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Growing Up

Gathering: November 2019

simple morning time practice of gathering together with family to explore art, music, truth, goodness, and beauty
This entry is part 7 of 10 in the series Gathering

Fall has finally arrived here in the desert of Southern California! We thought it would never come. And then, suddenly it was cold in the house when we got up in the morning. Tomorrow morning we will have our first fire of the season in the fireplace – I LOVE FALL!

We love having our Gathering around the fire in the mornings. So we may have to move our Gathering for this season! This morning we had our first hot cocoa of the season during our Gathering. What a treat!

I am currently dreaming up ways of cozy-ing (cozy-fying?) our Gathering for the cooler weather. Blankets and coffee are a must for me. What do you do to make the season a bit cozier?

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Growing Up

March 2020 Gathering

This entry is part 8 of 10 in the series Gathering

We are limping into the last month of our winter term around here. Literally limping. I broke and sprained my ankle at the end of January and have been sporting a boot for what feels like ages. It is amazing how much life has changed by the ankle of one of us.

It feels like we have just had to cut everything down to the basic basics. And homeschool has been the priority because I don’t want to make my children suffer because I am down. We haven’t left the house for a whole lot of stuff other than our community day and Awana. I have driven our car a number of times, but we have just become homebodies in a major way.

The arrival of S-P-R-I-N-G! this month will hopefully breath freshness into our home that is palpable!

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Growing Up

April 2020 Gathering Extras

August 2019 Gathering for families - get the details on this morning time practice for the month.
This entry is part 9 of 10 in the series Gathering

This month I desire most for my kids not to lose sight of the cross. Not to forget the empty tomb. In a world that is focused so entirely on everything other than Jesus, I want to impart to them the beauty of the good news. We will be listening to resurrection music this month. We will be reading the story of the Passover Lamb. We will be meditating on the love brought to earth and expressed in death. I invite you to join us.

The Gathering is such an ingrained and cherished part of our family culture that when I made the announcement this week that we only had one or two more days of March’s Gathering, there were groans of disappointment. These were followed quickly by reassurance that we would have new Gatherings next month. I just love the joy my kids have in Gathering.

If this is your first month of sharing the Gathering with your family: Welcome! I pray the Gathering placemats will be a support to you as you refresh, restart, or embark on a morning time routine with your kids. They are a stand alone blessing – morning time made as simple as placing them at a table and inviting attention to them; but I know extras are always a blessing, too! Those are here today, for you.

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Growing Up

A New Gathering

This entry is part 10 of 10 in the series Gathering

It has been such a long time since last summer when I created a year’s worth of Gathering Placemats for the 2019-2020 school year! My little idea to create simple placemats to share beautiful things with my kids was inspired by my desire to create a morning time routine that worked for us and didn’t make too much work for me! The original placemats were inspired by my kids love of reading the backs of cereal boxes.

Thus, as I sat down to start making the Gathering Placemats for the summer of 2020, I had all sorts of ideas of where to go with them. But it was my kids who once again inspired me and the result are these simple Gathering: Birds Placemats.

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