Family Life & Kids

Auntie Anxiety and her two am homeschool doubts

December 3, 2019

Let's call her Aunty Anxiety. And I've come to see that her intentions are good, even if I have to squint real hard to see it.

A September review (in short)

September 30, 2019

September was a whirlwind of activity and then for a solid week at the end of the month I stepped out of it all to walk in the woods and climb mountains, in sunshine and rain, with my best friend and life partner.

Wrapping things up

August 21, 2019

On these late summer days, as blackening red drupes weigh down the chokecherry boughs and the pears hang like pendants on the neighbor's tree, everything ripening and suspended, it feels like a holding year. Waiting for next thing to start, but knowing we won't get there till we finish this first.

As we finish homeschooling 3 kids through high school

July 31, 2019

I don't have the same sparkly idealism. (It's fun! It's easy!) What I have instead is years of experience that have confirmed what was once just theory - it's possible to do something different with education and to build the kind of relationships I envisioned for family life.

Vacations on our way to an empty-ish nest

July 23, 2019

Our children are practically adults now and will be choosing for themselves what to do with their leisure time and how to fund that leisure. Whatever they choose, we don't feel a responsibility anymore to keep the gang together and create summer vacation memories.

What counts as vacation, anyway?

July 19, 2019

It's taken me many years of adult life to feel comfortable with my own family's version of family vacation, which has been an evolving hybrid of traveling to visit family, camping and backpacking, and working roadtrips.