• My guys are in the garage and I'm snuggled up with a good book. Bear thinks my time could be better spent. 🤣 What are you doing for yourself this weekend?
    100 16
    My guys are in the garage and I'm snuggled up with a good book. Bear thinks my time could be better spent. 🤣 What are you doing for yourself this weekend?
  • We have been a bunch of bookworms lately. I'm doing tons of reading for work, and Everett is just devouring every book he can get his hands on. We both are doing a lot of audio stories, as well. He received a beginner chapter series for Christmas and can't get enough. He has us reading them to him and he listens to them on audio while he's playing. Back in late September, I posted about how Everett was just not interested in the Montessori sound games. A couple of weeks later he suddenly started doing it on his own. For 3 months straight he would point to objects and say what they started with or what sound they ended with, and he loved to say a word and then told me all the rhyming words he could think of. Game on. I just ordered the stuff to start letter shapes: sandpaper letters, moveable alphabet, etc. Really excited. Mostly excited that he might be able to read to himself soon so I have more time for my own reading. 🤣🤣 Did you use a reading guide or curriculum with your kids? . . 🎉GIVEAWAY CLOSED🎉 I've teamed up with some awesome mamas to give one lucky person SEVEN winter themed books. To enter: 1. Like this photo 2. Follow these accounts: @simplefamilylifestyle @thewaldockway @bookbloom @literacyforlittles @littlehousebecameahome @agrowingtime @theartgardenblog 3. Tag a friend on @simplefamilylifestyle's account. Each comment is a separate entry.
    133 8
    We have been a bunch of bookworms lately. I'm doing tons of reading for work, and Everett is just devouring every book he can get his hands on. We both are doing a lot of audio stories, as well. He received a beginner chapter series for Christmas and can't get enough. He has us reading them to him and he listens to them on audio while he's playing. Back in late September, I posted about how Everett was just not interested in the Montessori sound games. A couple of weeks later he suddenly started doing it on his own. For 3 months straight he would point to objects and say what they started with or what sound they ended with, and he loved to say a word and then told me all the rhyming words he could think of. Game on. I just ordered the stuff to start letter shapes: sandpaper letters, moveable alphabet, etc. Really excited. Mostly excited that he might be able to read to himself soon so I have more time for my own reading. 🤣🤣 Did you use a reading guide or curriculum with your kids? . . 🎉GIVEAWAY CLOSED🎉 I've teamed up with some awesome mamas to give one lucky person SEVEN winter themed books. To enter: 1. Like this photo 2. Follow these accounts: @simplefamilylifestyle @thewaldockway @bookbloom @literacyforlittles @littlehousebecameahome @agrowingtime @theartgardenblog 3. Tag a friend on @simplefamilylifestyle's account. Each comment is a separate entry.
  • There were better pictures of this love, but there was just something about him facing the garden. Priming himself to take flight for the first time; challenges unknown. Fitting for my first post of the year. ❤ . My word for 2019 came to me while we were in New Mexico. My body had been saying focus, focus, focus, and then suddenly it said ⓒⓔⓝⓣⓔⓡ. . I've been meditating on why I chose that word and analyzing the different versions of myself that have passed through. A slightly different Kayleigh after each guy and each friend made their mark. A very different Kayleigh after marriage and motherhood burned their beautiful emblems. A Kayleigh that I love, but with whom my friendship has too much distance. Who am I? Who do I want to be? . Last year, I focused on cultivating new, good things in my life. Half the battle was opening myself up to let new things in. This year, I want to fine tune. Cut away and choose what I want to carry forward. Say goodbye to the me I was, say thank you to her, and move forward with the me I want to be. Not a new year, new me; a new year, free to be me (whoever that may be). 😘❤ . #agrowingtime #kayleighsbutterflies #thesugargarden
    136 13
    There were better pictures of this love, but there was just something about him facing the garden. Priming himself to take flight for the first time; challenges unknown. Fitting for my first post of the year. ❤ . My word for 2019 came to me while we were in New Mexico. My body had been saying focus, focus, focus, and then suddenly it said ⓒⓔⓝⓣⓔⓡ. . I've been meditating on why I chose that word and analyzing the different versions of myself that have passed through. A slightly different Kayleigh after each guy and each friend made their mark. A very different Kayleigh after marriage and motherhood burned their beautiful emblems. A Kayleigh that I love, but with whom my friendship has too much distance. Who am I? Who do I want to be? . Last year, I focused on cultivating new, good things in my life. Half the battle was opening myself up to let new things in. This year, I want to fine tune. Cut away and choose what I want to carry forward. Say goodbye to the me I was, say thank you to her, and move forward with the me I want to be. Not a new year, new me; a new year, free to be me (whoever that may be). 😘❤ . #agrowingtime #kayleighsbutterflies #thesugargarden
