When I shared earlier this year that posting frequency would slow down a bit here as I began posting weekly on The Connected Family, I worried that things would feel… slow at EFM. But thanks to your generous participation and maybe a little of the old quality v. quantity tradeoff, I was delighted by what we were able to talk about in February. You all are so good to me, and I’m excited for what I have planned for this month, too.
Writing here feels particularly like a gift right now as I work to find my TCF voice. It’s a new audience and brand (and purpose), and the trial and error feels a bit foreign! While I’ve got pretty much everything (voice, tone, perspective, format, length, angle, etc.) nailed down for EFM and CWM (since I’ve written for both for over a decade!), I’m still figuring all those things out with TCF. Thanks for coming along for the ride :)
The first of my fancy daffodils have bloomed!!
On my calendar: — Easter basket shopping with all three kids. I’ll go on individual mini shopping trips to Target with each kiddo to choose items for baskets we donate through a local program. One of my favorite traditions! — Primary voting. I would never miss a chance to add my voice, even if it sometimes seems inconsequential. — Spring break. We are returning to Jekyll Island!
What I’m loving right now: — Ocean BINGO, an unexpected reading practice tool! Shep and I have been playing it together and, since he loves to be the caller, he finds himself sounding out things like “spotted eagle ray” and “wandering albatross.” I’ll take it :) These BINGO games are really beautiful and great quality – I want to collect all the versions (birds! cats! trees!) even though I have very little reason to. — John and I try to have an at-home date night about once a month and usually watch a movie. Recently we chose Yesterday, and it was delightful! A feel-good pick with a just-intriguing-enough premise (and lots of Beatles songs). It’s currently included with Prime. — I asked for and received Vuori joggers for Christmas, and I’m sorry to report back that they really are excellent. Good quality, great fit, and I love my color – iron heather.
As a reminder, you can find allll the things I’ve loved over the last few years neatly organized right here!
What you’re loving right now:
This is where I highlight a few items here that have been popular in the last month with fellow readers, based on my analytics. Here’s hoping this will help you find something you’ll love!
— The Rifle Paper Co for Target collection was easily the most popular link I shared last month – and for good reason! I was truly blown away by the quality of the boxes I purchased. Wish there was more from the collection still in stock!! — The pearl and gold studs I wear daily bounced up to the top, too. I’m not giving them up anytime soon but I did just try on these hearts in a store and they’re now on my wish list. — 52 Modern Manners for Kids, a resource we use for Team Thomas Tuesdays — My current sunhat — Our favorite family conversation card deck
Last month on The Connected Family:
Adding a segment to round up the previous month’s posts on TCF! So many of you have subscribed (thank you!), but if you haven’t, and a conversation about kids, technology, and family culture sounds meaningful for you, I’d love for you to join us.
What I read in February: — The Red Tent | I plucked this re-read off our shelf as we worked our way through Genesis in our Bible-in-a-year plan. It’s a highly-imagined recreation of Dinah’s story, compelling and adding some interesting background to the ancient world Jesus’s lineage wound through, but it made me feel similar to The Book of Longings – vaguely scandalous? — To Say Nothing of the Dog | Whew. I added this to my 2024 reading list after Janssen put it on hers, so I didn’t know too much about it before requesting it from the library. It was… very different than your average bookstagram pick (!). It’s a “comedy of manners,” a stylized form I’d never read before, and packed with literary and historical allusions, many of which I was not familiar with. It was also published in 1998. All this to say, it was mostly a slog. I was still considering DNF-ing up until about 3/4 of the way through, but I’m glad I stuck it out. I think there’s value in reading something very different and a little more challenging than my usual fare every once in a while – even if it did back up my reading pipeline for a few weeks :) And I am proud to say I guessed the twist early!
