Tag Archives: parenting

A New Year!

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 The New Year is literally my favorite! I so love the start of a new year, all fresh and sparkly in my mind. I have been enjoying not only the holidays and Christmastide, but a feeling of energy and new beginnings in the quiet coziness. This is the beautiful blessing I often share on the New Year, from my home to yours:

May love and laughter light your days,
and warm your heart and home.
May good and faithful friends be yours,
wherever you may roam.
May peace and plenty bless your world
with joy that long endures.
May all life’s passing seasons
bring the best to you and yours.

-From an Old Irish Blessing, author unknown

My wishes for you in the New Year:

May this year be the one in which you are ENOUGH just the way you are.

May this year be the one in which you are content.

May this year be the one where you are loved as richly as you deserve.

May this year be one of bountiful and deep friendships, beautiful family memories, and love.

May this year be the year that you help someone else, the year of your generous spirit blossoming.

May this year be the one that is perfect for you and where you are in life and may you enjoy it abundantly!

I love the more introverted vibe of this season – nesting with blankets and hot drinks and inside fun, but still being able to go outside for a walk in the rain or bright sunshine with colder temperatures!    

January is actually one of my favorite months of the year. Suzanne Down had a beautiful little story in her most recent newsletter, and I found the public domain version of it here to share with you: https://etc.usf.edu/lit2go/165/buttercup-gold-and-other-stories/2902/the-little-new-year/. It would be a lovely one to tell with puppetry for your children but it is also worth a read if you have older children or are an empty nester to remember the spirit of Christmastide and new beginnings all around!

Here are some of the days we will be celebrating in January:

January 1 – New Year’s Day

January 6– The Feast of Epiphany and Epiphanytide that stretches until Lent begins on Wednesday, February 18 this year (and Easter is on Sunday, April 5th for those of you planning ahead!)

January 18 to January 25 Week of Prayer for Chrisian Unity

January 19– Martin Luther King, Jr Day – also celebrated January 15 and April 4 in The Episcopal Church

Janaury 18– The Feast Day of St. Peter

January 25 – The Feast Day of St. Paul

Rhythm is strength, and I have things in place for the house with outside the home work, farm work, and homeschooling our tenth grader. This is key to fitting in my priority of health and family plus work! I still work for two different companies providing physical therapy and lactation services plus have my own business so the days can vary, but I am learning to streamline more. I hope to eventually move into teaching at the college level and will streamline clinical work even more.

The farm is at only three horses right now that require care. We had six horses previously, two were boarders – one horse very sadly died, one horse went to his family home as they were building a barn, and one of our horses is being leased and is at our trainer’s farm down the road. We still have two beehives plus our indoor dogs and cats. We still have many renovation projects to go in the house (this year we are renovating our master bath), and landscaping and pasture pieces to fulfill, but slowly we are getting there. This house and property has been an incredible project. We were lucky to find this during the pandemic, but it has been a ton of work with literally not one thing from insulation, plumbing, water lines, heating, etc needing to be redone up through the pastures, barn, etc. It can be overwhelming at times, but then I remember how much I wished and prayed for this place and get my gratitude on again!

I usually pick a word of the year instead of making resolutions, and this year I chose the word “ROOTED.” Do you have a word of the year to bring you focus and clarity? My past words have included words such as radiant, abundant, vibrant, bold (2023) ,replenishment, and last year was commit  This year, I have really sat with a planner, a vision board, and a prayer board and just thought about how to bring pieces of “ROOTED” to life this year and what types of support I will need to make that happen.

These are a few of the things we are enjoying this month:

  • Daily outside time – when our children were small and we lived in neighborhoods, this was mainly in the form of a daily walk, and park time. Now it is mainly in the form of barn chores but I also am starting to walk again. I actually don’t generally mind the colder weather.
  • Puzzles and board games
  • Green smoothies and juicing
  • Making freezer meals
  • Exercising – I go to the gym, and generally do a combination of hot yoga, lifting weights, and Zumba.
  • Creating
  • Going out as a couple
  • Playing with our horses, dogs, and cats
  • Beekeeping
  • Indoor microgreens!

If you are looking for fun things to do with children, these are things we have enjoyed:  Cut out paper snowflakes, including really cool 3-D snowflakes; dip candles; roll candles; play board games or card games with your children;  draw, paint, model; whittle wood; make popcorn together; bake together; play in the snow – build snow forts; have snowball fights; snowshoe; downhill or cross country ski;  ice skate on a pond; read and tell stories; build forts inside; take a walk outside in the cold – look for animal tracks or berries or birds or all of the above; knit, crochet, cross stitch, finger knit, spin, sew; sing and make music together – learn some new songs; clean, scrub, dust, work around the house – rearrange furniture; go bowling or find an indoor swimming pool to swim in; write letters to family and friends; write stories together; snuggle on the coach with hot chocolate and marshmallows; cook for a neighbor; find a place of worship to attend and get involved; throw a party; clicker train your dog, cat, or other animal; take care of plants; start seeds indoors when it it is time

On the parenting and  homeschooling front, our oldest lives and works about an hour from us but comes to farm frequently because her horse is here. Our middle child is working towards her own business in the equine industry, and our youngest is a sophomore in high school. He is enjoying being in Sea Scouts. Homeschooling doesn’t look quite like it used to when I was homeschooling three children Monday through Friday, but we still have days of homeschooling in addition to several days of classes at a local hybrid high school.

THINGS TO LOVE THIS MONTH!

Things to love this month:

The January Book Box

Warming Meals

The other thing I am really enjoying is Hearth & Home for all things homemaking. I hope you enjoy it as much as I do: https://www.myhearthandhome.com/

I hope you are a member of The Child is the Curriculum for seasonal living, Waldorf homeschooling, Waldorf parenting, and support! It’s an amazing resource for those of you Waldorf homeschooling : https://www.thechildisthecurriculum.com/subscriptions/?register=1

Lastly, if you love a good book club I like to see what books they are reading here: https://everyday-reading.com/the-2026-everyday-reading-book-club-list/ I also like outdoor memoir oriented books,( have you seen the books on Rugged OutdoorsWomen on Instagram?) so I have some of those on my list for this year! Other things I am interested in is doing an art class or taking some music lessons again (I play flute). Those might be good spring, summer, and fall ideas! I hope you have some fun things planned just for you!

