Snow Sabbath

A snow storm covered us (and a lot of the United States) in snow last Sunday. 

It's a good thing church was cancelled and only online that day, because if people had been out at church or anywhere else, the roads would have gotten too bad too fast. 

Everyone knew the snow as coming for a while. But once the snow started, it came down fast and steady and kept falling all day and night. 

So, we started a fire for the first time this winter, gathered in the living room and watched church, and we got a lot of rest on that snow sabbath (unless we were out shoveling). 

The plow came Sunday and cleared the driveway, but the snow just kept coming.  

On Monday morning, it was as if the plow never came; There was so much snow! 

The girls had work and/or homeschool work to do on Monday, so they weren't free to play until Monday evening, about the time the sun went down. 

But they went out anyway. They turned the outside lights on and explored the yard and edges of our woods and built a snow fort inside the massive pile of snow the plow made on the side of the driveway. Below is a picture I took from the warmth of the inside while I was making dinner. 

I imagine they won't always want to play in the snow, but I'm glad they are still young enough, or young enough at heart, to want to play in the snow. 

And I'm thankful for the pockets of quite stillness and rest winter provides. 

Winter can be, in a sense, one long sabbath if we are apt to observe it. 

An Element of Chaos

Arcus brings a lot of joy and an element of choas to our otherwise orderly days. 

 He's a fun friend to have hanging around. We're so thankful for him. 

Braces Off!

Avril got her braces off! She celebrated by immediately chewing a piece of gum on the way home from the orthodontist. 

English Muffin and Sally Lunn Breads

I am still baking my way through the breads in Bernard Clayton's New Complete Book of Breads.

I made two batches of English Muffin bread; That's four loaves. 

We enjoyed a loaf and a half at home ourselves. 

I shared half a loaf my our hairdresser, one whole loaf with my homeschool co-op, and another whole loaf with one of my besties. 

I did buy some pretty, paper bags to make it easier to share extra bread with others. 

Now that I've given a few loaves away, I have to say, sharing fresh bread is almost as great as eating it! 

Later in the week, I made a loaf of Sally Lunn bread. 

This is a sweet, fluffy loaf of bread traditionally eaten as a roll at tea time, so I made it in the evening, sliced it, and served it with hot tea for dessert. 

It tasted almost exactly like a sweet, soft, traditional dinner roll!

I've always wanted to be able to make delicious dinner rolls rather than buying them at the store. 

I want to adapt and find a pan so that I can create the smaller, more traditional Sally Lunn dinner rolls, rather than I large loaf like the one above. 

 

Teaching Gideon For A Season

I'm co-teaching a ladies' Bible study on the Old Testament hero, Gideon, at our church every week for the winter session. 

We are using Priscilla Shrier's Gideon workbook and videos. 

We have close to forty ladies in our class. 

The book and videos make it very easy to led the group. 

That said, I'm still taking the opportunity to dig into the material for myself as a learner and grow spiritually. 

I do the workbook for my own morning devotions then personally wrestle, think, and pray through the Biblical text on my own. 

This particular portion of the Old Testament is very challenging to me. 

The Bible reading is provoking questions in my own heart that the Gideon workbook is not asking or answering, so even though my personal questions aren't likely to come up in class, I'm reaching out to friends/ scholars and dusting off/ digging into other resources I haven't used in years, maybe since Bible college. 

I'm also simply praying about my questions and waiting on God to answer one way or another. 

I am so thankful to have a class to teach again in this season! 

I felt led to stop leading Classical Conversations a few years ago. 

At CC, I was always needing to teach some group: a Challenge level, an Essentials class, a group of moms at a teacher-training event, etc.  

After putting out my fleece about one million times, leaving CC felt like the right decision or about one million reasons in that season. 

Nevertheless, I still grieved the loss of my students and the loss of the opportunity to use my teaching gifts in community. 

But it can be the right thing to make a change when seasons of life change, and it can even be right to stop using your primary gifts for a season. 

Instead of teaching in public, I focused on my own homeschool more. 

I went to grad school and became the student again. 

I freed myself to visit and serve my aging mother and my aging mother-in-law more, since I had less teaching commitments. 

But now, I am truly thankful to be teaching again. 

This time, it's for church, not co-op. 

So it's a different group, a different subject, but it is another right way to use my gifts to bless my community. 

Sourdough Cont.

I made two loaves of sourdough last week. 

