CarrieIsaac.com

I have an impressive list of things I'm busy with.

The Year I Invested in Friendships

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A number of years ago I decided to actively invest in specific friends.

While I had friends in my life and activities that kept me busy, I desired deeper relationships than what I had at the time. My life did not lack for contact with people, but I wanted to go beyond surface-level conversations.

So I picked five women to invest in.

Looking back, choosing five was a little ambitious; maybe I wanted to hedge my bets in case some of them didn’t work out.

I didn’t even know what I thought I meant by “investing” in a friendship. I just knew that if I wanted deeper relationships, it wouldn’t do any good to sit around complaining that I didn’t have any true friends.

So, I prayed for those five women. I invited them and their children to my under-renovation home. I made meals for their families. I texted them and emailed them to see how they were doing. I didn’t wait for them to “take their turn” to have me over or check in on me; I kept pouring into them – while, of course, watching for cues that they just wanted me to leave them alone.

It was one of the best things I’ve ever done.

Almost all of those relationships deepened, and several of those five women are still a major part of my life today. Taking the focus off myself, off my yearning for deeper relationships, and focusing on what I could give others was life-changing.

It can be awkward to tell someone, “I’ve decided to really invest in your life!” I didn’t tell all of the five that, but the ones that I did were some of the relationships that developed the most.

Two of those friends went through some major crises in their lives that year, and because they knew I was praying for them and rooting for them and truly caring about them, they were more open about some of their struggles than otherwise they would have been.

Not all of them ended up being deep, long-lasting relationships, and there were different lessons to learn from that. The investment was not wasted just because I didn’t end up having all five become bosom buddies.

Since that time, I’ve developed new and deepened other existing friendships without having to make an official resolution to invest in them.

I’m thankful for those friendships both old and new, and I’ll never forget the lessons that God taught me that year. I’d do it again in a heartbeat!

Photo by Blake Wisz on Unsplash

Recent Reads: One Billion Americans, Geography of Nowhere, Miss Prim

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One Billion Americans by Matthew Yglesias

I was intrigued by One Billion Americans because I agreed with the idea that in order to stay on top, America needs more people to have “more ideas, more ambition, more utilization of resources”. Yglesias is somewhere on the political left, and I thought perhaps this could be an area where the left and right could work together.

While I agreed with the premise, I was disappointed that nearly all of Yglesias’s proposals were expensive, top-down solutions. I wish the book had spent more time laying the foundation of why having more Americans is critical to the future of our country and less time proposing solutions. At the beginning of the book, I found that the author and I had common goals. I finished feeling that while we might agree that more Americans is a good thing, we would be hard-pressed to find any mutually agreeable solutions.

The Geography of Nowhere by James Howard Kunstler

This book is a classic on the topic of urban planning and city development, but wasn’t available in audiobook form (my preferred method for non-fiction) until recently.

Originally published in 1993, the book feels both classic and dated: already by 1993, the trend of strip malls was seen as undesirable and people were tired of cookie-cutter neighborhoods (yet both continue to proliferate) – common complaints in 2021, and yet the book doesn’t even foresee the impact that the internet would have on our daily lives and city layouts.

While other books I’ve read go more in-depth on issues such as suburban sprawl, walkability, race, class, infrastructure, and architecture, this is a good overview if you are just getting interested in how cities have been developed over the past 100 years and why suburbia in Chicago looks the same as it does in Dallas, Las Vegas, and Denver.

The Awakening of Miss Prim by Natalia Sanmartín Fenollera

I re-read this book at the end of December, after purchasing it at a local bookstore to give to a friend as a gift. This second reading put it on the list of books that I’ll likely read at least once a year, along with The Blue Castle, The Scarlet Pimpernel, and Gone with the Wind. (Though not necessarily books I read every year, if you enjoy the books by D.E. Stevenson you may also really like this book.)

It’s a charming story about a woman who takes a job cataloging the personal library of a mysterious gentleman whose home is overrun by small children who quote Augustine and Chaucer*. It’s set in a charming village that has an intriguing history that’s revealed in the book.

The first time I read it, I wrote several quotes relating to children’s education in my commonplace. This time, I was struck by some of the ideas about feminism and can’t stop thinking about an excerpt where a woman is explaining to Miss Prim that many of the women in their community who appear to simply be housewives are actually more free and independent than Miss Prim herself. (If you read it I would love to chat more about this with you in real life!)

