Never let your schooling interrupt your education.
Written by contributor Rachel Wolf of Clean and Lusa Organics
Some days I fantasize that my home looks like something off of one of my Pinterest boards.
Well-styled, clean, and impeccably organized.
Simple, beautiful, artistic and inspiring.
With not a (dog) hair out of place. (So to speak.)
But then I open my eyes and look around. And I wince a little.
Because as it turns out I’m not living in that world at all.
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Written by contributor Rachel Wolf of Clean and LuSa Organics
Lately I’ve been reflecting on how our relationships change when we become parents.
My relationship to my husband, myself, my community, and my friends transformed on account of parenthood.
And I didn’t see that coming.
I thought life with children would be much like life before, just messier.
It wasn’t.
I think I called my friends to apologize for the curveball but – with a screaming baby in my arms – said we might never finish a phone call again.
Then I promptly hung up.
We made it through, of course. (Mostly because my friends soon had children of their own and they started hanging up on me, too.)
The second curveball came when we chose to homeschool.
Somehow I didn’t see that one coming either. But homeschooling (like parenting in general) changes our relationships.
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Written by contributor Rachel Wolf of Clean and Lusa Organics
I am a morning person.
I make tea and start work while the rest of my family is still asleep.
Still in my pajamas I jot down my daily “to do” list. Housework, writing, homeschooling, errands, classes, laundry… You get the idea.
(Quite well I suspect.)
Like yours, my day is often full before it has begun.
But recently I wondered: what would happen if I began today without the “to-do” list, but instead with the simple intention of having more fun?
What if I made joy my top priority?
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Written by contributor Rachel Wolf of Clean and Lusa Organics
Weeds. They invade our gardens and lawns.
They choke out the plants we’re trying to grow.
We did not invite them, yet there they appear in abundance.
So we seek them out and destroy them.
But Ralph Waldo Emerson said, “A weed is a plant whose virtues have not yet been discovered.”
Might we be missing something?
Stinging nettle
Around here we relish our weeds. (Though we prefer to call them “wild edibles”.)
I would contest that weeds have many virtues.
Wild edibles are:
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Written by contributor Rachel Wolf of Clean and Lusa Organics
My son once mistook Lake Michigan for the ocean. So we sat down with a map and found the Great Lakes. And then we found the Atlantic.
Lake Michigan is big, but the ocean is immense. He wanted to see it for himself. So did his sister.
And so did I for that matter. After traveling the world in my teens and 20′s, I hadn’t left the Midwest for nearly a decade.
It was time for a little sand between our toes.
At four and eight years old, my children were ready for a road trip. Why not take a month off and head to the beach?
And so we did.
Two kids, one grown-up, four weeks, and 3000 miles. My husband would stay behind to run our business and I would take our homeschoolers on the road. Alone.
We were excited, but I was also nervous. Could I swing it – even on the hard days – without the support of my husband and the comforts of home?
There was only one way to know. In early October we headed south, anticipating sand and sea within a week.
While there is no formula for the perfect road trip, this is how we pulled it off.
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