Outdoors Family Challenge: Day 1 Experience

/ Shannon Brescher Shea / 3 Comments

sunset-outdoors-family-challenge

In our part of the world, the first day of the Outdoors Family Challenge started damp but ended with a glowing sunset. (Read the Day 1 prompt or follow my page on Facebook to get ones throughout the week!)

In fact, the challenge has already gotten someone outside who wouldn’t have been otherwise – me! While the rain had stopped by the time I got out of work, it’s likely I wouldn’t have sat on our wet front steps. Instead, I grabbed Sprout and Little Bird and headed out the front door. Continue reading →

Outdoors Family Challenge: Day 1 – Use Your Senses

/ Shannon Brescher Shea / 1 Comment

the-outdoors-family-challenge-day-1-prompt

Welcome to the Outdoors Family Challenge! This is a seven day challenge to help get you and your kids outside, living more sustainably, and connecting more with nature and each other. If you would like automatic updates each morning, sign up for the email list, follow check out the archives on the blog, or like my Facebook page.

Each morning, I’ll post a prompt for you to do and then the afternoon or evening, I’ll post about our experiences.

We encourage you to post about your experience on your blog and social media using the hashtag #outdoorsfamilychallenge. (It would be even better if you could include a link to my blog or Facebook page so other people can find out how to participate!). At the end of the week, I’ll be giving away a copy of Richard Louv’s Vitamin N to a random participant that uses the hashtag.

If you can’t do the activity that day, that’s okay! Do it the next day and don’t worry about following it exactly.

For even more outdoors fun, check out the Children and Nature Network’s Vitamin N Challenge.  Jen Mendez at PERMIE KIDs,  Sandi Schwartz at Happy Science Mom, and Aditi Wardhan Singh at Silver Linings are also participating in the Challenge, so be sure to check out their posts as well!

We can’t wait to see your photos and read about your experiences!

Day 1 Challenge: Use your senses to take in nature.

Spend 15 minutes (or more) outside with your kids, just paying attention to what is going on around you. Encourage your kids to use all five senses. Sit on the ground, if possible.

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Weddings, Threenagers, and Grace

/ Shannon Brescher Shea / 6 Comments

weddings-threenagers-and-grace

The bride walked down the aisle, a flowered headband in her short, black hair. As everyone watched expectantly, I shhhhed my yammering three-year-old son. While the readers recited statements from the couple’s grandmothers, I struggled to hold him on my lap. As a member of the wedding party read a passage by astronomer Carl Sagan, I finally hauled my kid down the aisle. The two of us spent the rest of my friends’ wedding in the back of the building. I alternated between trying to catch bits of the ceremony, grabbing him as he sprinted out the door, and whispering to him about how disappointed I was. It was a pretty low moment in my parenting career.

It wasn’t supposed to go like this.

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Guest Post: Not Perfect, Still Amazing

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The last two years were very challenging and last winter, the difficulties started seriously wearing on my mental health. Thankfully, participating in Stratejoy’s Holiday Council workshop (along with an appointment with a therapist) helped a lot. I wanted to give back, so I wrote a blog post for their website.

The post, called Not Perfect, Still Amazing, is finally up! Part of their Two Truths and a Lie series, it talks through a lot of the issues I deal with but I hope it helps you too.

With their forays into mutant beings, aliens, and time travel, I don’t usually look to superhero television shows for practical advice. But in Supergirl, I’ve found a couple of heroines that have taught me a lot about what means – and doesn’t – to be enough.

Read the rest on Stratejoy’s website! (And isn’t that photo hilarious? That’s a fantastic summary of my life right now.)

Join the Outdoors Family Challenge!

/ Shannon Brescher Shea / 6 Comments

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Do you want to get outside more with your family? Do you want to connect more with nature, your neighbors, and your kids? Then my Outdoors Family Challenge is for you!

Each morning from September 19-25, I’ll be posting one challenge action you can do with your kids. You can sign up for an email series, follow me on Facebook, or check the blog each morning to get prompts.

After you’ve done the activity, I encourage you to post about your experience on your social media using the hashtag #outdoorsfamilychallenge. At the end of the week, I’ll pick a random participant to recieve a copy of the book Vitamin N.