Looking forward to celebrating throughout the year with you and supporting you on your parenting and homeschooling journey! I would love to hear what is on your mind regarding the New Year!

Many blessings to you and Happy New Year!

Carrie

November LIGHT

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November is the beginning of the season of light – Martinmas gives us a beautiful opportunity to think about how to spread light into our communities in a world of darkness.

I love November in all its crisp -leaved, golden sunset, chill temperatures perfection.  The leaves are turning here where I live, and it feels like the beauty and coziness of fall is upon us at last. We have had our first frost, and things feel like a cozy autumn.

This is a wonderful month of celebrations for our family!

  • November 1 and 2 – All Saints’ Day and All Souls’ Day
  • November 4– Election Day
  • November 11 – Martinmas (and there are many other posts about Martinmas if you use the search engine box!) It’s also Veteran’s Day, which we celebrate every day with my husband and father in law who are veterans.
  • November 20- My handsome husband’s birthday!
  • November 27- Thanksgiving
  • November 30- First Sunday in Advent
  • November 30- The Feast of St. Andrew the Apostle

Learning and celebrating:

  • Learn songs for a Martinmas Lantern Walk – you don’t need a lot of people to do a Lantern Walk! I have done Lantern Walks with just one other family and I have done Lantern Walks with over a hundred people! You an also check your local churches – if you live in an area with a German population, there may be a church holding a celebration of this day. I went to a Lantern Walk one year at a German church and they had St. Martin on his white horse and everything!
  • Use transparency paper to make window silhouettes and transparency cut-outs and lanterns.
  • Bake bread on the cold days
  • Look for bird’s  nests as the trees lose their leaves; make feeders start to be filled all the time, make treats for the birds
  • Dip leaves in glycerin or beeswax and preserve them
  • Cook things with cranberries, corn, and pumpkin.
  • Try the book Cranberry Thanksgiving and make cranberry bread!
  • Learn some Thanksgiving songs and practice so you can play them after Thanksgiving Dinner!
  • Find a place to volunteer to serve Thanksgiving dinner
  • Make Thanksgiving Baskets and leaving them on your neighbor’s doorstep!
  • Gather greens and natural items to use for an Advent Wreath.  We do this at church from the areas surrounding the church and it is quite lovely!
  • Find books, cozy blankets and pillows, and mark off half days for just reading and lounging around. Pull out candles, homemade Martinmas lanterns, salt lamps  and scatter them around.  Cuddle up and read with some fabulous tea or hot chocolate.
  • Find handwork projects that you will love and get started.
  • Order some woolens for your family members; my favorite place to get them is Green Mountain Organics
  • You probably already have found your hats, mittens and gloves and coats, but we are a little slower down here with cold temperatures coming later so I just did that this week!

For littles especially:

For the older children:

  • Get them involved in your autumn traditions – baking, cooking, cleaning, taking care of the birds outside, hiking, star watching, volunteering.
  • Think of traditions of gratitude and light.  Some teens may no longer love a lantern walk (although I still love it and I am an adult), but some teens might go for a big bonfire with friends on Martinmas.
  • Some thoughts:  Cultivating Gratitude in Children
  • How do we help older children internalize the spirit of helping the most needy, the most destitute, the most poor? That is the work for this age.

Inner Work:

Other Ideas for this month:

  • Get a small jump on gifts for the holidays. Here is my Pinterest Board of holiday gifts to make
  • Make sure you are still getting your Vitamin N and get out in nature!
  • Dream a little about the next school year in homeschooling 
  • I always choose a word to encompass my year – this year, my word for 2025 was COMMIT and my word for next year is being decided as we speak! I have toyed with the words “Rooted”, “Delight”, or “Restorative”. I am not sure yet. I have some bigger projects planned after some more busy but more fallow years here in this space. More about that later!

Many blessings and peace to you and your family,

Carrie

A Rhythm Snapshot!

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This is a snapshot of our rhythm right now, and because it involves working outside the home and having only one tenth grader at home (other two children have graduated), it looks vastly different than when all three of our children were young. However, I think this sort of rhythm can also be the reality of many in these economic times and we are all striving towards more calmness, beauty, and order in our homes.

First of all, if you have small children, let me be very blunt in that I think if it’s at all possible, children should have their days based at home. I think this is important for neurological development, and I think in general the day care, school days, and after care are far too long for children under the age of 14 because the United States is not geared to families, working families, and children. I think the hours away from home are just too long. We are not like countries where children walk home for lunch in the middle of the school day and therefore I think the hours at school and work should be shorter. I don’t think children should have to be in daycare from 7 AM to six thirty at night. That’s my opinion, and realistically being home and having children not in daycare or preschool or longer school days with after care isn’t possible for many people with the way the economy is. If, however, you feel really led in this direction, I have numerous back posts regarding this matter. I also think it is vitally important that families feel supported in this endeavor of being home, and not feel isolated. Families at home need community and to feel that their children have community, and this seems to be a tall order these days. So, for many of us, we are at an impasse with meeting these needs.

For our family right now, a general week looks like the below (outside of farm chores, which are multiple times a day. Farm chaos or work emergencies can also bring things to a halt). Some of this varies if my husband is home or traveling as he definitely can jump in and drive our son to any outside class or activity and he and one of the children handle the vast majority of farm chores without me. I could not work outside the home if this wasn’t the case. It’s a team effort between us all, including our adult children too. I also put notes about where I want to go in terms of rhythm for the future. I am a work in progress and striving, just like many of you!

