I have a complicated relationship with busyness: I love when our family is engaged in a variety of meaningful activities, but a packed schedule always leaves me feeling stressed, overwhelmed, and exhausted. At the start of this month we had a couple of weeks with events happening every night. I was grateful for each and every activity and wouldn’t have given up a single one of them, but by the mid-point of that especially busy stretch I was literally crying myself to sleep at night because I felt so overtaxed.
Now that April is over, our school year is winding down and the pace has slowed. This week I savored the lightened load that created space for some small indulgences: a gentle walk to admire the blossoming wildflowers; a cuddly evening on the couch for a movie with Kali and Nico; a few extra chapters of my book before bedtime; a game of cards with Charleston. It was wonderful that our month held so many great things that kept us busy, and it is also wonderful that I am now getting to enjoy some great things of a quieter variety!
|| READING LATELY ||
It was a pretty meaty reading month, with many thought-provoking novels including this powerful story of two motherless girls growing up in the Jim Crow south, this story set in a Cambodian waste dump, and this middle-grade novel that is on my personal list of lifelong favorites and that I was excited to read and discuss with my kids. I also read this book that I actually hated but that paired with this nonfiction look at influencer culture. Other nonfiction included this heartbreaking memoir and this book related to my One Word for 2026 (reviewed this past Monday). Reviews of the rest of these books are coming in a Quick Lit post in two weeks.
And some Substack articles I’ve appreciated lately.
Confronting the Lie of Sinless Conservatism from Phylicia @ Every Woman a Theologian
Keep the em dash — even in the age of AI from Mallary @ Write at the Edge
Kids’ books that I loved as an adult from Michelle @ Library Binding
A Fun Way to Add More Classic Literature to Kids’ Reading Diets from Tabitha @ The Writer in the Willows
We Need to Talk About Christian Speaker Fees from Phylicia @ Every Woman a Theologian
34 little ways moms say i love you from Caro @ What to Cook
|| LISTENING LATELY ||
So much good stuff in the podcast world this month!
Life & Cultural Trends:
The Rubin Report—A New Crisis Has Begun, & We’re Running Out of Time | Arthur Brooks
Focus on the Family with Jim Daly—How AI is Shaping Our View of Reality
Church Matters:
Faith & Parenting:
Foundation Worldview Podcast—My Kid Only Obeys to Please Me — Here’s the Biblical Fix
|| MONTHLY KID-ISMS ||
CHARLIE-ISMS
+ I asked each of the kids to define family. Charleston’s answer: “A family is a group of people who are physically or spiritually connected.”
+ “Thanks for being such a great mom. It’s really helpful at times.” Me: “At times?” Charleston: “Yeah, at times. Other times it’s just okay. I hope you’re not offended by that.”
+ Talking about a friend we have watched change: “I think it’s what we call being a teenager.” Me, teasing: “Well, I’m glad that YOU aren’t going to change like that when YOU are a teenager.” Charleston: “I think that is what we call a mistaken assumption.”
SULLY-ISMS
+ Sully’s definition of family: “A family is a mom and a dad and some kids.”
+ “What is ‘Patient Parking Only’? Does it mean you have to be patient and wait for a spot?”
+ “I think it’s called a honeymoon because most people do it at nighttime and they spend time looking at the moon.”
+ “Shouldn’t Kali take a shower last because she asked first? Because the Bible says the last shall be first and the first shall be last.”
+ When he asked why I was wearing deodorant and I explained that after puberty people need to wear deodorant to keep our armpits from getting smelly. “What about your teeth? I mean, your breath? Does that get smelly when you start puberty?”
+ And then, after he asked me to explain more about puberty for girls and boys, “So girls get more things than boys?”
KALI-ISMS
+ Kali’s definition of family: “A family is a big group of people that are together a lot.”
+ “You get baptized to show people you trust in God. So when Jesus got baptized He showed that He trusted himself!”
+ “Is Arlo seven or eight? And he’s not married yet?”
NICO-ISMS
I guess our sweet babe is a full-blown toddler now because he is officially walking! He sure did take his time reaching this milestone, but transitioned away from crawling just before hitting the 20-month mark a couple of weeks ago. I still can’t get over his wobbly little Frankenstein walk that is quickly shifting into a confident stride. With walking has come an even more adventurous spirit. He fearlessly climbs the tallest of playground structures, as well as all the furniture in our house. He’s the first “climber” of my four kids, and also the first to hold his breath until passing out (talk about scary!) and the first to try playing in the toilet (eeeww!); I guess I didn’t realize how easy I had it with the first three kids! But when he is not inspiring more grey hairs to sprout from my head, he certainly keeps us all laughing.