Revisiting my February goals: Reach out to an upholsterer and/or visit a showroom for goal no. 1 (Yes! Waiting on fabric swatches to arrive.) Rehab and paint June’s new (old) desk (Yes! I just added the top coat yesterday and now it needs two weeks (!) to cure. I found a cutie chair to pair it with at Pigfish on my birthday.) Finalize the secrets + swag for the AC retreat (Sadly, the AC retreat is the same weekend as my grandmother’s service, so I’m no longer able to attend. I’m very sad to miss, of course, but also feel total peace that I’ll be where I need to be that weekend. Because of this, I’ve stepped back from the planning, but can’t wait to see what the gals come up with!) Complete at least 60 hours of deep work (I got to 39, beating my total for January by four hours! Still room to grow, but grateful for improvement!) Write one lesson of the TCF course (It was the first one and by far the easiest, but still!) Read chapters 4, 5, and 6 of Outlive (Just starting to get into the actionable section :)) Take the Birds & Bees course with John
March goals: — Take the Birds & Bees course with John — Read chapters 7, 8, and 9 of Outlive — Choose fabric and send chairs off for reupholstering — Complete at least 45 hours of deep work (about 3 for every week day, minus travel days!) — Finish the leadership program slides + deliver my talk — Write the second lesson of the TCF course — Wholeheartedly enjoy my extended family and time in Connecticut, as my grandmother would have wanted
As a reminder, many of these are drawn from my 2024 goals!
Happy March! Feel free to chime in on anything I’ve mentioned or anything else on your mind.
In this month, the first of the year, my attention is narrowly focused. I am aware that the demand of writing weekly on The Connected Family for a paying audience could easily become a stressor if I don’t carefully manage it, and so here at the beginning of the year, I consciously restrained myself on almost all other goals to create the space to start strong and get ahead in this one area. It’s a bit challenging (I’m excited about every one of my goals!), but I know this short-term narrowing will give me the most peace of mind and pave the way to branch out a bit more in the months to come.
Also, while we’re talking about TCF, I thought it might be helpful to do a little expectation setting here at the start.
For the last few years, my intention has been to share two posts a week on EFM. I didn’t always realize it, but that’s been the goal! With splitting my time between two platforms, going forward I plan to share one post on EFM and one post on TCF each week. TCF will be the home for all things family culture, kids + tech, and low-screen living – a deep well, considering everything that feeds into it! EFM will hold the rest: my goals, our travels, personal finance, faith, books, home updates, recipes, etc. My signature deep thoughts will feature on both :)
While this is, theoretically, the same amount of content, I recognize that only paid subscribers will now have access to all of it, and that is a change from the past 15+ years of blogging. I’m grateful to each of you that’s able to take the leap with me on this new venture. I also understand it’s not in the cards for everyone right now for various reasons, and that there might be disappointment that comes along with that. Please know I am very grateful for you and your support, in whatever form it takes.
On my calendar: — Our 19th dativersary! We’re taking a pottery class (part of John’s Christmas present!) to celebrate. — A goals night with our church community group. They asked me to lead a little session and I’m delighted to – it’s always an interesting challenge to translate CWM’s teachings for a new (and guys + gals) audience. — June’s birthday celebrations. She chose a “day of fun” this year (versus a party), and so we’re following her lead to visit the Museum of Life and Science, have lunch at Noodles & Co, play at a ninja gym, and have her very first sleepover with her BFF.
What I’m loving right now: — As a mom who works outside the home, I loved this essay from Coffee + Crumbs – and then one of my dearest friends texted it to me saying it had struck a chord with her, too! — I recently discovered that you can buy Olive & June items at Target. Did you know this? Their cuticle serum and polish remover pots were sitting right there in my local beauty section. Both are items I use and love! (I keep the serum in my bedside table drawer to apply right before I go to bed.) — Alstroemeria. They are not, like, the most beautiful flower God ever created, but they are in every single grocery store flower bin and they last for – I kid you not – a month in a cut vase. Perfect to brighten up cold January days.
As a reminder, you can find allll the things I’ve loved over the last few years neatly organized right here!
What you’re loving right now:
This is where I highlight a few items here that have been popular in the last month with fellow readers, based on my analytics. Here’s hoping this will help you find something you’ll love!
