What you do in your house is worth as much as if you did it up in heaven for our Lord God. We should accustom ourselves to think of our position and work as sacred and well-pleasing to God, not on account of the position and work, but on account of the word and faith from which the obedience and the work flow. ~ Martin Luther

Wednesday, February 18, 2026

Resolved: 2026



  It's, oh, a few months late, but here are my goals for 2026.  

While I haven't blogged them until now, I have been implementing them since Feb 1st.  (Epiphany screws everything up with New Years' goals.  Just sayin'.)

~ Take a Woods Walk once per week  (these are NOT to replace the walks I take on my own or while listening to audiobooks/podcasts.  These are for nature and children and refreshment.  Not necesssarily exercise.)

~ Finish Hillsdale College course on Paradise Lost

~ Re-do Dining Room already.  SHEEEESH.

~ Continue the habit of exercising three times per week.  (I am going to try to focus more on strength training this year... hopefully sneaking it in twice a week this year as often as possible...but still gonna count three times of WHATEVER a win.  Habits are turning into lifestyle and that is progress I want to keep!  At my age, mobility and strength will always be more important than being thin.  So, continue I will.)  

~ Group Letters, 1x per month

~ Read at least 2 adult books with the Middles

~ Read at least 4 chapter books with the Littles

~ Read 2 poetry books 

~ Read at least 5 never-read books from my shelves

~ Try and fix my sleep problems this year.  Research and implement strategies that will help me in this.  (Can only get better at this point.  Can't get any worse. Riiiiight????)

~ take supplements every day.  Especially magnesium before bed!

~ Monthly budget meetings with the Mister 

~ One date night per month with the Mister (NOT at the same time as the budget.)

~ Host games nights for teens (I'd love to have this once a month but I know that is probably too lofty of a goal.  So, my goal for this year is at least four times.)

AND THE BIGGEST ONE...

~ Focus on Feeding My People Better

(It has taken me a few extra weeks to post this because I have been concerned with how this next one sounds.  I don't want to seem snooty or uppity or judgy about food or food choices.  I know there is a lot of baggage surrounding this topic so as you read on, remember.  This is just my goal for my family and it is just my goal for this YEAR.  And it is just a goal for my own KITCHEN... I am not the sort of person who is going to refuse to eat with gratitude what others put before me. So much can be said on this topic... but not today.  Today, is just me trying to find a few changes I can implement in an effort to optimize what comes out of my own kitchen. )

I spent a lot of time eating differently than my family last year because I wasn't allowing myself the not-good-for-you foods that they were eating.    Which means, they were eating a fair bit of not-great-for-you food.  This year, I hope to change that.  

What complicates things is that everyone in the family has different needs and temptations... some eat way too much, some eat way too little.  Some need lots more protein.  Some need lots more carbs.  Some need to eat a lot less.  Some need to gain some weight.  It's a full time job to meet the needs and feed all these unique, hungry people.  But there are a few things that will help everyone in the household.

We don't need to eat as many processed 'treats'. Candy.  Chips. Cookies.  I'm all about the treats... but I hope to offer more homemade treats, less artificial and processed. (I'm ashamed to say, rather than force myself to withstand the temptation of a homemade cookie-a near impossibility- I bought cookies for the family simply because they don't tempt me as much. Tragic and sad.  And selfish. And MEAN of me!)

I would like to lessen our storebought convenience foods like storebought bread or dressings. (Notice I said lessen, not cut out entirely.  Baby steps.)

And we could all benefit from more vegetables.  (We already eat vegetables at every supper.  But I'm going to try to increase that even more.)  

Basically, more nutrition.

 Equal parts ridiculous food prices and my own sheer laziness/overwhelm, this year I need to refocus on getting our food under budget again...and making it as nourishing and healthful as I can muster.  And THAT means, more things made from scratch.   And THAT means...a schedule.  

I have noticed I am very much a 'what I feel like cooking' cook. I like variety, I like following my food whims.  So scheduling a meal plan has always been hard for me.  But, if I plan for it, I have more control over it.  And more preparation time.  And more intentionality.

So here is my plan:

Focus on:

~ a loose weekly meal framework (to lessen decision fatigue). Strategy, my friends.  I need strategy.  Within that framework, there is room for following my whims.