In the evening, I’ll share our family’s experience on the blog and Facebook. In addition, three more bloggers will be joining me in the fun: Jen Mendez at PERMIE KIDs,  Sandi Schwartz at Happy Science Mom, and Aditi Wardhan Singh at Silver Linings (who will be doing it later). This is also part of the Children and Nature Network’s Vitamin N Challenge to encourage kids to get outside more.

I hope  that you’ll join us for the Outdoors Family Challenge!

What I’ve Been Reading

/ Shannon Brescher Shea / 2 Comments
Photo of a Siproeta stelenes, a green and black butterfly sitting on some leaves

A Sipoeta stelenes butterfly at the Brookside Gardens’ Wings of Fancy exhibit.

I haven’t done one of these in ages because of potty training and children not staying in their beds and babies and life, really. But I’ve still been reading and keeping my links, so I figured now was a good of a time as any to share them with you. This time it includes riding transit with kids, the biology of breastfeeding, learning through play, poking fun at Trump supporters, and adventure playgrounds in the U.S.!

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Lily Pads and Marshes in Washington D.C.: Kenilworth Park and Aquatic Gardens

/ Shannon Brescher Shea / 1 Comment

Photo of large lily pads in a pond; text: "Lily Pads and Marshes: Kenilworth Park and Aquatic Gardens"

Dark pink blooms swayed over my son, their long, thin stems rising up from the muck. Lily pads the size of platters floated on the pond, their curved sides forming miniature walls. Blue dasher dragonflies flitted across the water, their wings nearly transparent. And a big, green tractor hauled dirt back and forth for a landscaping project. These were just a few of the wonders we saw at the Kenilworth Park and Aquatic Gardens in Washington D.C. this past weekend, when we visited with the kids and my parents. The tractor was my son’s favorite.

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Why I’m Thankful for Labor Day as a Mom

/ Shannon Brescher Shea / 1 Comment

Why I'm Thankful for Labor Day as a Mom2

I’m thankful for Labor Day and the people who made it possible – both as a worker and a mom. But we still have so much more to do.

I’m thankful I have weekends off so I can spend them with my husband and kids. I already feel like this time is so stretched; I can’t imagine having even less. But before 1937 and the work of labor unions, there was no standard 40 hour workweek. Even now, there are moms who have to work two jobs just to get by, meaning they don’t get those precious hours.

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How to Start Composting with Your Family

/ Shannon Brescher Shea / 12 Comments

How to Start Composting with Your Family (Photo: Tumbling composter)

Sometimes, I question the decision to teach my four-year-old how to compost. Like when he spent 10 minutes today ripping up a tiny piece of newspaper to add to it. Or touched the composter after I turned it and it was dripping with decomposing goo. Thankfully, he didn’t put his hands in his mouth. At least not this time.

Despite the gross moments, composting with kids is worth it. As a way to reduce waste and save money, it’s a worthwhile skill in and of itself. It’s also a pathway into so many other lessons in ecology, food waste, and biological cycles.

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What We’ve Learned about Love in a Decade of Marriage

/ Shannon Brescher Shea / 1 Comment

What We've Learned about Love in a Decade of Marriage (Photo: Young white man and woman in sepia-tone standing in front of a giant wine barrel)

Looking up the aisle, I swallowed and blinked to hold back tears. There stood my husband-to-be, my best friend, the person I had spent the last five years of my young life loving. He seemed to be shaking just a little in his tux, his hazel eyes looking back at me.

Walking down the hallway in work today, I hummed Billy Joel’s “You’re My Home” to myself. “Wherever we’re together, that’s my home.” I thought of my husband’s smile and smiled back to myself.

On the day you get married, people say you have your whole life ahead of you. What they don’t tell you is that life is made up of a series of years, months and days, each with their own rhythm. Even though ten years sounds like a long time on your wedding day, it doesn’t feel that way when it rolls around.

Instead, it feels like a collection of the ordinary and extraordinary, the good and the bad, the hard and the easy, with both of you together at the center. At least that’s how it felt to me, when my husband, Chris, and I celebrated our tenth anniversary.

In that decade, Chris and I learned a lot about each other and marriage. We’ve been through hospital stays, international travel, crummy work hours, living in multiple places, graduate school, and having two kids.

Here are a few things we’ve picked up along the way:

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