— Heavenly Hunks, and rightly so. — These stretch twill cropped pants in a faded green, one of my favorite purchases of 2023. — The delicious-smelling and effective tangle spray we use for Annie. — My daily face sunscreen! One of the products I MOST love to push on others :) — The snack box June uses for school. I bought one for Shep’s stocking but it didn’t fit, so I just set it aside for his Easter basket!
What I read in December: — The Hiding Place | Essential reading, for Christians and everyone else. The courage and moral clarity of Corrie and her family – who risked their lives to save Jews and underground workers in World War II and were sent to concentration camps for it – is frankly shocking to our modern sensibilities, but so needed. — How to Stay Married | This book was making the rounds of our community group and so I hopped on the bandwagon, too. A (true) tale of a wife’s infidelity and the havoc it wreaked on their marriage, it’s an unflinchingly honest and specific look at what contributed to drift in their marriage (on both sides) and how they fought to stay together. (And, weirdly, it’s funny.) It’s also a window into what the church and community can and must do well to help real people in the very real tragedies of their lives. — The Magician’s Elephant | June passed this Kate DiCamillo book to me after reading it and I enjoyed it! It’s a short, moody tale with poetic language and a happy ending. I’d recommend for third grade-ish.
Revisiting my December goals: Finish our 2015-2019 photo album (Not done yet but I am chugging away! I don’t have the heart to officially put it on my goals list for January, but do plan to continue working on it when I can!) Prepare well for my family’s visit See what I can do to continue to customize The Connected Family’s home on Substack (I did a little more customization but am also embracing simplicity for the moment! Banking on quality content over fancy graphics here at the start :)) Plan out content for Q1 of TCF, including brainstorming at least 100 newsletter ideas (Confirmed I will not run out of things to write about, ha!) Tackle our laundry room Tackle our downstairs linen closet Savor the Christmas season by focusing on loving the ones I love most, and loving those who need it the most.
January goals: — Kick off The Connected Family well with five weekly posts — Write ahead to complete drafts of February’s TCF posts — Complete at least 85 hours of deep work — Send an inquiry to our top builder candidate — Begin the Bible Recap reading plan — Read the first three chapters of Outlive — Take the Birds and Bees course — Prep for our Valentines mailbox
I also am tracking a daily habit of making kid lunches the night before in my PowerSheets, which has been going well so far!
Grateful for you, friends! Please feel free to comment on anything I’ve mentioned here or anything else on your mind!
Generally, I prefer to look forward. I love to dream and imagine the future, and we’re lucky to have reason to hope for good things ahead.
Looking back can be harder. It’s a reminder of the good things that have happened, yes, but an inevitable reminder of the passing of time, too – and, depending on my mood, that can be fraught. (I know I’m not alone in this!)
Still: looking back in intentional ways has helped me to take what I can from each year, to appreciate what it had to offer, to learn what it had to give, to acknowledge the hard and appreciate the good. Our lives are what we give our attention to, and these posts are my way of giving a little attention to the year of my life I just lived. Thank you, as always, for indulging me!
As always, our year started by celebrating our best big girl turning another year older – this time with a birthday hike on the big day and a petite pottery painting party a few days later. We said goodbye to the CWM commercial office space and I headed to the beach for a weekend with the Articles Club gals. On the blog, I shared my reading list, my goals, and – for the first time – our family goals for the year.
There were more celebrations in February! In lieu of 2022 Christmas gifts, my sisters and I (and husbands) chose to go out to dinner together – not so easy since we don’t live in the same place! – and we were able to make it happen at Kindred over Presidents Day. We also stuffed our Valentine’s mailbox, went to see the Duke basketball team play and Riverdance tour for my birthday (reflections here), finished the first Harry Potter, and started composting (a long-awaited splurge).
We spent lots of time outdoors in March, including on the field and sidelines for another soccer season for June and Shep. I chaperoned my first elementary school field trip (a dream come true, as silly as it sounds!), we replaced our roof after hail damage, and we kicked off our spring break trip with 20 hours in Serenbe, a nostalgic treat from my SW days.