The most important thing to do is to treat ourselves (we mamas juggle a lot!), our spouses and children with a lot of love, kindness, and compassion. The best way to live a simple life is to simplify our attitude. This is going to look really busy to those of you that work at home and stay at home, and it probably will seem familiar to those of you that work outside the home and homeschool. It’s a juggle.

Sunday –Church and yoga day or just stay at home ❤

This is a day to reset the nervous system, and a day to meal prep. Sometimes everyone (grown children) is available for dinner so that’s always fun. This month I am doing more of a “Crocktober” month and that really cuts down on meal prep. Sunday is a good day for our son and I to catch up on any homework for outside classes. It can also a good night for my husband and I to see friends. Every now and then I have a patient emergency, but for the most part this is a guaranteed day of rest.

Monday – Homeschool and work day! I work on Mondays doing pelvic health physical therapy, and work with our son in the morning and at night after dinner and the gym. It’s also a good day to clean for a little bit! I like the Home Blessing Hour from Fly Lady to hit the high spots and then try to work the FlyLady zones for fifteen minutes the other days. At night, we like reading or puzzles.

Tuesday- Baby visits in the afternoon for work, and outside classes for homeschooling! On this day, I usually have a few pediatric/ lactation home visits in the afternoon and our son has outside classes. We go to the gym at dinner time if the rest of the family can handle the horses (unless I got to the gym in the morning).

I want to turn part of this day into more of planning day and setting goals for the week; a day for writing, making art or projects, or doing my online continuing education courses in the morning. We usually go over schoolwork in the late afternoons, specifically math, and at night as needed on this day.

Wednesday – Work, work, work and outside classes for homeschooling. This day is often my longest physical therapy work day, and our son has outside classes and Sea Scouts, so not much honestly gets done.

Thursday – Baby visits in the morning! I work in the morning with lactation and pediatric PT patients. Our son has Spanish class in the afternoon and he is usually busy in the morning with work for his outside classes. I try to run errands on this day while he is at class, and we usually we go to the gym on this night. Sometimes I get to see a friend during this time!

Friday – Homeschooling Day and get ready for the weekend! Sometimes our adult girls are at a horse show, either competing or catch riding so my husband might be hauling horses or doing something like that. This is a day where I try to put my own appointments if I need to, because our son can work independently enough that I can run and do something and come back.

I definitely like to reserve the late morning and afternoon as much as possible for being home, cleaning up, and preparing something yummy, almost like Shabbos cooking of my Jewish friends so we that we can have a restful night and peaceful Saturday. Our son works fairly independently during this time to get a jump on things due in his outside classes for the next week. He can also hang out with me in the kitchen and I can help while cooking! Sometimes we will do work at night if he has a sailing race the next day or the weekend is just busy.

Saturday – Reset and relax! Sometimes our son has sailing races, or we have a horse show, but usually this is the day is to be with family and at home. If I have to take an emergency lactation patient, I would rather do this on a Sunday than Saturday even. I just enjoy having some options on Saturday, whether that is to be outside on the farm or doing what I want inside the house. Or just relaxing!

As you can see, there is not a lot of margin with working outside the home and homeschooling. There isn’t really a ton of time to hang out with friends or date nights or take a whole day to go hiking like we did when our children were young. The horses have to be taken care of around dinner time, (and all the other times LOL) so that’s a barrier for sure, along with the fact that the week is just busy.

I am working on changing some of this with very set hours for outside work, but over the late summer and the beginning of the school year there really wasn’t a full day I was home, not even on weekends with continuing education, conferences, and patients. That was exhausting! The home visits that patients love can be very taxing on me and my family due to long drive times in my area so I am limiting my geographic radius for now for those visits. Charting also takes a lot of time. Getting stronger boundaries surrounding what I can and can’t offer should be helpful as we head into these last few months of 2025.

That’s just the way it is, and maybe you feel this way too about your own brand of controlled chaos or that you are evolving like me. I think my reality is the reality of what a lot of people are juggling. I would love a link to your blog or Instagram post about rhythm to help inspire all of us here. Of course, if you have small children, your rhythm will look much different than mine, I hope, and I am sure mine will change again when our youngest graduates high school as well. Then we will officially be empty nesters, and my husband actually mentioned retirement for the first time ever this summer! Very exciting!

Take your seasons in stride and enjoy the ordinary days that so often make up life. There is joy in lighting a candle at dinner, snuggling together after a long day, watching the sunrise or sunset, petting the animals, and knowing that life is beautiful every day. ❤

Warmly,
Carrie

The Beauty of September

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School is in full swing now! Our third child is in tenth grade this year, and is working his way through such subjects as geometry, biology, American literature and history. Despite summer coming to a close, I have to say I love September so much and settling into fall. Fall is an amazing time to think about getting cozy in the home for the upcoming cooler weather and the holidays. So many wonderful things to love about September – cooler weather, harvest, leaves turning colors, long walks and bike rides, apples and pumpkins, acorns, getting the house organized for fall, searching for things to make for the holidays, fall decorating!  

September often seems to be about new beginnings.  Here in the South, the school children have been back to public school about a month, so perhaps it is not “new”, but  it still has that feel to me and my Northern upbringing (where we always started school the day after Labor Day) , that it is a time of possibility and change.

Our farm has been quiet. We had a horse that died recently plus two went to other barns due to owners moving them or leasing situations, so it’s been a tad quiet around here. The bees are getting ready for winter. I am feeding one hive that is smaller and trying to get the bees stocked for winter. Winter annuals will go in soon, and I am hoping to put in some fall vegetables.

For me, September is also a time of contemplation as we head into the mood of Michaelmas. Some of you may know it as The Feast of St. Michael and All Angels. It is celebrated on September 29 in the Western Church and for those in Waldorf Education, and it is celebrated by the Eastern Church on November 8. It is truly a time of prayer, meditations, new impulses and an idea of serving others and changing the future.