I baked one loaf inside a new, enameled, cast iron loaf pan with a lid. 

It made the same dough into a traditional, rectangular loaf that shaped like the sandwich bread you can buy at the supermarket. 

I baked the other loaf in my enameled, cast iron cloche-shaped pan. 

I really enjoy making sourdough this way. 

However, in this pan, the bottom of my round loaves becomes very thick and hard when I complete the baking time on the recipe (45 minutes covered, 15 uncovered). 

Perhaps I'll adjust the baking time to see what can be done to get a thinner bottom crust.  

One of the things I am starting to really enjoy about cooking and baking is the opportunity to improve and adjust recipes to suit my own tastes. 

Winter Joy

I am really enjoying this winter in Connecticut.

It's not like I have never felt joy in winter here, but the winter joys in previous years were isolated to brief moments here and there. 

This year is remarkably different; I am truly loving every moment of winter for the first time in my entire life! 

I have a few ideas as to why this is the case. Some are related to body; Others are related to soul:

First, we just got back from weeks in Florida. Maybe getting away to a warm place simply takes some of the edge off winter.

But second, we replaced all the windows and the roof last year. Our house is dramatically more secure from the cold and my body is not struggling to stay warm while I'm inside. 

Third, I'm healthier than I have been in years. My body is not constantly struggling against overwhelming infections. After more than a year of intense Lyme treatment, I am finally winning against the disease. My capacity for joy seems to increase as my body recovers its vitality.  

Forth, after over twenty years here, I finally feel that CT is my home, and maybe I have finally had enough years in CT to begin to recognize the winter sights as signs of home. The electric blue sky, the bright green moss, the sun going down and casting rays over the stark landscape, the pond frozen over, the weeds with their branches and seed pods covered in ice or snow- I'm used to these sights now, and they bring me a sense of nostalgic joy over their unique beauties. 

Fifth, I've slowed way down. I don't have the stressful commitments that I compelled myself to keep in previous years. Those commitments added hours of stressful work to our daily lives without much pay. I finally realized that the benefits of those things no longer warranted the costs. Now we have time to move through the world at a more humane pace. I don't resent winter for slowing me down now, because I am already going slower. 

Sixth and final, I have lowered my expectations. This goes along with slowing down and giving up stressful commitments. I have simply stopped expecting so much from myself, from others, from life in general, and odd as this sounds, this has led to an increase in my soul's contentment and thankfulness. When you aren't expecting so, so much, you aren't looking at life like something's wrong with it all the time. You begin to see what you do have as a gift. Then you can begin to see how much is right and and how much is, in fact, really, really good- including winter! 

Vero Beach January 2026

We've enjoyed a lengthy visit to Vero Beach this month. Activities included:

 Long beach walks everyday

Three books of Earthsea = read by me. (This will be our new family read aloud after dinner. It's amazing!)

Time spent together just talking

Watercolor painting

Reading quietly with Grandma

More walks

More painting

Watching Clone Wars after dinner with ice cream at intermissions

Shell collecting, organizing, and identifying- 

I found shells I have never found: two nerite shells (shown in the picture above) and I also found a spiny jewel box (the yellow shell in the picture below)

We always take a collection of shells home and create a keepsake jar for every visit to Vero. (We have over ten! They make beautiful decor for our basement living room.) 

But we had so many magnificent shells by the end of this trip and I had so much time here that I purchased these cases, labeled everything, and gifted this collection to Dwayne's sister/ her beach house, so the whole family can enjoy it. 

Avril painted Howl's Moving Castle- Amazing work! 

Card games with Grandmom

The beach changed everyday. It was lovely to spend so much time there! 

 It was lovely to spend so much time with family, especially Grandmom. We also got to meet our nephew and his wife's new baby. What a blessing! 

The Shire

When the girls were little, I'd get them Lego sets for Christmas, and then we'd put them together on Christmas day and keep working into the next day if needed. 

We made the best memories putting Legos together at Christmastime in front of the fire, so Legos became one of my favorite things to do at Christmas. 

But the girls have been getting older, and they have not been asking for Legos or even interested in them much. 

So I was prepared to go without Legos at Christmas this year...

But my awesome family gave me Legos this year! 

I got The Shire in Legos this year! 

So when I am not cleaning or cooking, I am putting this together while listening to audio books or music or just enjoying the slow silence. 

And the youngest, Adele, has asked to help now and then. 

I'm thankful for that.