In April, we reached our spring break destination – a return to Watercolor, Florida, to celebrate John’s parents’ 50th anniversary with the whole family! This is where we discovered Annie is obsessed with belly flopping into pools, ha. We celebrated Easter in Greenville, SC on our road trip back (complete with an ER visit after having to administer the epipen.) We took another little weekend trip to Asheville, where we met up with my younger sister to celebrate her paying off her student loans, and I traveled to Texas for work. Whew!! In between trips, we picked strawberries and June had her first piano recital.
With school out for the summer, June swam on our neighborhood team for the first time (and greatly enjoyed learning group dances on the pool deck), the kids played street soccer almost daily with neighbors, and June and Shep camped in the backyard solo. I hosted another book swap, biked the American Tobacco Trail with a dear friend (44 miles!), and we took one of our favorite trips of the year to Beaufort, NC before heading north to spend a week with my parents, sister, and cousins in Connecticut.
We began the month of July in Maine at our island and concluded it with Shep blowing out the candles at home on his fifth birthday. In between, we had a stopover in DC on our road trip south, an insane rash from moths (!), many evenings at the pool, and a joint birthday party with Shep’s best friend at a local park. On the blog, I shared a few takeaways from Habits of the Household, my favorite nonfiction read of the year.
In August, we welcomed two of our nieces and nephews for a week of cousin camp, highlighted by the debut of the Best Friends Snack Shack, hikes, and our nephew learning to ride a bike! We discussed the Barbie movie with an all-pink Articles Club, stayed with John’s parents for a week at their new home in Virginia (so much closer to us!), and kicked off another season of soccer at a field we can walk to. And then school started – second grade for June and a final year of preschool for Shep!
September saw the advent of Team Thomas Tuesdays, a dream many years in the making. It’s been (mostly) a delight! We also organized our garage – a sore spot in our home that had been dogging us for years – with some professional help. In honor of our 11th wedding anniversary, John and I had a special date night to see Wicked and took a quick weekend trip to Charleston (not without its relationship lessons). We led a book study at church onThe Common Rule and I started volunteering weekly in June’s classroom to run a reading group.
We had another favorite trip in October – to Boone, NC – as well as a memorable gathering for the 8th anniversary of Articles Club, a visit to the state fair, our annual camping trip with the Rays, and a chocolate chip cookie tasting party. Sadly, John’s back pain flared up again and he continued to battle it for the rest of the year.
In November, we met up with cousins for a coooold day at the zoo, I biked the ATT one more time, we had friends over for what we hope will be many more Sunday pizza hangs in 2024 (more about that soon!), and we celebrated Thanksgiving in the Florida Keys with my family in honor of my parents’ 40th anniversary. (Annie’s first flight!)
December felt full, slow, and all about community. We fit in lots of beloved Christmas traditions – many with friends or family in tow – but worked hard to keep plenty of white space for playing, baking, and reading books at home, too. Shep started the very lowest-key basketball, a new delight of his life, and at the end of the month, we hosted my family for a few days of Christmas fun and then flew to California to be hosted alongside all of John’s family at his sister’s home for even more.
For us, each year in the life of our young family is a delicate balance – between travel and staying home, between “new” and “the same,” between pushing and choosing rest, between work and play, between freedom and control. We do not get it right all the time, not by a long shot – but we try. We think deeply about it, and pray for wisdom, and act carefully, and adjust as we go. It’s both rewarding and overwhelming to see a year in our life summed up like this, but as always, I’m choosing gratitude. It’s not hard, and for that I am, well, grateful.
Friends, I know I’ve said it before, but I am SO excited for what we’ll discuss here (and elsewhere) in 2024. Thank you for being here, and for sharing so generously with me! It’s one of the delights of my life. Wishing you a healthy, happy, and abundant new year. My 2024 goals are just about ready to share, so I’ll see you soon! :)
Welcome to the last month of 2023, friends! I’m grateful to be here. Between Thanksgiving, the anniversary trip for my parents, the (very soft) launch of The Connected Family, a particularly sad+thrilling week with Articles Club that I hope to tell you a bit about in the future, and, last but not least, the everyday magic of writing by the light of our Christmas tree with a fun holiday weekend ahead – how could I feel anything but?