*I don’t remember specifically which ancient writers the children quote, and I gave away the copy I read in December to my friend! It’s next on my list to order from the bookstore, though.

These represent my reads worth writing about for the last month or so. I’ve started, then abandoned a lot more books than I’ve finished lately.

Photo by Alfons Morales on Unsplash

I’ve owned my Miele Titan Canister Vacuum for 2 years – do I still love it?

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It’s now been almost two years since I spent an enormous sum of money on a Miele vacuum, and I’ve been meaning to do a review of it for awhile now. Here you go: a review of the Miele Titan vacuum after two years of ownership.

Over the past couple of years, I’ve realized that I have spent a lot of money on stuff because it was cheap, but been totally unhappy with it. This includes everything from clothing to furniture to vacuum cleaners. I’ve been working on training myself to make do or do without until I can afford quality items, and incredibly, I’ve found that I’m almost always quite happy with more expensive purchases because I really took the time to evaluate whether or not it was worth the money I was spending. My Miele vacuum is one of those super-expensive-but-never-regretted-it decisions.

I went with the German-made Miele brand after doing a fair amount of research online and browsing in the store. We vacuum a lot – I’m not exaggerating when I say we vacuum daily – and I wanted one that was going to keep doing its job for more than a year or two. I wanted a canister vacuum so it was easy to tote up and down stairs, and I wanted something that would work well on hard floors, since we planned to replace our main floor carpet with wood floors and I didn’t want to use a broom and dustpan every day.


miele-titan-attachments

I bought the Miele Titan and I love it. It works as well today as it did when it was new, and we’ve only had one minor problem with it. (The brush attachment broke, so I took it into the shop where I’d purchased it and they gave me a new brush right then – I didn’t even have to wait for it to be shipped.) It is light, easy to maneuver, and actually pretty fun to use! I mean, who wouldn’t like to wind up the vacuum cord when all you have to do is push a button and it pulls it in?! (That mechanism works great, by the way.)

I upgraded to Miele’s Powerbrush so I can’t say how the default carpet attachment for the Titan works, but I really do love the Powerbrush. It has five settings for different types of carpets, and it actually works – this is the first vacuum I’ve ever had that you could actually tell adjusted for different heights! I have found that the pedal to adjust the height setting tends to catch for me and I have to push a little harder than I feel like I should, but Jeremy never has that issue so maybe I’m just too lightweight. 😉

The handle on the Titan has a button where you can choose to turn the brush on or off, so it’s easy to switch from carpet to hard floors using the Powerbrush. Also, the Powerbrush stops spinning when you accidentally get the corner caught on a throw rug, so it doesn’t burn the belts or whatever causes that awful smell when normal vacuums get caught on something.

miele-titan-cord-windup

The Miele Titan has different levels of suction, and you can just turn the knob on the canister to adjust the amount of suction. We almost always keep it on the highest suction, but it is nice to be able to decrease it when I’m doing stuff like sucking dust off artificial floral stems. (If you leave it on high, you’re likely to lose a few flowers!)


One thing that took some getting used to is that the vacuum doesn’t really have a stick like most of the other vacuums I’ve used, so if you need to reach higher than the hose will allow it to reach, you have to lift the canister up, which isn’t a big deal because it is pretty light and easy to handle.

I also had to get used to the fact that the power switch is on the canister, and not on the part you hold – it’s actually great, but it took me a long time to stop feeling around for the on/off switch on the handle!

The handle is also really easy to adjust for different heights of vacuum-ers, so we can let it all the way out for Jeremy (who vacuums almost every night) and pull it all the way in for the kids. It’s also really easy to attach and detach the Powerbrush, parquet floor tool, and attachments.

miele-titan-review

Now that we finally have wood floors, I can actually say how it works on hard floors: great! The parquet floor tool works well and it slides under the furniture quite well – much easier than a regular vacuum or a broom.

miele-titan-canister-vacuum-review

One drawback to the Miele Titan is that the bags are kind of expensive – about $4-5 per bag, and they are not terribly big, either, because the canister is small. The boxes of bags also come with pads for the two filters on the vacuum. I think we end up changing it once every month and a half or so, and it would be more often for people that have pets. The bags are really nice, though – very thick and I have no doubt that they hold the dust in better than the cheap bags in other vacuums. But, it can be a case of sticker shock if you don’t realize how much the bags are!

