The Luckiest No Matter What!

The school year has begun. This particular year has, yet again, brought quite a few changes into our house. Last year, we were heading into our basement school to start online learning. Carter was starting kindergarten. This year, I have three boys in school full time. After not having that for over a year, it's been a B.I.G. adjustment. Preston is starting daycare. We've never done that before. I'm back to work- still teaching part time, but going in five days a week instead of two. How's it all been going, you ask? Everything has been A LOT. A lot of feelings, worries, nervousness, and work. Daycare and Back to School for P Preston's transition to daycare has been very difficult. He's refusing to eat there, isn't sleeping much, and has had epic cry sessions and breakdowns at drop off. I have walked away from him grabbing for me and crying. It doesn't help that the daycare is next to my school. I have exactly one minute to pull myself together before ne...

Have you ever booked at last-minuteish adventure?! Because Josh and I are both planners, we rarely do this. Way back in the winter, we began to think about our summer. Usually, we spend a lot of it at my parent's cottage in Canada on Lake Huron; it's my most favorite place in the entire world. However, with Covid, the border has been closed and has remained closed. It was important to us to have a trip planned somewhere in the summer just in case we were not able to go to Canada this summer. It was clear based on how little inventory there was that a lot of people were adventuring this summer, which makes complete sense. After a lot of research (of course), we had landed on a stay in Northern North Carolina by the ocean in August and were so excited about it! After making the decision to go back to classroom, I realized this trip was going to back up to when my school was starting and that made me a bit queasy. Could I really enjoy this trip to North Carolina with a new school ...

 I am a writer. As I type that out, I immediately want to erase it, take it back, and blush with embarrassment. I am not classically trained, or frankly, trained at all. Until a year ago, I had no idea what passive voice was (or how much I liked using it). I struggled to teach my own students writing conventions because I often didn't know them myself. I have learned more about prefixes and suffixes as well as Latin and Greek roots from my second grade sons this year than I ever remember learning in school. I hated my linguistics class in college. My writing was called "too fluffy" by a professor in one of my masters classes.  Yet, somehow, for as long as I can remember, I've always written. Writing has actually been a HUGE part of my life. I love it. I fall in love with it in different ways as time goes on. Because this time of year is full of love and thinking about our loved ones, I thought I would write a love note of some kind to writing. These are the loves of ...

I have never considered myself to be "outdoorsy."  I love the beauty  of nature: mountains, lakes, the ocean, a tree lit afire with color in the fall, the smell of spring, all the noises of wildlife in the summer. I love to be in the presence  of nature- seeing God's glory with my eyes and taking an obsessive amount of pictures of it. There is nothing that brings me more calm and zen than being by the water. I have always liked to just stand and see nature, but I didn't really need to hang out in it for long periods of time. I didn't need to touch it or interact with it. I just wanted to be near it. Am I making any sense?  All that has held up for my entire life- liking to be near nature, but not really wanting to be all up in it. Until 2020 happened. 2020 has made me an outdoors(wo)man!  Needing to Escape When you're in the hustle and bustle of your life: taking people back and forth to practices, going to school and work, stretching yourself thin from a v...

I honestly can't believe we are nearing the end of 2020. Most of it felt so challenging, often shocking, and so pain-stakingly slow sometimes that I wasn't sure the end of the year would ever come. I'm sure this year, especially, has us all reflecting on a lot: thinking back to where we all started, how we first felt when the pandemic hit, when we were smack dab in the middle of it, and how we've adjusted to what is our new normal for the foreseeable future.  I have so much I want to leave behind and never revisit: the memories of all the time I lost my patience with my family, crying in the shower more times than I'd like to admit, the feelings of isolation and loneliness, the worrying. I chose right now, however, to focus on the bright spots of this year. It was hard, indeed, but it wasn't always  hard. Here are some of the things I'm incredibly grateful for in 2020... Starting 2020 on the Right Foot On January 2nd, 2020, I started taking care of myself. I...

My kids have been learning remotely since March. There is no end in sight for us. I am working my tail off, the kids are working their tails off, their teachers are working their tails off. We've had ebbs and flows of things going pretty smooth and going like a goat rodeo, but one blessing (and curse) at this point is that we know the drill.  I know N and J will have zoom calls from 8:30-11:45 with a 15 minute break at 10:15. I know they will do literacy first and then math. I know what their asynchronous work looks like and about how long it takes. I know C will write about his weekend every Monday morning. I know he does Freckle on Friday. I know when he sees his new sight words. It is all predictable and known at this point.  I called this kind of monotony a blessing because consistency is important, routines are important. My young children can show a lot of independence when things are predictable. I also put that it is a curse in perenthesis because knowing exactly what'...

Cities are near and dear to our hearts. Some of our favorite travels ever are visiting Toronto and NYC, for example. We love big buildings, the endless yummy food options, the hustle and bustle. We love cities so much that we bring four little kids to them even though cities are not always large-family friendly.  This pandemic has brought a pivot for the Hundt family. Where we'd normally research a tip to Boston, Washington DC, Charleston, or Madison. We are now looking for teeny tiny towns and a lot of land to roam free and away from people.  The need for social distance and being able to wander around together isolated and safe is what sprung our trip to Montana where we stayed in a town of less than 300 people. It was one of my favorite trips we've ever taken. A hustle/bustle travel gal always on the go go go is slowly becoming a hiker who takes her time ;) Landing on Maine Learning from home and working from home has brought a silver lining in this pandemic of having freed...

Anyone in my life knows I haven't handled this pandemic very well.  It's a perfect cocktail of the extremely high expectations I put on myself + an incredible sense of responsibility for my children's education, mental health, and well being + wanting to do everything + wanting to do everything well + being an anxious worrier + little to no alone time or break from... well... anything = a sh*t storm for me.  My mom has been on the receiving end of teary phone calls from me more times than I can count.  My group chats have been on the receiving end of many pictures of dumpster fires to describe how it's going at my house on any given day.  And I have been on the receiving end of text messages from friends checking in to see how I am doing (thank you, profusely, by the way).  I sometimes find myself, after an occasional good cry in the shower (shower cries are just the BEST aren't they?! Such a good way to let things out), thinking there HAS to hav...