Author: Sarah Bringhurst Familia

A Fossilized Birthday

Sarah Bringhurst Familia

Last Tuesday was Axa’s 8th birthday. We spent the morning at the Daytona Museum of Arts and Sciences. They had quite an interesting mishmash of exhibits, including a room devoted entirely to art depicting space flight, and another of Spanish conquistador weapons.

But Axa’s favorite, and the reason we went to the museum on her birthday (other than the fact that it was the first Tuesday of the month, and free to Volusia County residents) was the beautifully preserved fossil skeleton of a giant ground sloth.

On the way home from the museum, we finally had the experience we’ve been waiting for since we moved to Florida: an encounter with wild alligators!… Read more

Sugar Babies 2.0

Sarah Bringhurst Familia

It was Axa’s birthday last Tuesday, and it turned out to be a pretty action-packed week, so I have plenty to blog about. But first, some exciting news: we have new sugar gliders!

No, Merry and Pippin did not have babies (they are both, after all, neutered males). A friend of friend needed to rehome a pair of adorable little girls, and so my friend mentioned me. On Tuesday, Axa and Raj went with me to pick them up, and they’re now settled in at our house.

Following our Tolkien theme, we named them Galadriel (“Gala”):

And Nimrodel (“Nim”):

Sorry, I know it’s TMI, but you can see that she’s already what sugar glider enthusiasts would unblushingly refer to as a “bra baby.”… Read more

The New, Improved Kindle Paperwhite!

Sarah Bringhurst Familia

Last week, my beloved Kindle finally died. Axa was getting ready to read The Princess and the Goblin aloud to all of us from the back seat of the car. She opened up the case, flicked the power switch and . . . . nothing. Well, not exactly nothing. Faint lines on the screen, and tantalizing ghosted images of what we were last reading, but nothing really useful.

The poor dear thing has been well loved, and well used. And although I always kept it in its case and treated it well, you might say it’s been well abused too. I read it for hours nearly daily, carried it around in a purse wherever I went, and charged it in three different countries.… Read more

Organizing My Bookshelves, Part 1

Sarah Bringhurst Familia

When I asked on Facebook for suggestions on organizing my home library, I was amused to find that multiple people suggested organizing the books by color. Now nobody is denying that a bookshelf organized by color is very pretty. But how do you find the books once you’ve organized them?

Maybe I just have too many books. When I got ready to do my organizing overhaul, I thought it might be fun to count. My off-the-cuff estimate was around 500. The grand total, though, after going through every room in the house, was 805 books. Not counting the 100-or-so library books in the house at any given moment.… Read more

Casteluzzo Academy 2013, Term 1

Sarah Bringhurst Familia

A week or so ago I alluded to a major change-up in the way that we are doing homeschool. We recently ditched some books that weren’t working, and added a whole new list of wonderful books that so far seem pretty great.

Another aspect of the change is that we are doing more of our homeschooling together. I had always imagined having a separate stack of books for each child, and only doing the really obvious things like art and composer study together. But that was back in the days when we were having a child every two years or so, and weren’t going to stop until we got to five or six, like our parents.… Read more

Dumpster Diving in Deltona, Part 2

Sarah Bringhurst Familia

When it comes to the frugal branch of the homemaking arts, I am pretty much a failure as a couponer. In fact, I’m lucky if I manage to redeem the coupons stuck right on the package for instant savings. But I do have a nose for other people’s garbage. Because I’m all for saving the earth, saving money, and saving hassle.

Since my last post on dumpster diving in May, I’ve taken abundant advantage of the fact that people leave all sorts of goodies out next to their garbage can on garbage day. Every so often on that magical day I take a walk or a bike ride around the neighborhood to see if it’s my lucky day.  … Read more

How do I love my sugar gliders? Let me count the ways.

Sarah Bringhurst Familia

It’s been awhile since we’ve had any sugar glider love here on the blog. So won’t you indulge me in a bit of shameless gushing? In no particular order, here are a few things that I just adore about my babies.

1. Sugar gliders are exotic in so many ways. They have little conversations with each other that sound like the barking of impossibly diminutive dogs. They clean themselves with what sounds like a tiny sneeze and back feet that are cleverly modified to form a tiny comb. And the way they climb on the ceiling of our screened in porch never fails to remind me of the classic Beauty and the Beast trailer to Lilo and Stitch.… Read more

A Whole New Year of Homeschooling

Sarah Bringhurst Familia

When I started out homeschooling my children I swore that I would not be one of those schizophrenic homeschooling moms who is addicted to curricula and constantly switches from one to another. And it should have been an easy resolution to keep. After all, I decided to homeschool before my oldest child was even conceived, and spent a good portion of the first few years of her life exhaustively researching homeschooling methods and curricula. My plan was to find the perfect curriculum and follow it perfectly with my perfectly predictable children from preschool through 12th grade.

And then life happened. Turns out my children are no more predictable than I am, and what works for them is not necessarily always what I originally envisioned would work for all my hypothetical children.… Read more

The Familia Family’s Very Late Christmas Letter

Sarah Bringhurst Familia

I realized that not all of my faithful blog readers are also Facebook friends or email connections. So lest you miss the delight of receiving our family Christmas letter, here it is, reproduced in full (and for those of you who’ve already read it twice and are wondering when I’m going to stop posting it . . . um, sorry):

Dear Family, Friends, and Random People Whose Emails May Have Been Accidentally Added to our Mailing List and are Thus Subjected to the Annual Honor of a Summary of our Life,

It seems like 2012 was an unusually tranquil year. Maybe it’s because we only moved once, and it wasn’t even internationally, just cross-country.

… Read more

New Year’s Eve in the Hot Tub

Sarah Bringhurst Familia

This year my parents planned a gala Bringhurst family reunion over New Year’s. Florida narrowly missed being the gathering place, but was eventually superseded by Utah. I’m pretty sure people didn’t take the weather into account when they decided to meet in Utah in the middle of the winter, but three out of five siblings living there ended up being critical mass. And since my kids adore a good plane flight, it worked out great for us too.

My parents rented a huge house near Salt Lake City, and the snowy scene was undeniably beautiful.

Raj, of course, thought that the best thing to do after two years of not seeing snow was to taste it.… Read more