As you read this, I am in the San Bernadino mountains of California, worshipping Jesus and climbing ropes courses and dining on (fancy) camp food alongside my loved ones—both my family of origin, and the family of my own making. Forest Home has been an important part of my life for more than thirty years, and I still get excited about our annual weekend at family camp. It’s fascinating how places, traditions, and rhythms can remain a part of our lives for an extended time, always evolving yet remaining touchstones as we ourselves change and grow.
I feel similarly about this long-running blog series: as hard as it is to believe, I have been regularly reflecting on what I am learning through these monthly/seasonal/annual What I Learned posts for more than a dozen years now. It is a tradition that has been with me longer than motherhood or really ANY part of my life as it is today. The format has largely remained the same, but the specifics have shifted with the passing of the years. Some seasons have been introspective, some have been light and fun with purely surface-level learning; some seasons, I couldn’t wait to share what I had learned; others have contained lessons so painful that I could barely give words to the experiences, let alone share those words publicly. This spring has contained a healthy mixture of valuable life lessons, just-for-kicks trivia that left me ITCHING to share, and of course a few personal insights (including many more that I’ll need to keep to myself for now). The list is long, and though it barely scratches the surface of this learning-heavy season I am in, perhaps it will jumpstart some new insights for you, too!
NOTES FROM THE KITCHEN
Overnight bowl recipes make for the best breakfasts.
I like having fast and healthy breakfast options for the kids, and lately my children have been obsessed with these overnight oats, made with canned coconut milk for extra thickness and warmed up (but not fully cooked) before eating. I have also been making overnight chia pudding for Luke, who is on a bit of a health kick. I love that I can prep these bowls the night before and have breakfast on the table in minutes, making our school mornings a whole lot less chaotic.
Dehydration is the best use for over-ripe bananas.
We have had our food dehydrator for a while now, but dehydration had been exclusively Luke’s domain. I recently learned how to use it myself so that I could “rescue” our bananas that were starting to turn. Dehydrated bananas have become a favorite snack for all six of us! We usually have a “closed” kitchen outside of mealtimes, but the kids each have their own jars of dehydrated bananas that they are free to snack on whenever they please. It’s an inexpensive, healthy, and completely portable snack that we can all feel good about, and it keeps me from having to make extra room in my freezer for those ripened bananas.
Bar Keeper’s Friend is for more than just scouring pans.
This product is a miracle-worker for ridding my pots and pans of stubborn food residue, and I recently discovered that it is amazing at getting soap scum off of bathroom sinks when nothing else will work. (SIDE NOTE: I have always called this product “bartenders’ secret” and only realized I was using the wrong name when I was looking to link the product for this post. Yet another thing I’ve learned this season! Also, isn’t it astounding how we can let our eyes skim over the name on a label without ever clocking what it says?!)
It’s time to branch out with my cooking.
Luke’s recent health kick has led me to make some changes with our food preparation. I began making a weekly meal plan, and wish it was something I had started sooner. I also started looking for new recipe sources, which led me to the the What to Cook When You Don’t Feel Like Cooking cookbook and Substack. Caro’s recipes are fast, healthy, and—most importantly for me—accessible, enabling me to tackle many recipes (including a lot of protein-heavy ones) that I had found too intimidating in the past. I am not a great cook but am always looking to expand my repertoire, and resources like this one provide just the right amount of handholding.
Cook with ONE kid at a time.
My kids all love helping out in the kitchen. Unfortunately, I get very overwhelmed with all of them hovering over my shoulder as I cook. My solution lately is to invite one kid at a time to help me prepare a meal. This still gives them practice in the kitchen, and it is a lot more manageable for me, especially because it leaves two other siblings to help Nico-watch while we cook.
“HOW DID I NOT KNOW THAT?!” TRIVIA
It’s “beyond your ken” not “beyond your kin.”
