To-Do List for Today

1. Repaint toenails.
2. Get in car with three of my best Charlotte girlfriends and drive to Orlando, Florida for The Gospel Coalition National Women's Conference.

OK. Ready, set, go.

You can look for sporadic updates on my weekend on my twitter feed and on facebook.

Brain Dump

Just some thoughts I felt the need to unload:

1.  When a kid is yelling at the top of his lungs from the deep end of the pool, "OH, I'M DYING!  I'M DYYYYYIIIIING!" it's a pretty sure thing he's not.

2.  So far I've learned that owning a pool means:  having a lost-and-found box; endlessly hanging up towels; and forgetting when it was the last time your kids actually showered.

3.  Jonathan is on the verge of really swimming.  We are very excited about this development, because it will bring us up to 80% proficiency.  Andrew decided that he was done being scared of deep water about two weeks after we opened the pool.  One afternoon he just jumped in and that was that.

4.  As usual on Father's Day, I made a bunch of Mexican food and David watched the US Open whilst yelling at the television in a Scottish accent.  We are nothing if not multicultural.

5.  Before the golf yelling started, David and I both went in the pool and then laid on towels in the sunshine.  I don't think we've done that since our honeymoon.  It was weird.

6.  I've been really loving Sara Groves' newest offering, Invisible Empires.  Here is one selection from the album which Sara wrote for IJM.  On the album, it begins with an inner-city youth choir singing the original  "Eyes on the Prize."

Welcome to Donwell: Juxtaposition

If I were to ask you where a homeschooling mother of five children spends most of her time during the day, what would you say?

Three rooms -- kitchen, schoolroom, and laundry -- are where I spend most of my waking hours.

So here's the great thing about this place:  the laundry room here is RIGHT NEXT TO the schoolroom.  It actually comes off of the schoolroom.  So I can fold and keep an eye on people doing their math.  I can switch loads in between reading and science.  It's really quite amazing.

Of course, now that it's summer, I avoid both of these rooms like the plague.  It's vacation, after all.

Welcome to Donwell: Other Smart Stuff

Part One of this series here.

Last time we covered smart stuff in the kitchen; today we'll reach the rest of the house.  

This little thingy makes a door shut automatically.  It's really nice to have on a powder room door that's right next to the kitchen.

Here is a terrible picture of a wonderful feature in the living room:  floor outlets!  I get excited whenever I see these in a home.  We had extension cords running all around our old house, so this time it's nice to have a smarter arrangement for our cords. 

Here's the pergola over the back deck.  See that gray stuff on the right?  It's black mesh fabric.  Why is it there, you ask?  It provides just enough shade for the people sitting on the deck, so that they don't feel like they're frying in the hot, direct sun.  I was doubtful about its effectiveness, but now that I've spent hours sitting under it, I can testify that it works wonderfully.  It's such a great idea.

The former lady of the house was an avid gardener, and she saw to it that her plants got plenty of water.  On the deck, that means that we have a suspended irrigation system for hanging plants.  See the hose just to the right of the plant hanger above?  It provides drip irrigation, and there are seven more just like it strung across the deck.  SO SMART!

Here's one we haven't used yet, but come the winter, it will get used I'm sure.  This is a gas lighter for the wood-burning fireplace in our living room.

Lastly, there are skylights in two rooms.  Above, you see the schoolroom, which is the room over the garage.  Its location over the garage means that it has sloped ceilings and just one window.  The addition of this one skylight makes a huge difference in the brightness of the room.

And here are the two skylights in the kitchen.  The bars across them were used for hanging plants; we plan to take them down.

Welcome to Donwell: Smart Kitchen

Part One of this series here.

This house has many of those details that real estate agents love to call "better than new."  You know, those things that we would love to have but are probably too busy or too cheap to actually do.

Here are a few of these goodies...today we'll cover the kitchen.

Ben loved to show this one to everyone the moment they came in the house during our first month:  THE SPICE CABINET.

Spices on the front

Swinging front shelf

MORE SPICES!