I’m totally happy with my Miele purchase and would do it all over again in a heartbeat! I’m also glad that I bought it at a local store so that I have a place to take it if there are ever issues, like when the brush attachment broke.

This is an unsolicited review of a product I purchased. It contains affiliate links.


Big Family Problems

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1. Your refrigerator isn’t big enough to store a week’s worth of groceries.

In particular, you definitely do not have enough room in the produce drawers.

2. No stores have shopping carts big enough to hold all your children and all your groceries, too.

So you become a “two-cart family” and put kids in one and groceries in the other, but sometimes you worry that the store manager might revoke the license of the second cart-driver, who is seven years old and can barely see over the handle.

3. Toothbrush holders that hold more than five are rare.

Our kids are young enough right now that we still supervise their teeth-brushing, so all of our toothbrushes are in the same bathroom.  Yeah.  Try finding a toothbrush holder that holds more than four or five toothbrushes.  (We are currently using a short, oval vase from Hobby Lobby in lieu of a real toothbrush holder.)

4. Cars that seat seven passengers don’t allow for five of those passengers to be carseats.

The minivan may be the quintessential mom-mobile, but just because it seats seven doesn’t mean you can have five kids in it.  Fitting five carseats in a minivan requires hours of research and testing to figure out the right combination that will allow you to fit three seats across the back and two in the middle.

5. You can’t find a highchair for every highchair-sized kid at most restaurants.

And if you can, there’s rarely room to put more than one at a table.

6. Your dishwasher won’t hold one meal’s worth of dishes.

We are only beginning to happen upon this problem on occasion, but I forsee it becoming a regular occurence in the future.

7. You must run four pancake griddles simultaneously to get everyone fed in less than two hours.

If we ever do a total kitchen renovation, I’m figuring out a way to put a restaurant-style grill/cooktop in.

8. A standard-sized kitchen table is more than cramped.

When child #5 started sitting at the table recently, we realized that we are soon going to have to either get a bigger table or find more narrow chairs so that we can fit three on one side.  And while I eschew the idea of a formal dining room, I can see that someday we are probably going to want one just for the size!  (Maybe then I can turn the eat-in kitchen into a commercial grill and dish pit.)

All About Spelling: Reflections As We Finish Level One

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I’m beginning what I think will be an ongoing look at All About Spelling – I plan to keep posting about it as we progress further through the curriculum.  *Please note: I’m an affiliate for All About Spelling, though I did purchase the curriculum on my own and this is not a compensated review.

All About Spelling Level One

I purchased All About Spelling partly based on reviews I’d read online and the samples that I viewed.  I’m not exactly sure what my homeschool style is yet, but I do know that I hate curriculum that:

  • Is cluttered, uses Microsoft Word-style clipart, and features five different fonts and six different font sizes on a page.
  • Requires the teacher to spend extensive time in preparation to teach it “their way”.
  • Is strongly tied to a one-lesson-a-day schedule.

I picked All About Spelling because it seemed to avoid all three of those, and so far, it’s met my expectations.

  •  Curriculum Layout & Design

Maybe I shouldn’t care so much about what a curriculum looks like.  We’re supposed to be teaching spelling/reading here, not graphic design, right?  But, I think that a clean, simple interface is conducive to keeping a student and parent focused on the content instead of the fluff around the page.

All About Spelling is laid out in a very clean manner and is modern-looking.  I’ve never once been annoyed at their poor formatting or inconsistent styling.

  • Teacher Preparation Time

I find it easy to simply open the All About Spelling book, read through it once (usually a 1-2 minute process), and then teach.  Obviously, we are dealing with simple first grade phonics so it shouldn’t be too complicated anyway, but I know that the other phonics programs I looked at did manage to overload the teacher with tons to read and no clear direction as to where to start or what to do.

All About Spelling gives step-by-step instructions that can basically be read as a script.  I find this to be very easy to follow without making me feel like it’s holding my hand.

Here’s an example:

Set the tokens aside and put the following letter tiles in a row in front of your student: a, r, t.

(picture of tiles set out)

“Today you will spell a word using the tiles.”

