a family but we usually walk at the state park because it is free apart from a minimal parking free while the Indian Mounds charges admission. So I told my boys we were going for a walk somewhere different,…

Christ is Risen! Each year, the week prior to Pascha, I prepare different items to add to our Pascha Easter basket. Hop on over to last year’s post to see what our basket looked like (similar but different: I forgot which basket I had used then!). This year, the date of Pascha fell one week after western Easter. We typically add items we did not eat during lent in our baskets: meat, dairy and eggs. We do not gorge ourselves once lent is over but do enjoy these treats in moderation in the weeks following lent. Cheese Paskha I usually make cheese Paskha with a couple of my friends but…

Wednesday was a hard day. In order to avoid crowds at the grocery store, I changed my grocery day to Wednesday. I woke up with a slight headache. nothing too terrible but I know that if I don’t take anything, it will develop into a migraine. But since it wasn’t a migraine I didn’t want to take too much medicine. Because of that I ended up with that headache all day which influenced my feelings of accomplishment. It took me 2 hours including the drive to take care of the grocery shopping and gas, my 2 year old who is potty training right now had 2 accidents, it took me…

I had a hard time coming up with favorites for March at first. It is not that my life is that much different now than before apart from being stuck at home a little more than before.  I have been quite a homebody the past year or two unless we are on vacation but I had started to meet different friends once a week. I think it is more the uncertainty of when this will be over that gets to me. The children are doing well with their home schooling lessons and we really have enjoyed the outside time (minus the pollen) with walks and bike rides as well as…