This Rugged JoyFull Home

I'd like to share a few of the short story books that I wrote for my kids many years ago. Back when they were small and I would have the liberty to pick out what to teach them from home. I drew my inspiration writing these short stories based from our daily mundane activities which transpired around our kitchen or school table . I took value from them by coming up with a list of vocabularies that would describe what ever we were doing at the moment. The list of vocabularies served as anchor to our stories. I found this approach very useful in instilling love for reading in them at an early age as they found the stories relatable. Little by little they learned to read phonetically as they decoded the sound of each letter and blended them into words.  While we filled our family library with a collection of colorful illustrated story books through time, I also felt it was necessary to come up with a set of our very own early readers' compilation of short stories without the pictu...

This is a storybook I wrote about 7 years ago for our then unica hija , 4 year old Bethany. I wrote this book primarily to fill the need to have a set of non-illustrated story books to stimulate her imagination. I was intentional in teaching  her to read phonetically; decoding the sounds of every letter; blending them together to form words.  It was totally the opposite during my time because I remember learning to read by memorization (like most of us parents did) with the help of picture books. I thought that bookstores these days have a plethora of picture books that use heavy illustrations from cover to cover so that kids have become overly stimulated visually, leaving no room for creating imagination.  When I wrote this collection of short stories, apart from my daughter, I had a lil boy in mind. I envisioned him sitting next to his big sister and I while we do school at our kitchen table. But that had been yrs ago, and that boy came into flesh a year after I ...

For this Science lesson, instead of telling my boy to color, which he despised lately, I told him to just circle the pictures that showed how to take care of one's body. BOY: Teacher, DONE! MOM: Hmmmm...Can you explain why you think reading, like what this lil boy in the picture is doing, showed taking care of one's body? BOY: What, Mommmyyy? He's taking care of his body. MOM: Well, you did ok on all the pictures, but I'm just wondering how and why you think reading can also be a way of taking good care of your body as you would take a shower or brush your teeth or eat good food ? (Mom was trying her best not to say "You're wrong" right away for her son's debatable answer) BOY: Mommmmyyyy, right Daddy always tells us to read books because it will protect our brain? We needed to take care of our brain too. Right, Mommmyyy? Reading protects your brain...it also makes you smart too. Daddy always says that. MOM: Oh, I see...I s...

Almost 2 decades ago, an Italian missionary friend of mine cooked for me a what she called "classic Italian comfort food" that's as easy as ABC to prepare and yet delightfully delicious and tasted expensive. I mean, to this day, remembering her kindness, cooking for a sick friend that I was, that really meant so much. Down memory lane, here's what she did:  1.     took a left-over pasta spaghetti from the fridge 2.     melted butter in a pan with a little drizzle of olive oil and stirred in the left-over pasta noodles 3.     got a medium-sized red tomato... pomodoro ehh ...poked it with her finger on its base and sort of squeezed it with her bare hand so that the juice really oozed out as she threw it in the pasta while stirring 5.     cracked the egg directly in the pasta, stirring it well, turned off the heat 6.     plated for me...the poor hand-beaten pomodoro seated nicely on the center of the plate above...

Melancholic - adjective; disposed to or affected with melancholy; gloomy Grateful - adjective; warmly or deeply appreciative of kindness or benefits received; thankful                source: dictionary.com    Euy and I learned two big words at school earlier this day that we thought were worth discussing together. SCENARIO. Euy took a short quiz on vocabulary and got a score of 9 points out of 10 and was complaining about one word she had a hard time figuring out. She was given four word choices and was supposed to pick out the best word that would complete the sentence. This quiz was about knowing the meaning of words through context clues, no dictionaries allowed. She was a bit exasperated that although she found the quiz easy, this one word got in the way of her getting a perfect score. So we discussed THE word "melancholic." Her quiz says, "The girl was still___________ after recovering from her previous illness." "But Mom...

"When the dog bites When the bee stings When I'm feeling sad I simply remember my favorite things And then I don't feel so bad." Maria Favorite Things "The Sound of Music" Things that make me happy... just a few of them... 1. Twelve hours of uninterrupted sleep, zzz, zzzzz, zzzzzz. The last one I had was 2 decades ago. 2. Rising up every morning with my kids lying down next to me all cuddled up. I smell their heads, lay may hands on them to pray for them. 3. Two freshly cooked eggs sunny side up pls. 4. A cup of instant coffee that we have at the pantry now, one that says "7-in-one." 5. Scents of things: L'occitane hand cream and their Verbena cologne, Johnson's liquid baby bath color blue and white, Chloe rose parfum, my husband's outfit after a day's work. 6. Scents of herbs in my greenhouse: tarragons, oreganos, rosemarys 7. The thought of "shopping....

Just recently, I came across this short poem that left me quiet for a awhile and thought about how my children view me as a Mom. This untitled poem is a sure tear-jerker but rubbed in a good way. If I had my child to raise over again, I would finger-paint more, and point the finger less. I’d do less correcting and more connecting. I’d take my eyes off my watch, and watch with my eyes. I would care to know less and know to care more. I’d take more hikes and fly more kites. I’d stop playing serious and seriously play. I would run through more fields and gaze at more stars. I’d do more hugging and less tugging. I’d build self esteem first and the house later. I’d teach less about the love of power, And more about the power of love Anonymous