I love this festival of Michaelmas as one that illuminates the soul into the winter, takes up the challenges in front of us as we wind our way ahead in the dark to help us find that small space of courage and bravery that lets us know we are not defeated yet. We have not given up yet. Imagine a humanity where this was the theme before us of overcoming, of bringing new into the world. I may be attacked along the way of this new birth and new bringing, but I am not decimated. I can move forward.

There is a beautiful poem in the book “All Year Round” on page 129 that could make a particularly lovely blessing for this time of year and you could modify it as you wish:

Thanks to our mother, the earth, which sustains us;

Thanks to the rivers and streams and their water;

Thanks to the corn and the grain fields that feed us;

Thanks to the herbs which protect us from illness;

Thanks to the bushes and trees and their fruiting;

Thanks to the moon and the stars in the darkness;

Thanks to the sun and his eye that looks earthward;

Thank the Great Spirit for all of his goodness.

Adapted from an Iroquois Indian address of thanksgiving

Here are a few things we are celebrating:

Labor Day – September 1  (Beach time!)

The Nativity of St. Mary – September 8 

Holy Cross Day – September 14

Autumn Equinox – September 22 – You can see my Autumn Pinterest Board for ideas!

The Feast of St. Michael and All Angels – September 29.  This is one of my favorite celebrations in the church and at home!  You can see my MIchaelmas Pinterest Board for some ideas!

The season of Michaelmas, for me, really lasts from a few weeks before Michaelmas until a week or so before All Saint’s.  In honor of this occasion, I have been re- reading the words of Rudolf Steiner from his lectures  collected and entitled, “Michaelmas and the Soul- Forces of Man”  In the fourth lecture, he relates the four major festivals of the year:  Michaelmas, Christmas, Easter and St. John’s.  He says, “ Easter: death, then resurrection; Michaelmas: resurrection of the soul, then death. This makes of the Michael Festival a reversed Easter Festival. Easter commemorates for us the Resurrection of Christ from death; but in the Michael Festival we must feel with all the intensity of our soul: In order not to sleep in a half-dead state that will dim my self-consciousness between death and a new birth, but rather, to be able to pass through the portal of death in full alertness, I must rouse my soul through my inner forces before I die. First, resurrection of the soul — then death, so that in death that resurrection can be achieved which man celebrates within himself.”

You can read these four lectures for yourself here:  http://wn.rsarchive.org/Lectures/MichSoul/MiSoul_index.html  There is also this really interesting collection of articles, lectures, verses and stories all about Michaelmas available in  Waldorf Journal Project #15, edited by David Mitchell.  You can find that here:   http://www.waldorflibrary.org/Journal_Articles/WJP15.pdf

The Home Mood:

To me, the fall becomes a time of turning inward; a time of gratitude and reflection.  How do my words, my actions, reflect my gratitude toward my Creator and toward my life?  How do I interact with others in order to show this?  There is a quote I often think about from Dr. Rudolf Steiner that talks about this. He says;

The cultivation of this universal gratitude toward the world is of paramount importance.  It does not always need to be in one’s consciousness, but may simply live in the background of the feeling life, so that, at the end of a strenuous day, one can experience gratitude, for example, when entering a beautiful meadow full of flowers……And if we only act properly in front of the children, a corresponding increase in gratitude will develop within them for all that comes to them from the people living around them, from the way they speak or smile, or the way such people treat them.”  Rudolf Steiner from “A Child’s Changing Consciousness As The Basis of Pedagogical Practice”

Gratitude is such an important mood to create in the home. I think this creation can be tangible,  like those gratitude jars or going around the table at night and sharing something we have gratitude for…those are wonderful in their own way, but I think creating a  true mood of gratitude in the home actually is a much harder and deeper task. 

How do I really permeate this mood and carry it, even when things are overwhelming, is for this season of overcoming and courage as we head toward the longer nights of Winter. I think this is especially pertinent for those of us with teenagers and young adults who often are in the throes of figuring out who they really are, what turn their life is going to take as they launch. It can be a daunting time requiring inner strength on the part of the parent to really hold.

I think prayer comes to the forefront if that is in your spiritual tradition. I have never prayed as hard as I do now for my young adults and all the things they face. Even knowing from a certain perspective that they are made for these times, it can still be daunting. Teaching them deeper joy in the midst of transitions is something valuable that they still can learn from us! The teaching and guiding is not over and in many ways they need us more now than they did when they were small. I also use many affirmations and place that positive energy out into the world on their behalf.

Ideas for the Home:

  • The seasonal table is transitioning to yellows with dried flowers, seed pods, bunches of oats or wheat or corn that are dried, cornucopias, nuts, acorns, leaves and little “helicopters.”
  • I am going through and taking stock of fall and winter clothes and purging what we do not need.
  • Fall menu planning – a time of chili, soup, stew, warming dishes. I eat a lot of plant based dishes, so beans are coming to a forefront.
  • Crafting – I have some autumn crafting ideas on my Pinterest board, but I think I am going to start with Michaelmas crafts! It is beautiful and nurturing to create things ourselves, with or without children.

Ideas for Celebrating this Month with Littles:

Ideas for Celebrating this Month With Older Children:

Ideas for Celebrating this Month With Teens:

  • Find great theater, museum, and festival events to attend
  • Longer hiking, camping, and backpacking trips
  • Bake and cook fall dishes
  • Work on fall organizing and cleaning
  • Stargazing
  • Find new activities outside the home that your teen will adore
  • Find  new knitting, crocheting, sewing, woodworking and woodcarving ideas to try

Homeschooling and Working:

Work has been very busy! I see patients many times through the weekend, but this can also give me flexibility for homeschooling during the week. Our tenth grader is in hybrid school classes, but we still have classes we need to do on our own at home plus the work for the hybrid classes.

What are your September plans? If you blog or on social media, please leave a link in the comments below so we can follow each other’s plans!

Glorious August

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This is a month of sunshine and sunflowers, lakes, and fun – and here in the deep south, it’s also time for back to school. School here begins this first day of August or the second week depending upon your program. We are beginning on August 19th this year for our 15 year old sophomore (he can be over six feet tall, but he’s still my baby!) – our last child in school! Our other two homeschooled students graduated and are living their lives.

