Here are a couple Instagram snapshots from the week. Since my semester ended on Fiday, I’ve been soaking up time with my boys. Doing silly, delightful things like making marshmallows from scratch + lovely salt dough ornaments + playing with catch with the dog + reading stories to the boys.

Tonight night we are having a solstice gathering at our house. Potluck + lots of good friends + a big bonfire. I’m hoping to take a few pictures to share. I’m so looking forward to it, in spite that currently my house looks entirely less than presentable and I have yet to make anything other than said marshmallows (which are entirely questionable) to offer my guests. Sigh. Somehow it will all likely come together.

What are you doing for solstice?

{PS: thanks to everyone who supported Bethany! She is a light + an inspiration.}

Following is a guest post written by Bethany. Enjoy!

We are in Venice, a land of fairy-tale opulence—gondoliers and palaces, masks and museums—but we stop for the honeysuckle. My barefoot Texas days come flooding back in muscle memory as I show the girls how to ease out the stamen and catch the tiniest drop of nectar on our tongues. It tastes like July. Natalie and Sophie are enthralled; drinking from flowers is a purer magic to them than St. Mark’s Basilica would be, so we linger off the tourist path to pick summer, and this is it: motherhood, nostalgia, travel, joy, LIFE.

My mind delights in the details, so if I were to organize our yearly road trips around Europe, I would map out an agenda for every minute. I’d research the top recommended things to do in every city and the best routes to get there, and we would be such efficient travelers that we’d never even see the honeysuckle. We would never tumble out of the car beside an unnamed waterfall in Wales or splash the heat away at a neighborhood creek in Munich or collect wildflowers on a sleepy mountainside in Austria. We would end up with pristine vacation photos and impressive souvenirs, but we would miss out on so many of the spontaneous moments we now treasure as family memories.

And so I step back to make room for wonder. Perfectionism has always chipped away at my capacity for marvel, but my girls have more than enough to go around. They don’t need a brochure to show them how to appreciate a new city, the curve of an unfamiliar leaf, the way each mile of landscape shapes the sky. They simply greet life as it comes with their full array of senses and a penchant for adventure, and I—the perfectionist, the planner, the mother-student—gain far more than souvenirs in return.

I am currently raising funds through Kickstarter to spend the next five months writing a book based on our unconventional trips to help families reconcile the dream of European travel with the challenges of parenthood. Life is too short, too deep with possibility to keep deferring adventure until the children are older or the 401K is filled, and I’m thrilled to work on a project I believe so sincerely in. However, I can’t do it on my own, and with only eight days left to raise the funds, I’m asking for your help.

First, would you back my project? Even if you don’t have young children or have never dreamed of Paris, would you help make it possible for me to write a book I believe in with all my heart? A simple $10 pledge will help in meeting the goal while pre-ordering a copy of the book, so I’m asking—earnestly and gratefully—for you to give what you can.

Second, would you spread the word? Every new person who hears about this book increases the likelihood that my project will succeed, so would you share this post or the link to my Kickstarter site with everyone in your social networking circles?

Whether traveling or writing a book, the most convenient option is to do it alone. However, the richness of shared adventure trumps convenience. Always. Thank you in advance and from the bottom of my hopeful heart for being a part of this one with us.

And I tossed in a little creative challenge just for the fun of it. I’d love to hear what you discover.

Hello friends!

Thank you for holding this space for me. Your comments when I came back on line a few days ago made my heart smile so very wide.

It was spectacular to take time off from the online world. To write, and write, and write. To notice things at a different pace. To fall in love again with dictionaries, with the sound of quiet, with paint on my fingers and my jeans. To feel fully focused, fully here, with only this intention: To write well and daily. To pull chapters together into a symphony of moments. To make sketches of illustrations still to come.

Now I’m back online, back to school on Tuesday, back to the pell mell pace of things. This September is crazy busy. I’ll be contributing to a blog I love next week; finishing a piece for the fall/winter issue of Kinfolk (swoon!); finishing the illos for the book; prepping for a panel discussion on digital storytelling at the Burlington Literary Festival… and sort of holding my breath until it’s all over….

In October I’m planning some lovely (and really big) changes around here, and finally, finally the rewards for my dear enduring Kickstarter backers who have waited more than a year now for me to send these goodies out… And the interview series here that I’ve been wanting to launch for so long. Super goodness. So excited.

Between now and then, I have so many photos to share from the past two weeks, and so many small stories: About tooth fairies, and rainstorms, gallery openings, quick summer meals and the process of making illustrations for the book…

Now it’s your turn… Tell me: The 5 very best things that happened in the past two weeks. Go!