  • Goodbye, 2018! My focus word this year was cultivate, and boy did we ever. The most beautiful part of what we grew was the unexpected. I started the year with a firm list of what we'd cultivate. Some things never came to being, and it was devastating. Unexpected things, like a new business and amazing new group of friends, took my breath away. We expanded our garden, completed some big home improvement projects, and Everett started (home) preschool. I'm excited to see what 2019 has in store. ❤
    184 17
    Goodbye, 2018! My focus word this year was cultivate, and boy did we ever. The most beautiful part of what we grew was the unexpected. I started the year with a firm list of what we'd cultivate. Some things never came to being, and it was devastating. Unexpected things, like a new business and amazing new group of friends, took my breath away. We expanded our garden, completed some big home improvement projects, and Everett started (home) preschool. I'm excited to see what 2019 has in store. ❤
  • We are having SUCH a great time in Santa Fe! Lots of fireside snuggles and playing in snow. . *also* . Traveling with a four year old sucks. Trying to enjoy the little shops and markets that make SF so lovely is basically impossible with a small unrestrained child. . *also* . We got stuck coming down a mountain with 50 or so other cars because the city of Santa Fe didn't have their sh*t together and I literally (really and truly) thought we were going to die from another vehicle sliding into ours and pushing us off the side of the mountain. Next day I found my first grey hair. NOT JOKING.
    102 13
    We are having SUCH a great time in Santa Fe! Lots of fireside snuggles and playing in snow. . *also* . Traveling with a four year old sucks. Trying to enjoy the little shops and markets that make SF so lovely is basically impossible with a small unrestrained child. . *also* . We got stuck coming down a mountain with 50 or so other cars because the city of Santa Fe didn't have their sh*t together and I literally (really and truly) thought we were going to die from another vehicle sliding into ours and pushing us off the side of the mountain. Next day I found my first grey hair. NOT JOKING.
  • We're on our second annual winter let's find snow vacation, and New Mexico did not disappoint. There was a teeny bit still on the ground when we arrived that was really just ice, and honestly we were starting to get worried that it was not going to snow while we were here. But yesterday it piled on! My snow baby is having a blast. ❄
    169 13
    We're on our second annual winter let's find snow vacation, and New Mexico did not disappoint. There was a teeny bit still on the ground when we arrived that was really just ice, and honestly we were starting to get worried that it was not going to snow while we were here. But yesterday it piled on! My snow baby is having a blast. ❄
  • Another Christmas season has blinked by, and now I'm working on goals and plans for 2019 in front of a fire in New Mexico. Here are a few of my Christmas eve and morning favorites. (Can you tell he was REALLY excited for those Frog & Toad stuffies? Dreams achieved.) I hope you had a lovely holiday. ❤🎄 . PS If you're surprised to see our elf on the shelf please scroll to last Christmas when I posted about how we use it. No spying, no naughty list; just Christmas cheer.
    147 21
    Another Christmas season has blinked by, and now I'm working on goals and plans for 2019 in front of a fire in New Mexico. Here are a few of my Christmas eve and morning favorites. (Can you tell he was REALLY excited for those Frog & Toad stuffies? Dreams achieved.) I hope you had a lovely holiday. ❤🎄 . PS If you're surprised to see our elf on the shelf please scroll to last Christmas when I posted about how we use it. No spying, no naughty list; just Christmas cheer.
  • I love that the oranges (and maybe all citrus?) are ripe in the winter in Houston. We always had an orange in the toe of our Christmas stockings growing up, something I do for my own family now, and two years ago we started drying orange slices to string up for our solstice celebration.
    114 5
    I love that the oranges (and maybe all citrus?) are ripe in the winter in Houston. We always had an orange in the toe of our Christmas stockings growing up, something I do for my own family now, and two years ago we started drying orange slices to string up for our solstice celebration.