And thank you again, friends, for your warm and excited support of my new venture. I shared that my subscriber goal for this week was 50, and we’ve now topped 350 – plus several pledged subscriptions, which I truly did not expect at this point at all. I’m sure we will unpack all the feelings at some point, but suffice it to say I know that this community is a big chunk of my “new” one, and I couldn’t imagine better gals to have along for the ride. You’ll see several TCF-related goals on my list below – excited to keep you in the loop as things progress!
A quick snap of my favorite shoes at my dear friend Libby’s brand-new play cafe in Raleigh! Triangle friends with littles, you must go visit!
On my calendar: — Dinner out with John for our 2023 review and celebration. — Hosting my family for Christmas. Truly an honor (and big responsibility) to orchestrate magic for a group! — A trip to California for Christmas with John’s family. It’s been four years since we’ve been out to visit my sister- and brother-in-law and we’re excited!
What I’m loving right now: — Copyright issues notwithstanding (?), this audio track of The Grinch is fun to listen to around the Christmas tree or on a holiday road trip! H/T to my friend Bethany for unearthing it. — This little flocked Christmas tree has been sold out for years and they finally brought it back! It’s the one we have in June’s and Shep’s rooms, and this year I bought two more to flank our front door. It looks delightfully full once fluffed! — Late breaking to this year’s stocking stuffer post, but if you have Squishmallow fans in your house, this mini set is genius. I’m planning to put one in each kids’ stocking, share some with my sister, and save the rest for Easter baskets or friend birthdays throughout the year. Perfect to go in on with a friend!
As a reminder, you can find allll the things I’ve loved over the last few years neatly organized right here!
What you’re loving right now:
This is where I highlight a few items here that have been popular in the last month with fellow readers, based on my analytics. Here’s hoping this will help you find something you’ll love!
Plus lots and lots of orders for Christmas books – makes me so happy!
What I read in November: — Welcome Home | This home decorating and hosting book – based on the four seasons – was on my 2023 reading list. Though I enjoy the Nester’s style and home/decorating philosophy (and enjoy her newsletter!), this one was a DNF for me. It wasn’t offering me much new info and when I continued to reach for other titles, I knew it was time to return it to the library! — A Light in the Window | Another book in the Mitford series, the coziest story set right here in the mountains of NC. — The Wishing Game | This was a debut novel that felt a bit like a debut novel. Good, not great! It’s a sweet story but was just missing a little spark in the plot and life in the lines for me. — China Rich Girlfriend | I read the first in the trio a few years ago and when a community group friend was offering this one up, I snagged it! Again – the writing is not necessarily going to win any awards, but it was a fun, quick read that kept me turning pages.
Revisiting my November goals: Submit all passport paperwork for the kids’ passports and my renewal (Nope, absolutely no progress on this, ha!) Tackle Shep’s closet Finish writing and design the Articles Club guide and list it for sale (Very close! Just need to finish the design!) Finish our 2015-2019 photo album (Determined to finish this in December!!) Design and order our Christmas card and newsletter Edit Sheptember, Volume 5 (Halfway done!)
December goals: — Finish our 2015-2019 photo album (gotta do it, it’s one of my 2023 goals! ;)) — Prepare well for my family’s visit. With such a large group, I’ve learned that advance (somewhat intense) planning is key to being able to fully enjoy our time together. Rereading my own post from last year to brush up! — See what I can do to continue to customize The Connected Family’s home on Substack – it is pretty bare bones currently! — Plan out content for Q1 of TCF, including brainstorming at least 100 newsletter ideas — Tackle our laundry room… — …and our downstairs linen closet, the very last space to complete my 2023 goal! — Savor the Christmas season by focusing on loving the ones I love most, and loving those who need it the most. Even to me this sounds somewhat trite, but also the best way I know to celebrate the arrival of a tiny baby king who did the same.
Wishing you the merriest December, friends! Please feel free to comment on anything I’ve mentioned here, or anything else on your mind.