This is my birthday month, which I am very excited about! These are the other things we are celebrating in this beautiful month:

August 6th- The Transfiguration of Jesus Christ

August 8th- My Birthday!

August 10- School starts!

August 15- The Dormition of St. Mary

August 28 – our oldest child will be 24! Doesn’t seem possible! 

Ideas for Celebration:

  • Making a  beautiful triptych to celebrate the life of St. Mary.  There are many wonderful ideas regarding this on the Internet.
  • We have about another month or two of tubing, swimming and water park availability to us, so we hope to take advantage as we have only been to lake for our youngest to sail and haven’t really done a lot of swimming!
  • Camping – it can be super hot here, but I am already making camping in the fall a priority.
  • Gazing at the stars
  • Walking in the mornings
  • Working out. I have had good success doing a mixture of hot yoga, Zumba, and weightlifting.
  • Making delicious meals!

The Domestic Life:

This a great time to take stock of needs for fall/winter in clothing, shoes, outside gear, school supplies, art supplies. When our children were little, this was the time I always looked at our woolen clothing. Yes, even down here in the South it can get cold to be outside in the fall and winter, and I am a big believer is preserving bodily warmth for babies and small children.

I also think this a great time to go back to manners.  Children are often in an expansive place with summer weather and may need some help in remembering school behavior, work ethics and manners!  I like opening the first day of school with an introduction to how the space works for homeschooling, expectations and rules in homeschooling and the like.

Getting back into a rhythm that supports school is also a huge help with that.  It provides that balance between rest and quiet and expansive doing for children. Rhythm is a key word for this month and the structure of the rhythm of school for homeschooling does us all good!

Meal planning gets us through because I am too busy to have to spend a lot of time every day planning.  So, I like to plan 2-4 weeks of meals and shop. You can also start stocking up on things for fall and winter!

Homeschooling:

We are jumping into tenth grade (for my third time!)  I am really looking forward to this. We are doing some classes through a homeschool hybrid for high school and will do some of our own blocks and courses. Our son has cybersecurity things and Sea Scouts along with the farm and volunteering to keep him busy. I love the quote from The Waldorf Family Handbook that says that the goal of high school is to prepare them as “free independent individualities and to orient them realistically to the world outside of school.” I have always taken that as the mantra for high school! Be prepared for life.

 This is the year we really start preparing for college admissions as well, so preparing for the PSAT and ACT, looking at possibilities for where to attend, what credits we need, transcripts. It’s easier to do it now and not be behind when it comes time to pull everything together when it is time to apply.

Self-Care and Rhythm:

My biggest priorities right now in addition to homeschooling and working outside the home are my workouts, medical appointments and self care.

I want to hear how August is shaping up for you! How is school looking?  I have been very busy doing homeschool consulting this month! If anyone needs help with homeschool planning or planning for family life, please email me at admin@theparentingpassageway.  My rates for a half hour phone call are super reasonable and I have helped lots of moms this month!  Please let me know if I can help you!

Lots of love and many blessings,

Carrie

Organizing The Week

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It’s almost back to school time for many of us here in the south. This seemed so strange to me when I moved to Georgia in the 90s as in New York school always began the Tuesday after Labor Day. And honestly, the start date has crept further and further toward the beginning of August over the years I have lived in different southern states. It used to be more towards the end of August, but now the public schools down here begin August 1. It hardly seems fair, but then I remember we get out of school in mid- May. So there’s that!

I am taking a serious look at the calendar. I have to look not only at my commitments (hello, work) but also when we are homeschooling at home, when my son has outside classes, and the balance of homemaking and farm duties. And, to be honest, I have a few more appointments these days for general upkeep in my 50s than when I started homeschooling in my 30s!

The farm routine is set in terms of when horses need to be fed or go in and out. The apiary is easily checked on a weekend. I know what days are office visits and what days are outside classes. I know when I would like to get to the gym. The more wild cards to fill in are home visits for folks, which I often don’t know until the day before, and general things that come up all of the sudden on the farm.

I have penciled in the times to work with our high schooler as he can do much of the work on his own, but there are things we need to work on and do in order to count for high school credit as well. There are some things this sophomore year of high school I would like him to read outside of assigned material for outside classes as his interests are primarily cybersecurity and computers, boats and possible military. We also need to do a fine arts credit and some electives this year and next year in addition to some of the things he is doing in core outside classes.

I generally plan two meal prep days to keep us going, and tidy every day plus more major cleaning two to three times a week. Farm life is generally messy and the house can get quite dirty! I like to put appointments as much as possible on Fridays, but sometimes I don’t have a choice as to when some of my check ups can happen and they are about an hour to an hour and a half away, so sometimes that’s just life.

So basically a revolving circus much of the time, but I like to pretend I have a structure! It sure was easier when our children were young and we were home more!

What’s your best way for organizing your week? I would love to hear from you!

Blessings,

Carrie

Spectacular July

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As I sit writing this, it is a beautiful humid and sunny day here in the deep south. Our kids are all off doing things, and my husband and I will be keeping tabs on our horses, dogs, cats in the midst of fireworks. Our county just passed an ordinance to not have fireworks within 200 yards of any farm, so we will see if that does much of anything. At any rate, I am enjoying July! It was sort of a longer, less hot spring and month of June, so I don’t feel like I am hitting any July antipathy. For those of you who have been reading this blog for the past ten plus years,  you know July sometimes was not my favorite month.  The heat of July can be oppressive where I live, the air can feel still, time can seem to stand still when you have small children with endless days of trying to beat the heat.  I even wrote posts about July Doldrums and More July Doldrums. However, July is definitely feeling glorious to me this year!

