Life updates
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Teacher by Nature: A Year in Review
Happy New Year, dear readers! I’m so happy you decided to stick with me for another year. I hope my (and Brian’s) writing blessed you and encouraged you to grow in faith in Jesus and to fight the good fight of faith with all of your might. Usually about this time of year, I post a list of my New Year’s resolutions. I’m not clear about what I’d like them to be yet. I know I’d like to keeping losing weight (15 lbs. and counting!) and eating a mostly whole foods, plant-based diet. I’d also like to continue to improve my martial arts skills and physical conditioning as I take…
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Happy Thanksgiving {Weekend}
Dear Readers, Thank you for following Teacher by Nature for another year! I’m so thankful for all of you, and it is such an encouragement and a joy to write for you. I hope you all had a wonderful Thanksgiving with family and friends, and if the holiday season is more challenging for you than anything else, I pray that you would find rest in the peace of God through Jesus, which surpasses all understanding. We had a fun day with my family. Our menu consisted of turkey, stuffing, mashed potatoes, green beans with bacon and mushrooms, butternut squash soup, dinner rolls, pumpkin pie, cherry pie, and sugar cookies. After…
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Having Fun with My New Old Apple Pencil
Sometimes you find a new tool that completely changes the way you create. That’s exactly how I feel about my new Apple Pencil, generously gifted to me by a sweet young friend of mine who happened to have an old one in her catch-all kitchen drawer. So far, I’ve used the stylus to turn my original compositions into lead sheets and piano/vocal sheet music (using Sibelius, a music notation app) and also to practice my drawing skills. My drawings tend to be fun and goofy, and I thought you all might enjoy seeing some of them on this dreary Wednesday. Cupcakes Ruthie and I worked on this drawing together. She…
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7 Good Mental Health Habits to Continue in 2023
I love making New Year’s resolutions. (Here’s a list of my past New Year’s resolutions: 2019, 2020, 2021, 2022). This year, however, I decided to set the goal of continuing some good mental health habits I started in 2022. The first group of my good mental health habits concerns food. I’ve posted a lot about my struggles with overeating, and I continue to fight against that sin in my life. Overeating, for me, is a spiritual issue. I understand the ideas behind methods such as intuitive eating, intermittent fasting, and diets like keto and paleo. None of this matters, however, if I choose to continue to eat foods I shouldn’t…
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My 2022 Book List & My Top Ten Songs
Happy New Year, friends and family! As I did in 2021, this past year I kept track of all the books I read, either as family read-alouds or on my own. (This list doesn’t include the books the kids asked me to read out loud to them–that would be a very long list!) As a family, we especially enjoyed Brave Ollie Possum by Ethan Nicolle, the Green Ember and Archer series by S.D. Smith, and the Nnewts series by Doug TenNapel. My favortie books on the list this year are The Princess and the Goblin and The Princess and Curdie by George MacDonald. The book that held my attention for…
