Chelsea Dyreng's Blog, page 3

Walking to Church in Oxford

For four Sundays we have walked the 2.5 miles to church. At first we walked through the center of Oxford, but recently we found a less busy route. Let me take you with us.

First we walk through the streets of Jericho where we live, past the ales and fine food.[image error]

We cross a bridge and walk alongside the canal. (Oxford is called Oxford because it was a place where they would cross oxen through the Thames River. Swineford is another city where they would cross the pigs. I’m glad I live in Oxford.)...

And Then There Was One

Last night we found out some big news for Naomi: she will be going to the St. Aloysius Catholic Primary School. This must have been meant to be since she is always telling me that she wants to learn Latin. She will also be wearing a uniform which is welcome news for her since she has been coveting her older sisters’ uniforms.  Luckily, there was also a spot there for Levi, so they will both be there together, and when they come home they will be able to say secret things to each other at the...

Home School, Bribes and a Ghost!

This has been a great week, if you don’t count the ghost. But first I’ll tell you about school. I started “school” with my kids and is how it goes: We sit down at the kitchen table and I pass out their journals. They spend some time writing about a topic that I have chosen for them. Then we do math, then penmanship, then some vocabulary. And then school is done! This takes about 8 minutes. As you might guess, my kids are loving this school. But I’m afraid their teacher is lacking. I have...

Our First Week in Oxford

When you only have a little bit of time and you have to decide whether you are going to write a blog post or write to your mother, always write to your mother. But I will let you eavesdrop. Hi Mom– Please excuse the spelling and grammar of my letter. I wanted to send you some photos of our trip so far and tell you what we’ve been up do but I don’t have much time (Scott is down stairs streaming Indiana Jones with the kids). But now that we’ve been here for almost a week I wanted to write...

The Year We Changed Our Lives

[image error]

After months of deliberating, strategizing, decision-making and then fine-tuning those decisions, Scott and I are finally on the brink of a dream we’ve wanted to achieve for many years: we are taking our family to England.

We gave away our cat, loaned out our dog, put our house in beautiful North Carolina on the market and just finished driving across the country. All of our things are going into storage, and now the only obstacle between us and the biggest adventure my family has ever had i...

Book of the Month: Charles and Emma, The Darwins’ Leap of Faith

[image error]

Recently I found this gem in my library. It is a YA biography about Charles Darwin and the relationship he had with his wife Emma. Theirs was a marriage perfectly matched in every way but one: Emma believed firmly in God and Charles believed in science. Yet together they had ten kids and they were completely devoted, even through illnesses, deaths of children, and Charles’ growing ambivalence toward religion. Despite their theological differences, his wife read and edited every one of his pa...

Love Notes, Fried in Butter

Last night, after all the kids had gone to bed, my husband made me the most exquisite fried egg.

He made one for me and one for him, and each was fried in butter in its own little single-egg pan. We sat down together to eat them, and when I put it in my mouth it melted on my tongue . . .so salty and velvety and warm … It was like eating a bit of a sunbeam, and it tasted so luxuriously superior to the fried eggs I make for myself (which require a lot more chewing).

When Scott makes an egg like...

The Loudest Minds

Yesterday, as I was bringing mykids home from piano, Ientered intoline of cars that were stopped at a stoplight.

While we waited for the light to turn, I startedthinking. I was thinking about the canyon in Utah between Heber City and Provo. I was wondering if there were very many deer that crossed that highway and if it was dangerous for drivers. But, I reasoned, there are a lot of deer here in North Carolina, so it wouldn’t be any more dangerous than driving to my own home. What would reall...

Teaching Kids about Trump, Canada, and the End of the World

So we just finished with an election which proved to be very historic but not for the reason everyone had originally supposed. You know the details.

My husbandand I (dyed-in-the-wool Republicans but not Trump fans) were stunned when we started to see what was happening on the screen as Donald Trump’s numbers went up. As our reactions became more and more flabbergasted, so did the panic level in my kids. And why were they panicking? Because we had been telling them all along that if Donal Trum...

She That Hath Nose To Smell

Authors Note: I wrote this post a year ago but I never posted it. With all the wonderful smells of autumn coming back to me I remembered the great deficit I had last fall. This is about how, for a few months, I completely lost my sense of smell. Or, if you are familiar with my writing, it could be about something else.

I didn’t notice anything was amiss until I made the teriyaki chicken.

I got my recipe from a native Hawaiian whointroducedme to The World’s Most Wonderful Ingredient: fresh gin...