I had achieved something like this at our old house using stuff from IKEA, but this one is built in:

A place for cookie sheets, cooling racks, etc.

 The silverware drawer has dividers, and it has two layers (this one slides back to reveal another underneath):

Why do we own so much silverware?

And when you open the pantry door, a light shines down on you from above.

Who ate all the cereal?

 Because of this little switch on the door:

So, nothing flashy, but things that make life in the space more pleasant.  This kitchen is far smaller than my old one, but it's MUCH smarter.  I don't feel squeezed at all.

Welcome to Donwell: The Befores

I named our new house.  I named it in my mind, anyway.  You probably think it's pretentious, but I find it charming when people name their homes.  

"Donwell" is a Jane Austen reference; Donwell Abbey is the home of Mr. Knightley in Emma.  If you haven't read it, you should go back and read our love story to find out why it's so much like Emma and Mr. Knightley.  Donwell is an obvious allusion to Knightley's doing things well in many aspects of his life.  

Anyway, when we finally found this place and bought it, I named it Donwell because if there's one thing we want in our home, it's to do things well for God's glory.  But it's Donwell in my head.  I don't say things like, "Do pop in for a spot of tea at Donwell this afternoon," or "You must come walk the gardens at Donwell."

For that matter, I don't say, "Possums drown at Donwell, poor saps."

So I'm going to introduce you to the new place this week.  You can see some before photos of the downstairs in my moving day post.  The dark wood trim was mostly primed before we moved in, and I've been painting it in fits and spurts since then.  

Upstairs, we have...

"tomato soup."  That's what I like to call this color. It morphs from pink to brown depending on the light.  Above we have the master bathroom, with original vanity, which cries out to me for replacement or at least a coat of paint.

See?  It kinda looks brown here, doesn't it?  This is the master bedroom.  But it's really just the BRIGHT cranberry carpet that makes the paint look brown -- it's the same color.

This is the hall bath.  I love that the kids have two sinks.  I also don't dislike the color in here.  It's nice.  The bathroom also has a separate area with toilet and shower with a door.  It feels appropriate when you think that five people are sharing it.

This room is on the third floor, which is really the attic.  The previous owners finished off a portion of the attic into a craft room.  We now have an extra bed in here.  I also just unpacked all my sewing stuff into this room this past Sunday.  I can't wait to use it.

Here's the room above the garage.  It's our schoolroom now.  I'm so glad they put a skylight in...it really brightens the place up.  If you can't tell, the paint is dark blue.  It makes me a little jumpy.  I need something brighter and calmer.

Down the hall from there is Maddie's room.  This room feels HUGE right now because Maddie is sleeping in a toddler bed again since the move.  We really need to get her a twin bed.

And here's where we've been eating most of our meals lately.

David thinks looking pensive is funny.

Look for more Welcome to Donwell posts this week!

Light for the Lost Boy

If you are interested in such (wonderful) things, you should know that Andrew Peterson's new album, Light for the Lost Boy, comes out at the end of August.  Here is the stunning cover art:

AP said in the comments that he's releasing it on vinyl, too.

We heard quite a few of the new songs at AP's concert in the spring.  It circles around themes of adolescence, lost innocence, and the pain and beauty of growing maturity....all those things that make your chest ache and eyes water.

 Or maybe that's just me.

For Scale

The amount, size, and gender of my children have necessitated that I begin cooking in vessels like this:

I can really get by with my normal pots if I'm just feeding our family.  But what's the point of making a big batch of soup or chili if there's none to put in the freezer?  Or what if we have people over and there's not enough?

(the sink is just there for scale...this pot IS a sink.)

The Rational Explanation

I'm just going to go ahead and confess that I currently have an expired license in my wallet.  Yesterday was my birthday and my license was due to be renewed, but I haven't done it yet.

There are many very rational reasons why.  Here is my plan if I get pulled over and am forced to hand an expired license to an officer:

Step One:  Pull over quickly and safely, not like that time I drove for a long time not noticing the lights until the officer finally had to put on the siren.

