The Girls
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Decluttering the Kids Room
Now, to tackle the toys. The playroom/schoolroom was in a constant state of disorder and disarray. Getting my kids to clean it was impossible. They were overwhelmed and so was I. I was done. So done. But in order to get my kiddos on board I needed to go about this in a way that allowed them to understand the “why” of minimizing. They had been raised in a more-is-more environment. In fact, I had unintentionally trained them to place so much value on their stuff to the point that everything was made to feel special and needed. I needed to find a way to retrain them. I took a…
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Fight or Flight
I don’t know how I heard about it, but somehow I started following and watching a movement called 1000 hours outside (https://www.1000hoursoutside.com/). The basic premise is to replace screen time with green time. After observing other people’s adventures for a year or two we finally decided, as a family, to take the plunge and commit to the challenge for the year 2023. I am proud to say that we fulfilled our goal! We hit our thousandth hour on December 31st, 2023. The year was full of many adventures; the following story is merely one of them. We started 2023 strong- averaging two hours a day in the dead of winter.…
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Performing With Pickleville On Tour
Have you ever heard of the legendary outlaw El Juandito? Those of you who have have probably visited Bear Lake, where El Juandito has spent many a summer entertaining audiences at the lakeside theatre, Pickleville Playhouse. Once, a few years ago, we were fortunate enough to visit there as a family. It was an experience I will never forget, because the atmosphere was so different than any other I had ever experienced. The talent was phenomenal, the stage was intimate, and the air was fragrant with the fun-filled scent of popcorn and summer. This year, my actor hubby had the opportunity to co-star in a show with Pickleville On Tour.…
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No News Is… No News.
Those who know me already know that I am not an introvert. I enjoy going everywhere and getting to know new people. I like having new experiences every day. If you saw my family calendar you’d understand. At one point we lived near our cousins. They are much more homebodies than we are. They’d watch us go in and out of the driveway everyday feeling exhausted with the thought of such a busy life. That’s pretty typical for us. I intentionally fill my days with people, places, and adventures. If I’m home doing the “same old, same old” for more than two days in a row be assured that I…
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Thank You For Your Time
The job of an actor is varied, dedicated, and time consuming. When Ben was acting full time in LA he would usually have eight to twelve hours on set. That’s not including the time he would spend driving there (sometimes up to two hours), applying for jobs, networking, creating content, and developing skills. His weeks were often between fifty to seventy hour work weeks if not more. Now that he has a day job his days are just as long. He not only works his 40 hours a week for his day job, he also works at least 15 hours on acting/producing/screenwriting. When he was a banker we could expect…
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An Uninvited Visitor
Our apartment has three bedrooms. Because Ben works from home, that means the rooms are divided as follows- our bedroom, Ben’s office, and one bedroom for the girls to share. Five girls in one room was a tall order- literally. To give them all their own sleeping space, going vertical was our best option; we decided to build a three story, tiered bunk bed. We didn’t have a lot of spare money to invest in a store-bought, several hundred dollar bunk, and Ben had wanted to build a custom bed for a long time anyway. He had the design already in mind, but lumber prices were crazy; building from scratch…
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When Not Much Has Changed, But Everything’s Changed
How are you all holding up? I mean… national emergency, quarantines, toilet paper shortages, social distancing, schooling at home and the threat of an unseen culprit that did all this. Are you all doing okay? We’re used to much of this. I mean… who knew it would take a pandemic to finally find commonality with the rest of the world. We already homeschooled and Ben for the most part worked from home when he wasn’t on set (which recently has been less than normal because they always want to hire someone who can have his face shaved or hair cut if need be, and Ben can’t right now). We already…
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Suddenly Homeschooling? Here’s 10 Tips and Tricks
Welcome! To those of you who don’t know much about me let me introduce myself. My name is Cindy. I am the wife of a working actor (Ben), mother to four beautiful little girls (ages 9,7,5, and 3) and I’m 36 weeks pregnant with our fifth little lady! We have been thoroughly blessed. As I’ve discussed in previous posts, due to the nature of Ben’s job and the abundance of support we receive from the charter school system in California, we decided to homeschool this school year. Because of that, now that the Coronavirus is having everyone move indoors, I have had several friends reach out to me for homeschooling…
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Good Things to Come
This November I am grateful for being a mother. Just shortly after Ben and I got married we decided to have children. We had such a powerful feeling that God had children waiting for us and that we should allow them into our home and our lives. I wanted to finish my degree first. Ben wanted to finish school. We lived in a tiny, one bedroom, 450 square foot apartment. We had been married for a few weeks and trying to figure out married life. Having a baby right away seemed like a ridiculous step… but our guide had shown us a better way, so we decided to start our…
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Gratitude
This November I want to focus on being grateful. I have so much to be grateful for, as do we all, and yet sometimes, life’s troubles seem to overwhelm my sense of gratitude. I’m going to treat gratitude as a muscle that needs exercise to maintain (or increase) it’s strength. So, here it goes. This November I am grateful for my darling husband. Even with all the ridiculousness he puts me through. The choosing to be an actor rather than taking a traditional path, the “it’ll all work out” attitude, and the fact that he sometimes has to be reminded to laugh at my really awesome jokes. I truly am…