We went to Alaska in May and it was such a wonderful experience. I can’t wait to go back and see more National Parks. I didn’t mind the weather at all or the sunlight and I loved seeing all the animals. We saw orcas, humpbacks, sea lions, seals, dolphins, Dall Sheep in Denali, moose, caribou, bears, porcupines, all kinds of birds and more. My husband and I generally don’t vacation without the children or leave the farm for very long, so it was a rare treat.

So,in the mode of gratitude and celebrating, this is what we are celebrating in July:

4- Independence Day

22- Feast Day of St. Mary Magdalene

25- Feast Day of St. James the Apostle

26- Feast Day of St. Anne and St. Joachim, Parents of the Blessed Virgin Mary

Are you thinking about summer menu planning?  I have a back post on July Menu Planning to grab!

I am looking forward to sunflower festivals, catching fireflies, being in the pool and lake and at the beach. We don’t have a pool near us anymore, so I have to do a better job planning to get us there in the midst of working!

Things to Do With Children:

  • Fourth of July decorating; patriotic crafts
  • Find traditional patriotic American music to listen to!
  • Go to Independence Day parades!
  • Sunflower crafts
  • Drying herbs and making things from herbs
  • Picking produce; canning and preserving
  • Earth looms and weaving could be lovely; see my summer Pinterest board for even more craft ideas – you can also see my July board on Pinterest as well!

Things for the Home:

  • Going through the school room or school area and cleaning out
  • Ordering art supplies and new resources for the next school year
  • Making new seasonal things for the home
  • Changing out toys if you are on a toy rotation for smaller children

Homeschooling

This summer, our rising sophomore (10th grade) is working a little on writing (he is reading Orwell’s 1984 and some writing in response) and working on cursive. I think if his cursive was better it would help him take notes better and faster at his hybrid school in the fall. Other than that, he’s been busy with gathering hours driving, spending time with friends, and Sea Scouts. We are going to take him to the beach to fish and he is excited about that!

In the past, July typically was a month I really pushed in homeschool planning – how are you all coming along? I usually wanted about 75 percent of my planning done. Tenth grade in Waldorf Education is a year of change as many teens in Waldorf Education are turning sixteen years old during this year. Here is a peek at that stage in development: https://theparentingpassageway.com/2016/08/15/development-of-the-tenth-grader/

Typically, Waldorf high schools include “track classes” for tenth grade – ie, English, Math, Spanish, etc and also blocks such as Ancient Civilizations, The Odyssey, Poetry, Ancient China, Trig, Embryology, etc. Our son is in a hybrid homeschool program where he goes two days a week and it is already going to be an more intense year with American History, American Literature, Geometry, Spanish I and Biology, so I am contemplating carefully how I want to bring the themes of traditional Waldorf tenth grade to him but not overload him.

Our other two children are adults and busy pursuing their own lives – one child is investigating advanced schooling in her profession and the other one is in a program right now for equine massage therapy.

Farm Life

The farm is busy! We just had a horse leave and another horse is going just down the road as a lease for a young lady to help further her riding. Hopefully we will get a few in to train and sell. Other than that, the bees are buzzing and I am enjoying my first grand dog. LOL

What are you up to this month?

Warm Regards,
Carrie

Lovely Month of May!

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There are so many glorious things to celebrate about May:  flowers and greenery, bees buzzing, spring time alive, and the activity of children everywhere perking up.  The world is ready to be outside in May in the Northern Hemisphere, and we feel the liveliness and promise of Spring.

This month we are celebrating:

1st- May Day – you can see back posts here  and here

11th -Mother’s Day

24th- Rogation Days – you can see this back post, “A Rogation Heart”

29th- Ascension Day – here is a post about celebrating this feast with children

The Twenty Sixth- Memorial Day

31st- The Feast of the  Visitation of the Blessed Virgin Mary

I am leaving today for a peaceful retreat with the ladies of my church. It will be a fun three days up in the mountains and a time to relax and recharge, which I really need. It’s been a busy year so far of treating patients, homeschooling, and farming.

We are also off to Alaska this month for the trip of a lifetime! I hope to see a whale, and you can follow along on my IG @theparentingpassageway.

Other things on my mind:

  • De-cluttering and deep cleaning with natural cleansers
  • De- cluttering and painting the garage
  • Spring tales for children and puppetry for small children
  • Gardening
  • The lake and the pool. Our son is sailing quite a bit with Sea Scouts, and the season is open!
  • Spring menu planning!
  • Exercising. Here is to a balanced May that involves spending an amount of self-care (receiving) closer to the amount of time I spend caring for others (giving). I have gotten smarter over the years (and my children are grown up), so I have scheduled my workouts first for May and then work. Farming chores are pretty consistent times, so that is easier to plan around.
  • Screen Free Week is May 5th to 11th!   Here are some real-life strategies for reducing children’s screen time. As adults, we often need to reduce screen time and social media time and I am making that a habit focus for May. Join me!

This year, I really looked at dividing my year more quarterly, so I am already looking ahead to these last two months of the second quarter as a bit of a personal challenge, and figuring out what kinds of things I would love to see happen in July, August, and September. The year is flying by!

I would love to know what is on your mind for this month of May.

Many blessings,

Carrie

Forward February

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If January is a month of reflection, then I think of February as the time to act and to start putting into action the things we discovered in January that could be helpful to ourselves and our families this year. This might be things about our health, our relationships, our families, our homeschooling, our jobs and finances.

If you can envision a wheel divided into categories such as health, friends and family, your significant other, spiritual/personal growth, fun and joy, your home, your career, money – are all these things divided equally? There are some seasons that one category may outweigh the other. However, I have found over the course of parenting that if one sector is neglected too long, it makes for an unbalanced household and an unhappy parent. We can create our own attitude and our own reality through those attitudes. Hold the positive. It’s not the negative doesn’t exist; it always will in some form as that is just the yin and yang of life so to speak, but to able to flow with those opposites and find the balance in the middle is so important.