I have been singing “You are Sixteen Going on Seventeen” (from The Sound of Music) since I was a preschooler and always thought the line was “timid and shy and scared are you of things beyond your kin.” To me, the word kin (“relatives”) made sense here. But in looking up the lyrics for Kali recently, I realized I had misheard and subsequently mis-sung the lyrics. It’s ken (“one’s range of knowledge”), not kin. Funny that I got this wrong, given my long-held pride that my name Kendra is a derivative of the word ken and means “knowledgable.” I love the song even more now that I feel a sense of connection (albeit a farfetched one) via my name!
Honeymoon actually has connections to the moon.
Sully recently hypothesized that it is called a “honeymoon” because the newlywed couple spends time watching the moon while on their post-wedding vacation. His postulation led me to do a little research, and I learned that the word “honeymoon” is thought to have originated in medieval times, when it was common for the newlywed couple to drink mead for a moon cycle (30 days) after their wedding. This tradition was believed to bring good luck and fertility to the couple. The term might also have been connected to the idea that the first month, or moon, of a couple’s marriage was the sweetest.
The origins of the word potluck are just what the name would suggest.
Some versions of this word have been recorded as far back as the 16th century, with the term referring to pots on communal fires, and the notion that one had to try their luck with the unknown quality of their contents. (The word could also trace back to the term “potlatch”—a phrase meaning “give away” used by Indigenous Americans to describe a communal food gathering—but I find that first origin story more fun.)
Most birds have several distinct calls used for specific purposes.
We went on a field trip to Westcave Preserve, which was one of the most beautiful places I have ever had the opportunity to visit. I learned A TON of nature facts on our guided nature hike through the preserve, but my favorite new insights related to bird song. Our tour guide, an avid birder, told us that most birds have different songs and calls that vary by purpose. The two primary reasons for bird song are to attract a mate and to defend territory; I was amazed that our guide was able to identify both the source (variety of bird) AND purpose of the various songs we heard pouring from the surrounding trees, and her knowledge left me itching to learn more. (We will be studying birds as a family in Science this coming school year, and I can’t wait!)
PARENTHOOD (LIFE’S CLASSROOM)
Managing my kids’ emotional and social lives is a full time job.
This past school year brought a lot of huge changes for our family, and with those changes came many more opportunities for social engagements for me AND my kids. This has been great, but I have also struggled to manage the friend time without going a little bit crazy myself. Of course, time with friends inevitably invites the potential for conflict and hurt feelings. . . a lot of which has required guidance from Mom. I am grateful for these opportunities for connection and social growth, but I am also learning (sometimes the hard way) how important it is for ME to be emotionally stable and socially confident in order to help my kids navigate this sometimes-rocky terrain.
Trust my mama instincts.
I generally take more of a hands-off/wait-and-see approach to developmental and health issues with my kids. There have been a few instances where I felt the urge to seek further medical advice and those urges have almost always proven right. Last year we started having concerns for one of the kids and decided to see a specialist and pursue further testing. Those results are slowly coming back and it appears that my concerns were not unfounded. Though I am still unsure what lies ahead for us on this new medical journey, I am optimistic about the future, and also very glad that I went with my gut on this one.
I have underestimated my children’s spiritual lives.
One evening last month it was dinner time, and Charleston was nowhere to be seen. We eventually found him hanging out in his closet, praying. He told me that he had overslept that morning and hadn’t had time for his morning prayer time, so he was praying in the evening instead. I was floored: I had no idea he started each morning praying in his closet! In addition to this new revelation about Charleston, I had a number of deep spiritual conversations with each of my three big kids this spring. I love how God is working in their lives and their hearts outside of my Mom and Dad’s guidance.
I shouldn’t take my kids’ openness for granted.