~ include more vegetables in our meals each day

~ make homemade snacks instead of buying them all.  Also- less snacking. Also- more vegetable snacks.

~  Breads from scratch.  I make a lot of bread products from scratch, but I still wind up buying sandwich bread for lunches.  It is just so convenient!  I have to admit, when I make three meals a day, it is nice to have a simple, convenient sandwich at lunch that children can make on their own.  But also- storebought sandwich bread is pricey, tasteless, nutritionless and never seems to fill people up OR go bad (?!?!).  So I am going to be working on making heartier breads each week.  (And more creative lunches).   I will not be making ALL of our breads, all the time.  Just MORE of them.  And for the sake of our Trim the Tree party rye bread dip, I want to learn to make rye bread.  (To buy a nice rye loaf at the store is almost $10 now!!!)  Also: try using einkorn flour. Also: experiment with sourdough.

~ Find excellent recipes for dressings and sauces and begin to make our own rather than buy them bottled.

Here is the 'loose framework' I intend to implement.  I'll tweak it if it doesn't work well.  

Food takes up a huge portion of my time already.  This is by far the loftiest, most time-consuming goal of the year.  It will, however, impact the health of everyone in this family and that makes it very worthwhile.  And it will make Matt's hard-earned dollars stretch further, which will be very helpful too.  

Here's to a productive (and delicious!) 2026.  

Do you make any goals at the start of the year?  If so- how are you doing?!  I'd love to hear!

And- if you have any from-scratch dressings/condiment recipes you swear by... drop 'em in the comments and I'll love you forever.

 The object of a New Year is not that we should have a new year. It is that we should have a new soul and a new nose; new feet, a new backbone, new ears, and new eyes. Unless a particular man made New Year resolutions, he would make no resolutions. Unless a man starts afresh about things, he will certainly do nothing effective.

Gilbert K. Chesterton

Monday, February 02, 2026

Grandpa's Quilt (and my Resolutions of 2025 Reflections)

Be the kind of woman who, 

when your feet hit the floor in the morning, 

the devil says 

"Oh no!  She's up!

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~


“I am not what I ought to be, I am not what I want to be, I am not what I hope to be in another world; but still I am not what I once used to be, and by the grace of God I am what I am”

― John Newton


Looking at last year's goals, here is how I stacked up...

~ Read Paradise Lost and take Hillsdale's College free course on it .  (NAILED it!  Sort of.  I read the entire book but didn't finish all the video lessons.  Finishing the Hillsdale course on it will be a roll-over goal for this year.)

~ Make a quilt (NAILED it!  I can't describe to you how proud and happy (and surprised!) I am to have accomplished this task.  And I am so pleased with the end result!  Even moreso, my Father-in-law was pleased, as it was for him.  I don't know that I would recommend a first quilt being done with misshaped and odd pieces that you must somehow jigsaw puzzled together, but it somehow miraculously worked.)  Photos of it at the end of this post)

~ Repaint the Dining Room (FAILED.   Another roll-over into the new year... this goal has been rolled over three times now. Third times a charm?!)

~ Create a monthly budget and use the envelope system to be sure it is implemented. (FAILED.)

~ Begin a SAPHOUSE FUND (Well, we set aside extra but it wasn't earmarked for the saphouse.  I am gonna call this a success because it can always be used for the saphouse if Matt wants to.)

~ Keep a home journal this year.  (Nailed it!)

~ Use up enough of my cotton yarn to fill a single basket- or less.  (NAILED IT! I still have cotton yarn leftover, but I used up a basket worth of yarn this past year- which is kinda crazy to me since I didn't knit or crochet anything impressive, really. Just a few sweaters, hats, a dress, a tiny purse and lotsa dishcloths)

~ Try to make a new variety of cheese (Nailed the attempts.  Did NOT nail creating a delicious cheese.  I tried three times to make Gouda- but all three wound up being ruined in one way or another. I discovered that I am very bad at babysitting cheese.)

~ Invite individual families from church over once a month.  (FAILED IT.  We did have families over but not once a month and not all the families of our church.  Still, better than nothing.)