If you can picture it, think of the most beautiful bubble of light that could surround you and your family. Think of everyone in your family as being happy, healthy, and smiling. This, to me, is the essence of February. It’s a month that is often in the Northern Hemisphere is dark and cold, but if we can imagine a brillance and radiance into it, it can become a beautiful glimmering light. After all, we begin the month with Candlemas, a celebration of light. We think of the first beginnings of light, and a beautiful candle festival helps mark this occasion.  There are so many ways to make candles, including rolling beeswax sheets, dipping candles, pouring beeswax into half of a walnut shell (and you can push in a little candle in order to have little floating lights, which are always fun for children), and you can make earth candles where you pour a candle and place a wick directly into a hole into the earth.

More than the visible signs of light, where is the light in your heart and home? Where are your connections with the people you love?

This is a wonderful time to change over your nature table if you have one to mark the seasons.  Flower fairies, branches in water that are budding,  a single candle, perhaps leading up to the markings of St. Valentine’s Day and then a little Lenten dish Garden to begin the beginning of March, as Lent begins on March 5 this year,  are all appropriate. All winter greenery is taken down.

This month in 2022 we are celebrating:

Black History Month – Of course Black History IS World history and American history and should be in every subject we teach EVERY month, but it’s also wonderful to take a renewed look at wonderful books and biographies this month.  

February 1 – Lunar New Year for those celebrating and also the Festival of St. Brigid

February – Mardi Gras! (until Lent, of course) Fat Tuesday is on March 4 this year with Lent beginning on March 5.

February 2 – Candlemas and also Groundhog Day.

February 14 – St. Valentine’s Day (you can see this post about Celebrating Valentine’s Day in the Waldorf Home

February 21- Presidents Day

Lovely things to do with children this month:

Make Valentine’s Day cards ; plan little treats and crafts for Valentine’s Day; make window transparencies; dip candles; roll candles; play board games or card games with your children;  draw, paint, model; whittle wood; make popcorn together; bake together; play in the snow – build snow forts; have snowball fights; snowshoe; downhill or cross country ski;  ice skate on a pond; read and tell stories; build forts inside; take a walk outside in the cold – look for animal tracks or berries or birds or all of the above; knit, crochet, cross stitch, finger knit, spin, sew; sing and make music together – learn some new songs; clean, scrub, dust, work around the house – rearrange furniture; go bowling or find an indoor swimming pool to swim in; write letters to family and friends; write stories together; snuggle on the coach with hot chocolate and marshmellows; cook for a neighbor; find a place of worship to attend and get involved; throw a party; clicker train your dog, cat, or other animal; take care of plants; start seeds indoors when it it is time, grow sprouts in the kitchen or a little microgarden.

Homeschooling – Do you need a little check in? Try this back post!

The February Homeschool Rhythm Re-Check

f you are looking for a little re-boot to your rhythm, please do try the above back post! There are so many wonderful posts about rhythm to look at. So, whilst February is a month in which many homeschoolers can feel in a rut and ready to just give up, try instead to think what would be the perfect reset and recharge for you and your family? Maybe it is a great month for a book study, a project that the whole family can be involved in or something else!

Our homeschooling this month: Our older children are out living their own lives and long since graduated, but our 15 year old is still home and a freshman in high school due to where his birthday falls for our state. He is at a two day a week school, which still legally counts as homeschooling in our state, but our curriculum and work is largely dictated by the hybrid school. It’s a classical school, so definitely different than Waldorf Education, but still having good discussions and debating and learning to think.

Farm Life- We have been doing a bathroom upstairs in an attic space, which is coming along, and we completed the addition to the barn right before the cold weather set in. We have six horses now, and cats and dogs and bees. Still hoping for a garden space this spring!

Work Life- Work is always busy, although summer is the busiest time in general. I am still doing a mix of pediatric physical therapy patients, pelvic health patients, and lactation patients, so some days it feels like I am all over our metro area. I am working towards a certificate in Peri/Menopause Coaching and next up is delving into fertility to help patients working with fertility issues have a more holistic approach and to fill in the gaps of Western medicine.

#Commit2025 – my word of the year! Mainly I am committing to myself and to showing up for myself. That means exercising, nourishing food, bookstore and library dates, painting and writing, and being out in nature. It may not sound like much, but when every day is busy taking care of other people and farm animals, it can be a challenge. The whole day can go by without really any thought of myself at all! I made a vision board and I have a prayer list and prayer meditations to go with my word, so I am working on this daily. Commit and show up!

I would love to hear from you! Drop me a line at admin@theparentingpassageway.com!

Cheers,

Carrie

A Happy New Year of New Beginnings

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I so love the start of a new year, all fresh and sparkly in my mind. I have been so enjoying not only the holidays and Christmastide, but a feeling of energy and new beginnings in the quiet coziness of the holidays. I was running with work hours close to the last minute of the holidays, and in fact, we only got our Christmas tree up on December 22nd! But since then, I have had some time off of work and have had time to think and dream and plan. It’s been so refreshing and nourishing.

I had a health crisis in 2023 and have spent much of this year working a lot and feeling as if I was trying to catch up to something -maybe the someone I used to be – before I got sick. Slowly, we emerge from things in life differently than we were before but still ever joyful. I realize I could have died in 2023, and am so grateful I am here still. Thank you all so much for your support. I am ready to re-emerge with some new content for you this year and sending you all some love in this season of new beginnings. I love the more introverted vibe of this season – nesting with blankets and hot drinks and inside fun, but still being able to go outside for a walk in the rain or bright sunshine with colder temperatures!    I am always delighted with the possibility and prospect of snow as well.

January is one of my favorite months of the year. Suzanne Down had a beautiful little story in her most recent newsletter, and I found the public domain version of it here to share with you: https://etc.usf.edu/lit2go/165/buttercup-gold-and-other-stories/2902/the-little-new-year/. It would be a lovely one to tell with puppetry for your children but it is also worth a read if you have older children or are an empty nester to remember the spirit of Christmastide and new beginnings all around!

Here are some of the days we will be celebrating in January:

January 1 – New Year’s Day

January 6– The Feast of Epiphany and Epiphanytide that stretches until Lent begins on Wednesday, March 5 this year (and Easter is on Sunday, April 20 for those of you planning ahead!)