I recently had a conversation with a friend who is struggling to connect with her preteen. When she asked if we were experiencing this same struggle in our home, I had to be honest and say that we aren’t. Our family is far from perfect, but connection and openness are not currently challenge areas for us. All of my children are talkers, including Charleston . . . notwithstanding the fact that he’s an 11-year-old boy (not a demographic traditionally known for their sensitivity or emotional depth). I love that he still asks me to snuggle with him every night when he goes to sleep; once I get Nico and the twins down for the night, I head to his room and crawl up into his lofted bed where we have heartfelt talks about everything under the sun. I cherish this closeness and pray we can keep it going through the teen years.
The walking stage > the crawling stage.
I know that many parents dread the early toddler stage, but with all my kids it has been the crawling stage that was the hardest for me. That may have something to do with the fact that all my kids crawled late and for an extended period of time. Nico was no exception, having only started crawling at 11 months of age and not walking until he was almost 20 months. Those months were hard ones for all of us, but I had a feeling that he would be a much happier (and therefore easier) kiddo once he was toddling around, and I was right! Now that he is a full-blown walker, he is far less needy and a whole lot more fun. The boy loves to climb and is extremely adventurous, which keeps me on my toes but also thoroughly entertained. Could it be that he is the funniest of the four Jernejcic kiddos?! These days he sure is the one who has me laughing the hardest!
ALL THE REST
Say yes to all the field trips.
This was the year of the field trip for our family: we toured the state capitol and a couple of museums, went on several guided hikes, and even went indoor skydiving. We loved every single one of them! It wasn’t always easy to fit the trips into our school schedule or budget, but I do not have a single field trip regret. I’m making a note of this NOW so that I remember to say yes to all field trip opportunities (even inconvenient ones) in the future: they are a huge perk of the homeschool life, and one I want to make the most of.
Take care with copying and pasting!
Last month I typed up a comment in an Evernote note and copied and pasted the comment into the Comments section of a popular blog linkup. Only after I had published my comment did I notice an extra word tagged onto the end. The word? Dilapidated. It was a vocabulary word turned inside joke for our CC Essentials class last semester, and I had typed it into Evernote to check the spelling before adding it to the kids’ school yearbook. Somehow dilapidated got tucked into the blog comment. I was mortified, but maybe nobody noticed? When I shared this story with the other CC moms, they observed that it could have been worse: at least I hadn’t accidentally included our other inside joke, Holy Hand Grenade. Now THAT could have stirred up some attention!
You never know where opportunities to share faith will turn up.
Recently, the topic of dinosaurs came up in a conversation with a friend who is agnostic. She was surprised that I, as a Christian, believed that dinosaurs were real, and her curiosity prompted some questions and a deep discussion about various aspects of my own beliefs and faith. I would never have guessed that dinosaurs could be a gateway topic for sharing the Gospel, but God works in mysterious ways; I want to remain open to wherever He is leading.
We have found our people.
All year long I have been telling Luke how much I love our Classical Conversations community, which has become a safe place of encouragement and companionship for the kids and me. Luke listened in, but since he’s not a direct part of our weekly co-op, he wasn’t getting to experience that community firsthand. Our whole family attended our end-of-year celebration in April, and Luke got a chance to really connect with the other parents. On the drive home he told me, “I get it now. These are totally our people!” Community has not always come easily to our family of introverts; what a blessing to be doing life alongside this group of likeminded families whose presence feels like home.
Nothing beats a good theme.
Celebrating my mom’s 70th birthday as a whole family was extremely special, made more so by my Dad’s creative 8-3-9 theme. (We celebrated a month early, when she was 839 months of age.) Our matching shirts prompted plenty of questions and comments from onlookers, ultimately leading them to join in the congratulations and celebration. The theme offered an easy gateway for the kids to get excited about the birthday, plus it took some of the sting out of a potentially triggering milestone year. I don’t know that I will ever reach my dad’s levels of creativity, but I am tucking the “creative theme” idea in my back pocket for next time I need to add extra levels of special to a milestone or celebration.
I wasn’t kidding when I said this season’s What I Learned list was a long one! Now I’d love to hear from you: what is a thing or two that you learned this spring?