~ Read through the Children's Story Bible with the Littles.  (While we spent time reading this book together,  we did not finish the entire book -and we could have- so I call this a FAIL.)

~ Create a better schooling schedule for the Littles- and then implement it.  (FAIL.  Once again, the Littles get less than they deserve.)

~ Make Morning Time Great Again.  (Overall, better than the year previous.  Could do a lot better.)

~ Keep my commonplace book more faithfully.  (NAILED IT!)

And the HEALTH GOALS:

~ I AM NOT GOING TO WEIGH MYSELF for all of 2025.  (Nailed it.  That was easy.  And freeing.)

~ I AM NOT GOING TO TRY TO LOSE WEIGHT.  Instead, my only focus will be to EXERCISE (in some capacity) at least 3x/week. (Nailed it with the exercise.  Every SINGLE week last year, I did some sort of exercise three (or more times) except the last three weeks in December, when I was only able to squeeze in two.  I am very proud of this accomplishment because there were many times that I just chose to do it even when I DID.NOT.WANT.TO but my track record was so good, I didn't want to ruin it.  And I was always happy I had done it after the fact.  Soooo happy with this accomplishment.

~ I AM NOT GOING TO CUT OUT FOOD GROUPS.    And I will be tracking my protein because I know I don't eat enough of it NAILED.  I upped my protein to consistently getting between 100-175 grams of protein a day.  (I ate A LOT of yogurt.)  And I tracked my calories and protein the whole year- probably 75% or more of the time.  I ate breads and pasta and potatoes every now and again which is healing for me because I've struggled with a lot of internal guilt by labelling those things 'bad'.  And I spent the majority of the year in a calorie deficit.  

~ I AM NOT GOING TO DRINK MORE THAN 12 DIET COKES this year (I had way more than 12.  Let's leave it at that, shall we?)

I weighed myself the first day of last year, and the first day of this year.  And entire year of exercising three (or more!) times a week, establishing routines, tracking my food, eating in a deficit, upping my protein...and guess what?!

I only lost three pounds.  

Which is about what my weight fluctuates on a day to day basis.  So, basically, I didn't lose any weight.

I know that my goals were to NOT try to lose weight, but of course, making so many improvements to my lifestyle would result in that naturally.  I mean sheesh!  I am not gonna lie, I am super depressed about this!  I am going to continue to implement these goals because I know they are much healthier for me than the way I was before... I can actually squat in the garden without pain again... and my body will thank me later for being stronger as I age.  But I hate to think I am going to be 'thick' for the rest of my life, no matter how hard I work at it and that just seems to be my sad, sad reality.

And yet, I can honestly say, I did everything I could to change that reality... and I am really proud of myself for doing it.

Over all of my goals, not just the health ones, I saw a lot of improvements and successes.  I count 2025 as a win for my goals, overall.


(Tomorrow, I'll share my goals for 2026)

And now for Grandpa's quilt:

My floor was a scrappy mess a lot of the time as I tried to sort things out.  Over and over again.  And then, because we LIVE here, I'd have to pack it all up and start all over the next time.

I had some completed blocks to work with, lots of strips of fabric to work with, and then I filled it all in with blocks of my own to make it all 'fit'.

The quilt top, finally put together!


The back.  (An old flat sheet and some piecing to make it big enough. And more interesting.)


I love the red and blue block in the corner.  It's my favorite.


These are the oldest blocks on the quilt... all handstitched, fragile fabric and even some of the small squares were pieced using two tiny scraps sewn together to make a complete little square   Very impractical to include in the quilt, but I just had to.  


blowing in the wind

I had to decide how I was going to actually quilt it... without a longarm sewing machine, the options were hand-quilting and tying it off.  I was under serious time constraints so hand-quilting was out of the question.  Tying it off would have required borrowing a frame and would have resulted in those little ties sticking out, which felt like it would take away from the beautiful top.)  A friend from church has an "in" with a reasonably inexpensive Mennonite quilter, so I decided to send it off to her to be 'professionally' done.

This was the hardest decision to make and I regretted it so much- until it was actually done a week before I had to give it to Gary.  Then I was SO THANKFUL I was not killing myself to get it done in time.

