Life Lately :: May 2016

May has been absolutely incredible. The weather has been so gorgeous and it leaves everyone seeming a bit more chipper. This month, I thought it might be fun to change things up a bit and do more of a 'currently' post. If you've been around blogland, you're familiar. If not, it's a bit of a "whatcha doing/thinking/reading now?" kind of post. I'd love to hear what your 'currently's' are. Here are a few of mine:


Reading: Oh boy. Friends, I am a always running through 2-5 books at once. While this makes it infinity times harder to actually finish a book at any normal pace, I feel like my brain is challenged and encouraged in equal measure. So, lately these are the books I keep reaching for:

Wild and Free : Jess Connolly and Hayley Morgan
    Just started this beauty and it is already been so good... Like...when you read the first chapter and it voices some of the things you've been trying to sort out for over a year. BAM. So good.

Eat with Joy ::  Rachel Marie Stone
    As someone who really feels like everything has the potential of being a gospel issue, reading this has brought a whole lot of freedom and conviction to the way I view food. I'm so excited to finish this book and to see how my opinion and heart changes. I love books that invite the reader into being unleashed and diligent in tandem.

Wild in the Hollow :: Amber c. Haines
    This book has had me laughing and crying. It's such a redemptive story and one that has me reexamining my own story as I read it. So beautiful. Such beautiful writing.

The Whole-Brain Child :: Daniel J Siegal M.D. and Tina Payne Bryson PHD
  Whenever I begin to touch a book like this, Ben gets to endure me repeating near every paragraph for several weeks. This book has come to me after being recommended by many. I understand why. It's  helping me a lot with my parenting. It's so well written and rich.

Parenting with Love and Logic :: Foster W. Cline & Jim Fay
   I think this is the almighty Holy Grail of parenting books for me. I'm nearing its end and think I'll just start it right back up once I'm done. This is always my first book that I recommend if anyone ever asks me for a parenting read.

I'm nearing the end of Wild in the Hollow and Parenting with Love & Logic. Both have been challenging me in the way I process my story, the way I crave community, and the way I move towards my littles. I'm two or so chapters into the rest of them. Each have been deeply challenging.
I'll probably write a proper book review this year (I seem to be good at doing them in one big swoop.)

Doing: While Ben has been working his copious amounts of overtime, I've been getting craftsy in the evenings. I'm working on sewing a dress and I can't really confirm how successful I'll be, but it still has been fun to learn. Even if the project fails, I imagine I'll learn a great deal. I'm dreaming patterns and fabric at this point, so I'd say things are looking up.

I also got the opportunity to take some professional portraits for a dear friend of mine this past month, and it reminded me just how much I love photography and especially capturing those outside of my family. The whole experience left me giddy. Especially since I had such a stunning client. Amy is launching her newly updated travel blog soon and I'm so excited to follow along. If you love beautiful images of faraway places and spectacular advice: check out my girl Amy on her site "NewlyFleds.

I'm beginning to see an even more consistent rhythm to our days and am learning how well we all thrive when one thing leads to the other. After a few days of going outside at the same time, Elias was bringing me his shoes and trying to get us out the door! ha! While travelling will turn all of this upside down, it is nice to experience the rhythm, even for a few months.

Working on: Getting more consistent with 'school time.' What started out as a loose structured time to engage with Eowyn has become something that she consistently asks for. Like, anytime Elias goes to sleep, she's running to her chair. I went several weeks with having a decent amount of engaging activities, and after taking a week off, I'm realizing that it really is a big deal for her. It takes some planning on my part, but I'm really happy to see her enjoying it. At this present time we plan on homeschooling, so this has been a fun 'get our feet wet' sort of trial run. There was a bit of a fear in me that my A-type personality would damage her free-bird style. I wanted to make sure I didn't make learning a chore, while still guiding her to focus. Looks like we're figuring each other out. 

As I mentioned, we're  gearing up to visit the states in just a few weeks. This means a lot of extra planning now as we have a couple 10+ hour flights, as well as 6 or so other 2-5 hour fights. You can start praying for this mama soul now. SRSLY. (I'm thinking of writing up a series of posts one of these days on our travel tips. Is there any interest?  I know you can find several of these, but so few of them are from chronic travelers, or they're from travelers that journey much more mild flights than the international flights we've gotten to experience. I'm a pro at knowing what toys hold hour+  potential :P)

Watching: All Things Marvel (and Elementary.) We're deep into Agents of Shield. We often will wait and get all the episodes (we end up having to buy the seasons since we live overseas) and then binge them over a series of weeks. Right now we're catching up with Agents of Shield, as we just finished DareDevil on Netflix, and we'll be just in time for Date Night come Friday to Watch Captain America: Civil War.

Marvel and Star Wars characters are like family members for us at this point. We talk about characters as if we're part of their origin stories...Makes gearing up for STAR WARS CELEBRATION all the more exciting.

Elementary is my one show that I bring to the table. Otherwise I'm a tag-along. I'm not a real film buff, but this one has me. I seriously just love it.

Loving:

Naughty BRGR. A new restaurant has opened up in helsinki called Naughty BRGR and it is AMAZING. Seriously, we love this place. Their burgers and fries are amazing.

Speaking of amazing. Kitty's Milkshake Bar opened up just down our street (uh-oh!) and have unbelievable shakes. Helsinki was one giant black hole of nasty shake sludge until this place has come on the scene. I quite literally thanked Jesus for this. There's over 20 flavors, and you better believe our summer will be enriched because of this place.

As for favorite products: I recently bought a long sleeve swimtop and I cannot believe I didn't convert sooner. Love the three fourth sleeves and the way I will have one less hesitation in getting out on the beach with my kids. No sunburn for me! Also, the SkipHop kids backpacks are forever my best friend. For all my curly haired girls. I just put in my order for SheaMoisture hair products back stateside. They sell them at target and they are seriously my favorite. I've been loyal for the better end of 3 years now. (and I stock up once a year, so it says a lot about their use-especially with this long mane.)

I recently took a bit of a breather from instagram, and my mind is processing how much I love not captioning the moments in my day. Out of all the social media platforms, instagram is for sure my favorite. This is the very reason why I know my heart needs a break from it every once in a while. It's been a nice break, so nice that I'm not sure when I'll return to it fully. . I'm just loving the nature of living life unplugged a bit more and I notice my heart is more at ease when I'm not getting so antsy to interact with people online.

The extra sun has given us all the prompting we need to go out and explore our city, so it's been such a sweet pleasure exploring over the past month. We visited the newly opened Children's Museum and it's a sweet (free!) place to go in Senate Square. If you're ever in the area, be sure to check it out!


How about you? What have you been up to lately? Feel free to share with me your own "currently's" in the comments below.