“I will say a word and you will repeat it slowly, one sound at a time, like you did with the tokens.  Instead of pulling down a token for each sound, you will choose the correct letter tile and pull it down.”

The instructions are brief and clear enough that you can read them to the student without them feeling like you are giving them a half-hour lecture.

  • Lesson Schedule

One of the things that I love about All About Spelling is that I feel no pressure to complete a certain number of lessons each week.  It seems that some curriculums say “OK, these are the things that we need to teach in first grade.  There are 180 days of school in the year, so let’s average out all of this stuff so we can sell this curriculum as a full year of lessons.”

Yes, you can do more than one lesson a day, but it really seems like that gets tedious when half the lesson is review.  One of the reasons I’m homeschooling is so that my kids can learn at their own pace, be that faster or slower or with more or less review than a curriculum dictates.

All About Spelling Level One has 24 steps, in which each step is a chapter each.  Each step or chapter basically focuses on one phonics rule.  There really is no indication as to what pace you are supposed to go; the curriculum encourages you to move as quickly or slowly as it takes, simply making sure the student has mastered each step before moving on.

Some weeks, we go through one step; other weeks, it’s two or three.  We completed Level One in about six months with my first grader (and probably could have gone faster if I wasn’t pregnant and tired!).

Spelling or reading?

I’ve not been homeschooling for long enough to know the nuances of what makes something spelling curriculum or reading curriculum.  Though it’s not technically marketed as such, we are using All About Spelling as our reading program and it seems to be working quite well.

I suppose that if I was only teaching how to read and not how to spell, we could move a little faster and my first grader would be reading more advanced words.  However, reading and spelling really go hand-in-hand and I think I might feel as if we were backtracking if we jumped way ahead in reading words that the student had no idea how to spell.

I do have to remind myself not to compare what we’re doing to what others are doing.  We just began to learn what causes a vowel to make its long sound at the end of Level One, something I know most reading curriculums teach much faster.  But, my student can correctly spell every word he can read, and can explain why it’s spelled that way, something that I don’t think is as common with other programs.

Three types of learning

All About Spelling does a pretty good job of equally incorporating auditory, visual, and kinesthetic learning.  I love that it’s not tied into one method; some days, we only use the auditory exercises, other days, it’s only the visual or kinesthetic. And some days, we use all three.

The variety of exercises (letter tiles, tokens, flashcards, verbal exercises, and writing) help keep the student engaged even when reviewing the same concept over and over, and it also allows me to give the student a choice in how we do the day’s lesson.  My first grader loves to write some days and some days he hates it, so often I’ll let him choose if he wants to spell with letter tiles or spell on paper.

Things we used to supplement

All About Spelling has no workbook or worksheets included.  I found it helpful, especially at the beginning, to simply make my own worksheets where the student fills in the beginning or ending sound of the word for an object, for example.  Though it would be nice if it included some worksheets, I enjoyed making my own based on what the student needed to review and I already admitted I think a lot of clipart is cheesy so I’ll probably continue making my own even if they added some sort of worksheets.

All About Spelling is not technically a reading program, so it also has no reader included.  However, they have recently come out with All About Reading, which has a workbook and reader.  We went through All About Spelling Level One without a reader, and just supplemented with the Bob Books (Set 1) and, I admit it, we printed out the sample PDF for the All About Reading Level One reader.

We ordered the All About Reading Level 2 reader to go through as we enter All About Spelling Level Two (the spelling book indicates which chapters in the readers correspond with the lesson), and if I didn’t try to go through Spelling Level One relatively quickly, I think we’d have ordered a Level One reader, too, since most other easy readers have a lot of sight words and All About Spelling has no sight words (at least not in Level One).

An ongoing journey with All About Spelling

We’ll be continuing to use All About Spelling as our primary reading/spelling program for the forseeable future.  I’ll let you know how it goes!

You can click here to visit the All About Learning website to find out more about All About Spelling and All About Reading.

Practicing Letter Formation With Toy Trains

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This morning we used our Melissa and Doug train set as a learning tool for language arts!  We formed letters using the tracks, and then practiced proper letter formation by driving the trains around the letter tracks.

Miss Preschooler definitely benefited from this, and though First Grader is pretty good about proper letter formation, even he had to think about how to drive the train around the track properly, making me think this is a great way to reinforce letter formation even if you think you know it!