Finished the binding.  By the last corner, I actually did a good job. :-)

Guess you'll never know who my holder-uppers were!






I'm pretty sure he liked it.

Monday, January 26, 2026

WoodsWalks 1-4

                 January begins a new year and with it, new goals and aspirations.  I love the openness and expectancy of a new year; the fresh, clean slate.  And I love the reflection on the last year- where I can improve, where I did improve, what I was able to achieve, what really needs my focus now.  Now that it is nearly FEBRUARY, I'll soon be doing a proper post on reflections of last years' goals and what the new ones are for this year.  But for today, I want to share one of the goals for this year that I am most excited about...  a weekly woods walk with the children.  All year long.

CONFESSION: I turn into a hibernating bear in wintertime.  A hibernating SLOTH would be more accurate but sloths don’t hibernate.  I move as little as possible.  I avoid anything to do with the cold unless I absolutely must.  And, it's no wonder, winter can be a very challenging time for me- despair and anxiety and stress creeps in little by little.

(Apparently, sunshine fills my proverbial batteries.)

Coupled with that, I have been thinking a lot lately about how my mothering looks differently, now that I am older,  with my Littles than it did with my Biggle babies.  With the Biggles and some of the Middles, I was growing up with them.  I was making snow angels alongside them and playing hide and seek with them.  Somewhere along the line, the children started playing with siblings and I began staying inside.  I realize this and want to remedy it.  Playing with siblings is so, so good but I do not want to become a dull mother in my old age.  

I hope that this weekly woods’ walk will help with ALL of these things.  I will move my body, even in winter.  I will breathe in deep the fresh air.  I will exhale long.  I will soak up sunshine.  I will feel revived.  I will be encouraging my children to do the same.  And, maybe best of all, I will be a mother who plays, explores and experiences alongside her children once again.  I have already been sledding twice- and I haven’t done that in YEARS!  Moses and I had a very fun time rolling down the pipeline two weeks ago.   Imagine!  Me, 43 years old… rolling down a hill, arms tucked tight and legs flailing- laughing like a child.  It was amazing. 

I am going to take a picture every week for accountability and later, a rememberance book.  At the end of the year, we will have witnessed the woods in all its' seasons, we'll watch it transform and come alive.  

And maybe, just maybe, we'll see the same in ourselves.

WoodsWalk 1:

(First Week challenged My resolve almost immediately when we went out in the middle of a winter snowstorm)







Right behind us was where Matt fell from the sky and lived to tell the tale


Woodswalk 2:









WoodsWalk 3:

Not clever enough to bring sleds along, the pipeline hill begged to be sledded down- so we used coats instead.






Woods Walk 4:

We came prepared this time

 







 “Everyone begins as a child by liking Weather. You learn the art of disliking it as you grow up. Haven’t you ever noticed it on a snowy day? The grown-ups are all going about with long faces, but look at the children—and the dogs? They know what snow’s made for.”

                                                -C.S.Lewis, That Hideous Strength

Thursday, January 22, 2026

Birthday Wishes Do Come True (Ineke turns 10!)

Ineke, going in to her 10th year, has a deep and abiding love (infatuation?) with horses.  

And so naturally, horses had to be a part of her birthday.

Besides horse socks and a horse notebook and a little horse lantern, she got a beautiful horse card...
and on that card, she got a ticket.

And on that ticket, she got a birthday trip to ride a horse for the first time!










(I think, from those tears, that this was a very Special, Secret Wish that she had been holding close inside for a long time.)

Thank goodness for friendly, generous, homeschooled horse-people like Kate, who are willing to make birthday wishes come true.





This is Boon.  















I think both Boon and Ineke had some trepidations about trotting.  Poor Kate had to practically pull the horse to a trot...

But eventually trot he did. And Ineke was glad that she had done something that made her nervous.



What a brave, beautiful, boisterous girl you are, Ineke Beaneke. 

And we love you more than a barn FULL of horses.  ;-)

For her dessert, Ineke requested a fruit cheesecake.  Here is a fruity cheesecake at dusk.


 And here is her fruity cheesecake on fire.


And here is her attempting (and failing) to blow out the MANY candles upon her fruity cake:









One can only assume she had such a hard time because all her wishes had already come true.