Step Two:  Put on Harried Mom Face (where's the challenge in that -- you hardly ever take it off).  Open window, keeping hands in full view at all times.

Step Three:  Hand officer license and registration.  Immediately confess that license is expired, before she/he has a chance to see it.

Step Four:  Here's your moment.  Launch into your airtight explanation:

I'm so sorry, officer.  I know it's expired.  I received the notification six months ago in the mail, but then:

• We were planning to move, and I thought it would be better to have my official address on there rather than go through the additional step of getting it changed again after we moved.  So that takes us to February.
• My hair salon closed and moved to Cotswold.  They rescheduled all the appointments and mine got put off.  I don't have to tell you how critical it is to have a good haircut for your license picture, right?  It lasts for ten years!  My last one was really good, because we had just moved from California...and my hair was long...and my face was thin (living in California will do that for ya).  I have a lot to live up to with that picture.
• The day I finally had my hair appointment, I ended up in the emergency room with a kidney stone attack.  I had to text my friend who's a colorist at the salon from the ER and have her tell my stylist that I wouldn't make it.
• Then I spent a week in a holding pattern, ready to collapse into blinding pain again at any moment, until the doctor and I agreed that we'd do surgery to remove the 5mm kidney stone.  Do you know what that's like?  5 millimeters in a teeny little 1 millimeter tube inside your body.  And it's not smooth.  It's like a peppercorn. I mean OW.  I'm just saying, OW.  Did you want me to go get my picture taken at the DMV in that state of mind?
• Then I had to finish up homeschooling for the year, picking up the shreds of learning we'd done while I was on narcotic painkillers, and then we took off for Indiana for a week because my oldest niece was graduating from high school and we needed to be there because all the siblings were going to be there, and we can't be the slacker branch of the family who doesn't make the trip, right?
• And that brings us up to yesterday, my birthday, the day my license expired, and the day I finally got a good haircut.  I will right this wrong as soon as possible, but as you can see it has been utterly impossible for me to renew my license until now.  I hope you can understand.

That'll work, right?

David Sings Adele

I'm sorry, there is no video available at this time.

However, I will attempt to communicate this musical gem through the magic of vocabulary.

Adele is on the radio all the time here in Charlotte; is that true where you live?  "Someone Like You" plays all the time.  If our entire family happens to be in the car when Adele starts singing, here's what happens:

Source

I start singing along, quite terribly.  I can carry a tune but I am the antithesis of soulful.  I am as white as they come in the vocal department.  Maddie also sings along in her little mumbling three-year-old way.  We both close our eyes and bob our heads like we're on stage at Royal Albert Hall.  Sometimes there are even hand motions.

The boys roll their eyes and put up with it, again.

David starts improvising his own lyrics when the bridge ("I hate to turn up out of the blue uninvited...") comes on.  They usually go something like this -- though they are different every time because he is such a Masterful Singer/Songwriter:

I like to turn up at your house uninvited
'Cause I'm a creepy stalker and I don't care that you're married
I follow you around and and it shouldn't be surprising
That to you, I am so creeeeepyyyyyy....

Then it kind of descends into babbling on and on about how Adele has no respect for the institution of marriage and how mad the guy's wife would be if she answered the door.  You know, typical heart-wrenching love song stuff.

So that pretty much ruins it, and Maddie and I start singing louder and louder to try to drown him out, until finally one of the boys interjects in good sense and asks if we can please change the radio station.

It's all good fun.  I think Adele would approve.

Little Graces

Yesterday...

• Jonathan began swimming without a noodle helping him
• Andrew touched the bottom of the deep end with his toes
• We cleaned out the second side of the garage, which has been a disaster since we moved
• Jonathan found the treadmill key, which has been missing since before we moved
• I held a four-day-old baby girl
• I sold a couple things on craigslist within two hours of posting them
• Cameron began Harry Potter book five
• Strawberries were $.99 a quart at Aldi
• I caught up with Erin after many weeks of both of us traveling
• David had an extremely successful test of a new design -- "the best we could have hoped for"