+ We didn’t know that he knew how to play Duck Duck Goose, but when we sat down in a circle for nightly blessing a few evenings ago, he started walking around our circle and patting us each on the head saying “Duck!” I’m curious where he learned that!
+ We were all in the van, talking about how Grandpa would be turning 66 soon, and from the back seat we hear Nico shout, “siiiiix seeeeven!”
+ Breastfeeding a toddler is SO different from nursing a baby, for many reasons—one of the biggest being the communication that happens. Nico now has many words for when he wants to nurse: “offies” (how he pronounces “milkies”); “chair” (since we usually sit in a chair to breastfeed); and “uh-side” (how he pronounces “other side,” probably because I often say “other side?” when he alternates which side he is nursing on).
+ We were waiting for a restroom to open up at the Y, and Nico starts bouncing up and down and chanting “Open! Open! Open!” Ã la a 1990s Mervyn’s commercial.
|| HAPPENINGS & HIGHLIGHTS ||
Our Easter weekend was a little different this year because of our participation in our new church plant, but it was still lovely. On Friday we attended (Luke served) our Good Friday service; the churches where we’ve been members the past several years didn’t have Good Friday services, so I hadn’t been to one since I was a child and it was so special. The next evening we did some Easter Bunny preparation: the kids drew pictures and wrote notes and we left out carrots and empty eggs for the Bunny to fill and hide.
Luke had to be at church at 6:30 on Easter Sunday, so we were up extra early for our Easter baskets and hunt. The kids still loved every minute. It was fun to have Nico joining along this year and he was so funny army crawling under furniture to hunt for eggs!
We got to attend our first Easter service at our new church. The attendance was amazing, it is really cool to see what God is doing through this new church in our town, and exciting to be a part of it.
We spent Easter afternoon at Luke’s parents’ house with the family. It had rained that weekend, but we were blessed with beautiful weather—including cloudy skies that made for great pictures! The cousins looked adorable, especially Kali and Brooke in their matching dresses.
After Easter dinner we had our confetti egg hunt. We hade more than 200 eggs this year! The adults hid the eggs as best as we could (though it was hard to find spots for THAT many!) and the kids had fun hunting and then smashing them on each other’s heads. Nico was totally into this, and watching him discover eggs and learn to smash them was a highlight of the holiday.
We got to go on the funnest field trip to iFLY, an indoor skydiving experience. All three kids flew, and I did as well; it was amazing! (I went skydiving for real when I was in my 20s, and while I’d love to do it again, it doesn’t seem like a responsible activity for a mother of four young kids. This was a nice alternative.) As part of our STEM field trip we watched some neat experiments and then each of us took two one-minutes flights. Charleston and I both did the fly-high option which was especially fun, I couldn’t stop smiling and laughing. And I was proud of the twins for conquering their fears with this. What a great field trip, and so cool that we got to do it with friends.
We concluded our first year with our Classical Conversations community. It was, hands-down, the best part of our school year. We love the community itself, and the curriculum component has been an amazing addition to the school we’d been doing. Our only regret is that we did not join sooner! We were sad to see the year end and are already looking forward to starting up again in August!
The boys went to their final Trail Life campout of the year, on a game preserve just one town over from us. They went fishing, enjoyed an off-roading safari, wrote and performed skits around a bonfire, and participated in many activities and games (the egg drop was their favorite). It was fun for me to follow along with their pictures and videos and to hear all the details when they got home.
Kali got to have some fun while the boys were camping! She went to a Disney on Ice show with her cousin Brooke, and then Brooke spent the night at our house. It was our first time hosting a sleepover and we ran into a few snags but I think the girls had a good time and they looked so cute sleeping on their little pallet.
|| ICYMI: THIS MONTH ON THE BLOG ||
Present in 2026 Book Review #2: The Practice of the Presence of God
28 Words That I’ve Added to My Vocabulary Thanks to My Recent Kindle Reading
Bright Spots “Which is why it is so important to hang onto a memory of the bright spots along the way. Catalogue them in the mental filing cabinet. Pull them out from time to time for a rejuvenating moment of encouraging recollection. Polish them off and let them shine anew.“
On Bird Feeders and Funny Family Memories (and what they are teaching me about trusting the Lord) “It’s not that the big and little things of our lives don’t matter to Him, I believe they do; it’s just that we don’t have to handle them on our own.“
How was your April? What is ahead for you in May? Our month is looking to be a great one: we will be finishing our homeschool year next week; attending end-of-year ceremonies for both American Heritage Girls and Trail Life; hosting family for Mother’s Day; signing up for the summer reading program at our library; and traveling to California for some time with my family. I can’t wait!
