In November 2015 my family moved to Chiang Mai, Thailand, to work with the NGO Partners Relief & Development, to help bring free, full lives to children affected by conflict and oppression, particularly people in and from Myanmar (Burma). Two months in, here’s the third of a short series of updates on what life is like here. You […]
In 2023, Lent begins Wednesday, 22 February We’re spoilt by the church calendar at this time of year! We’ve just had four weeks of candle-lighting at Advent, culminating, in our household, with this delightful moment on Christmas Day: Now we’re coming to the end of the two-week Christmas season, and then it’s only a month […]
Wow. I asked around to see what people are planning for Advent this year, and look what I got! Lego! Candles! Chocolate coins in shoes! I have spent the evening wrangling a non-sleeping baby (very smiley and cheeky, playing with toys on the bed beside me and blowing raspberries non-stop for half an hour) and […]
Yay! Advent is my favourite season in the church calendar, and it’s almost here! Actually, Lent was pretty cool this year, too, with our superduper Lent with Kids series, but the inspiration for that came from all the fun and surprisingly helpful things we did at home during Advent. So here we are! I […]
It was my privilege and delight last weekend to accompany one of my favourite little girls and her daddy on her very first experience of a fancy stage show: a travelling London production of Annie. What a treat (for me as much as her)! I got to take her to the balcony and look at all the […]
This is an introductory post to our Lent with Kids series, explaining how and why we’re using candles and a bunch of other things to make Lent meaningful at home. I wrote this several years ago now, and it has become a cornerstone of our family spirituality. Skip to the bottom to see the basic […]
About a third of you, Gentle Readers, are based in the Northern Hemisphere, where the church calendar was born and raised: Advent, Christmas, Epiphany, Lent, Easter, and so on, until Advent begins another church year again. That means that your wintry Advent is naturally an expectant, waiting time that builds to the celebration of Christmas […]
It is a legal right in New Zealand for all children to have free education that meets their needs. This includes the right to ‘special education’ for people under 21 years old who need extra support, or something different from the usual classroom teaching. The vision statement of the Ministry of Education, in relation to […]
In Steve Biddulph‘s new book, Raising Girls, he apparently calls for an army of aunts to take their place in helping parents to raise resilient young women in a difficult era. The Guardian reports: It is a view about to be revived by bestselling author and psychologist Steve Biddulph, who is calling for an “aunties […]
In A Prairie Home Companion, Garrison Keillor gives the news each week from the township of Lake Wobegon, where ‘all the women are strong, all the men are good-looking, and all the children are above average.’ It’s not just Lake Wobegon. Some friends of ours observed the amusing number of parents around them who considered […]