January 18 to January 25 Week of Prayer for Chrisian Unity https://www.oikoumene.org/resources/documents/resources-for-the-week-of-prayer-for-christian-unity-2025

January 20– Martin Luther King, Jr Day – also celebrated January 15 and April 4 in The Episcopal Church

Janaury 18– The Feast Day of St. Peter

January 25 – The Feast Day of St. Paul

Rhythm is strength, and I have things in place for the house with outside the home work, farm work, and homeschooling our ninth grader this year. I will be detailing this and how I run the house and farm this month in this space. I still work for two different companies providing physical therapy and lactation services plus have my own business so the days can vary, but I am finding it easier to balance everything than it used to be.

The farm is at six horses right now that require care multiple times a day, and two beehives plus our indoor dogs and cats (and an outdoor cat that has decided to live here part time). We put an addition on our barn this year, and I am looking forward to expanding the apiary in the spring, and planting a garden. We still have many renovation projects to go in the house (we are starting with adding a bathroom upstairs this month), and landscaping and pasture pieces to fulfill, but slowly we are getting there. This house and property has been an incredible project. We were lucky to find this during the pandemic, but it has been a ton of work with literally not one thing from insulation, plumbing, water lines, heating, etc needing to be redone up through the pastures, barn, etc. It can be overwhelming at times, but then I remember how much I wished and prayed for this place and get my gratitude on again!

Creating is high on my list this year, including writing more, seasonal crafting, and watercolor painting. It feels really nice to have enough energy to be back in that space! I even got some new paintbrushes for Christmas and have plans to paint monthly with a friend. ❤ I decided that after I take my beekeeping class this year, I am going to enroll in an art class. Our son has less extra curricular things than his sisters did at his age, so I think I can find the time to do these things!

I usually pick a word of the year instead of making resolutions, and this year I chose the word “COMMIT.” I am committing to myself and my health this year. The things that need to be done are going on the calendar and I am blocking time out as I need to. Do you have a word of the year to bring you focus and clarity? My past words have included words such as radiant, abundant, vibrant, bold (2023) and last year was replenishment.  This year, I have really sat with a planner, a vision board, and a prayer board and just thought about how to bring pieces of “COMMIT” to life this year and what types of support I will need to make that happen. I can’t do it by myself, but I have a team assembled to help me commit to my health, along with family and great friends that are family. I am very lucky and grateful.

These are a few of the things we are enjoying this month:

  • Daily outside time – when our children were small and we lived in neighborhoods, this was mainly in the form of a daily walk, and park time. Now it is mainly in the form of barn chores but I also am starting to walk again. I actually don’t generally mind the colder weather.
  • Puzzles and board games
  • Green smoothies and juicing
  • Making freezer meals
  • Exercising – this includes at home with Bodi (the former Beachbody), the gym, walking, and some events at our local yoga studio.
  • Creating
  • Going out as a couple
  • Playing with our horses, dogs, and cats
  • Learning more about beekeeping. I am excited about my beekeeping course. I found a great mentor last year who came and helped me, but I am looking forward to being more knowledgeable on my own!
  • Indoor and outdoor gardening
  • Indoor microgreens!
  • Decluttering from digital spaces (social media), and decluttering the garage and basement.
  • I am taking a beekeeping class this month through our county’s beekeeping club!
  • We found a sweet new parish closer to the farm – our old parish was just too far away and we always have to do things around the horse schedule. This new parish is a small country church, and it’s adorable. You can see a picture on my Instagram stories!

If you are looking for fun things to do with children, these are things we have enjoyed:  Cut out paper snowflakes, including really cool 3-D snowflakes; dip candles; roll candles; play board games or card games with your children;  draw, paint, model; whittle wood; make popcorn together; bake together; play in the snow – build snow forts; have snowball fights; snowshoe; downhill or cross country ski;  ice skate on a pond; read and tell stories; build forts inside; take a walk outside in the cold – look for animal tracks or berries or birds or all of the above; knit, crochet, cross stitch, finger knit, spin, sew; sing and make music together – learn some new songs; clean, scrub, dust, work around the house – rearrange furniture; go bowling or find an indoor swimming pool to swim in; write letters to family and friends; write stories together; snuggle on the coach with hot chocolate and marshmallows; cook for a neighbor; find a place of worship to attend and get involved; throw a party; clicker train your dog, cat, or other animal; take care of plants; start seeds indoors when it it is time

On the parenting and  homeschooling front, our oldest lives and works about an hour from us but comes to farm frequently because her horse is here. Our middle child is working towards her own business in the equine industry, and our youngest is a freshman in high school. He is enjoying being on a cybersecurity team and being in Sea Scouts. Homeschooling doesn’t look quite like it used to when I was homeschooling three children Monday through Friday, but we still have days of homeschooling in addition to several days of classes at a local hybrid high school.

THINGS TO LOVE THIS MONTH!

Things to love this month:

The January Book Box

Warming Meals

The most wonderful new resource from Raising Little Shoots is here! My Christian readers will love the gentle wisdom in this collection: https://raisinglittleshoots.com/word-for-the-way-a-new-year-devotional/ I just LOVE this! Definitely go check it out!

The other thing I am really enjoying is Hearth & Home for all things homemaking. I hope you enjoy it as much as I do: https://www.myhearthandhome.com/

I hope you are a member of The Child is the Curriculum for seasonal living, Waldorf homeschooling, Waldorf parenting, and support! I just renewed my membership, and I hope to see you over there: https://www.thechildisthecurriculum.com/subscriptions/?register=1

Lastly, if you love a good book club I am doing this one: https://everyday-reading.com/the-2025-everyday-reading-book-club-list/ You can follow along on Instagram, which makes this really appealing.

Looking forward to celebrating throughout the year with you and supporting you on your parenting and homeschooling journey!

Many blessings to you,

Carrie