raising rileys

mothering is a joy

We are getting ready to head out of town, but I wanted to briefly share about the United Nations CSW (Commission on the Status of Women) conference, documents are being produced that refer to children as “burdens;” with the expressed desire to have the efforts (unpaid care and domestic work) usually performed by mothers “reduced and redistributed” to “national care systems” (the government). Please see the link here. This cannot be! I wish I were able to hug mothers everywhere who struggle, because the truth is, it's hard work! But I cannot think of a greater work that I could be doing. It makes me cringe to hear children referred to as "burdens," and I want to stand up and shout in support of home and family!

a homeschool life conversation with kimberly lowry

Hi, I feel honored that Elizabeth asked me to talk about how I homeschool. My name is Kimberly. I grew up in a little town in south-east Idaho. I have 7 children. My oldest daughter is 20 and is a sophomore in college. I then have 2 boys ages 17 and 15. Next, 3 girls ages 11, 10, and 8, and finally a boy age 3. We live in Fairbanks, Alaska and although we spend most of the year freezing, Alaska is a great place to raise kids. I homeschool all of my children, and have since my oldest was in 3rd grade.

a homeschool life conversation with maren jones

Hello! My name is Maren & I am the lucky wife of Dan Jones. We met on a blind date in high school & have been married for almost 18 years. We have 6 children: Averee 13.5, Adelyn 11.5, Owen 10, Reese 7, Gavin 4 & Fisher 3. We live in beautiful Southern Utah. We enjoy the outdoors; boating, camping, fishing, hiking, traveling, playing games, & watching movies. But nothing beats a date night, or even better-a vacation with just us two.

a homeschool life conversation with jesika harmon

We are the Harmons! Robbie, aka the Principal who the students actually want to get sent to visit; Jesika, aka the teacher/mom who some days flies by the seat of her pants; Bree, aka the sweet 9 year old who loves everything art, history and music, and not so much anything math this year; Gabe, aka the 7 year old who rolls his eyes at reading unless it has to do with animals and college sports teams; McKay, aka the 5 year old who is trying to find his place as the third child and has all the sport/math/reading talent as his older siblings but kindawants to be different; and Quinn, aka the 3 year old ballerina who reminds mom that she has to do “her math and grammar” every day too.

grumpiness and a gorgeous autumn day

Ever have those mornings where there's a general aura of grumpiness going around? Maybe not in your home, but it occasionally happens in our home. I think it usually relates to one sort of stress or another when it comes from me or my husband, and when it comes from one of the kids, I can oftentimes correlate it to not enough sleep or some sort of little sickness (a cold or something) making it's way through our home. Either way, the reality is that sometimes grumpiness takes a bit of a hold on us.

exhausted yet fulfilled

By about 1:30 today I was feeling pretty exhausted. As I mentioned in my previous post, I have been working on a lot of things trying to get caught up and doing my best to put my full energy and heart into our homeschool (along with all the other regular life stuff). I think we're doing pretty well, but boy, it's no small effort! That's why at around 1:30 I was scooting the boys out the door so they could play a while and run around in the backyard while I could sit down and take a break for a few minutes!