Time Never Slows Down

Posted by OfWoodandEarth August 23, 2026

Time Never Slows Down

I always delude myself into thinking that I just have to "get through this", and then things will "slow down". They never do. Whether it's my own fault for always finding something to do or simply life...I haven't quite figured that out yet. I have a feeling the answer changes depending on who you talk to.

(6 month comparisons)

July started out with our traditional tie-dying of shirts! I always try and look up "simple" patterns to try, and use clothing die in food squirt/poor bottles to make the tie. (Thanks, Mrs. Tasha for the picture!)

This year we did 2 TBS tie, 1/2 tsp salt, 1 squirt of dish soap dissolved in warmish hot water, and it worked really well. The colors came out vibrant and stayed that way. After letting them sit in ziplock bags for 24 hours, I rinsed them in cold water until the colors didn't bleed anymore. THEN we washed them. I can't remember if I actually dried them in the dryer or let them air dry.

I was actually disappointed by how light three of the shirts turned out, so I did my best to refold and re-die them. I was very pleased with how they came out the second time!

Having already seen fireworks once the week before, we finished off with fireworks at the lake on Saturday and fireworks at CCs house on Sunday. It was a lot of fun as always!

That week we had time for me to make blackberry jelly...

And Rylee to catch poison ivy on her face. She also managed to catch a really large fish from our pond!

We think it's probably about the same size as the one William recently caught.

While she and Will were fishing, Sam and I were fixing the dock to the duck coop. It had sunk it the water, so Sam let out some of the water that had leaked in to balance it back out. While helping him, I ended up falling in and bruising up a massive spot on my leg. It was pretty painful!

We spent the next 3 or 4 days in a row at Nene's house helping process corn. I think it was 780 ears or 13 bushels of corn that we ended up processing! We all split the cost and divided up the corn.

The kids had a fun time learning how to shuck corn! And I made a super sweet video of them helping that you can watch here. If you want to see a cute video of Mena learning to shuck, listen to her little voice here. They are so sweet and make my Momma heart warm. This is the life I want for my kids. I have to keep reminding myself when life gets busy or I feel like I'm not doing enough for them. They are learning a lot and spending a lot of time with their family.

I believe it was also that week that my sample from Barnes and Noble FINALLY came in (I had been hoping to get it in by June 13th just to put this into perspective for you). I had a *slight* problem. The pages on the left are from LuLu printing...$21/book. The pages on the right are from Barnes and Noble...$12/book. More affordable BUT the paper is matte finish, not glossy. Not sure if you can tell from this photo, but it looked like my book had been printed from a glorified home printer. I didn't like it AT ALL.

In the newer B&N draft (right), I decreased the size of the letters, and I think it looks a lot better!

I also made some modifications to the front cover. Mainly, I moved the names up so they weren't falling off the page.

I went ahead and emailed it to my contact at New Hope Publications in New Hope, Kentucky. I wanted to see what she thought, show her what versions I have, and ask if she knew anyone who could print my stuff. Spoiler, New Hope Publications has an in-house printer! Check back in for the next blog post to get an update there (or follow my author Facebook page...Facebook.com/booksbyvictoriaburns.

The following week, we had vacation bible school at church. I *of course* signed up to be the scientist to help the kids become more familiar with Natural Revelation--where we learn about God through learning about the world around us. My personal favorite.

I had the best-est husband who helped me decorate my school room to look like a jungle (our theme was Rainbow Falls Rainforest).

(I had another great helper!)

I had a lot of fun trying to make it fun for the kids! Sam helped me move my trees to church, and I stuck them right outside the door so the kids had to walk under tropical trees to get into the classroom (a fig and an avocado tree). I played rainforest ambient sounds on my computer and even wore my lab coat!

The first day one of the experiments involved mushing up spinach into rubbing alcohol so we could shine a UV light at chlorophyll. Did YOU know that chlorophyll fluoresces red under UV light? I won't bore you with the science, but it does! We compared this to just food color in water to try and show kids that plants are alive just like us. Nothing happens when you shine the light at the water, but cool stuff happens under the UV light as the plants "eat" sunshine.

I can't remember what the second day was about, but I do know that I tried to make it EXTRA special for the kids. I brought in every microscope I had in my house and put slides up of a sunflower stem, a bug leg, and even put a lava rock under a microscope for the kids to look at more closely. We took one of the cool camera/microscopes that Rylee got for her birthday and put it on a pineapple leaf (in the same pot as my avocado) so they could see the absorbing trichomes. I even printed out a picture of absorbing trichomes from pineapple leaves that I took during my undergrad with a SUPER FANCY microscope. The kids had a great time looking at everything!

PS. Look how cute Luke is holding his eye shut to try and see in the microscope, haha.

Day three was SUPER FUN. I drew terrible pictures on the white board so we could talk with the kids about how animals all have their safe space and in the jungle, their safe spaces could be in different places (e.g the forest floor, understory, canopy, and emergent layer). To visualize how all the different layers are inside the rain forest, the kids had to blow a bubble within a bubble within a bubble within a bubble! It was so much fun! And really hard!

The recipe to make these fun bubbles is 8oz warm water, 1 tbsp of sugar, 2 tbsp of dish soap. Mix everything well. Pre-coat your dish by rubbing it onto the dish with your finger, then dip your straw in and blow the first bubble. Dip the straw again, gently punch through the bubble and blow again. Repeat as many times as you are able. It's tricky! But fun!

The very next weekend, mom, Hazel, and I drove to Louisville for a writing conference. I had submitted my manuscript to a really wonderful agent named Cherry, and she and I were going to connect at the conference. She had some edits to give me, and she wanted to talk with me about the main issue she had with my book.

Her main issue was that my adult fantasy book is written in multiple POVs, eight to be exact (because I'm an over achiever)--and all from first person. She said she couldn't do more than 1 first person POV and I would either have to re-write the entire book into 3rd person OR, keep the main character in first person and make the rest of the book in 3rd. Given that my novel follows four main story arcs, I do agree that I could downsize to four POVs, Even if I were to rewrite everything, there's still no guarantee that she would take me on as a client. So I could rewrite the entire book (and a half) for *nothing*. Which, it wouldn't be nothing if it improved the book, BUT I still believe first person is the best way for me to tell the story. I'm not sold on changing the whole book. So for now, I am taking all the advice that I gained in the classes I took at the conference, and I'm going to spend the next year or two MAJOR/SERIOUS editing. I'm not going to go into detail about everything I learned in the conference...but let's just say I currently have a 30+ steps to success to-do list. In the meantime, I'm focusing on GravissiMum and still just writing on Song of Souls whenever I have the time/the desire to write strikes.

Father Edwin went out to eat with Sam and the kids while we were gone!

And Daddy took the kids on a hike (such a good, brave Daddy!) to Shakervillage to play in the creek.

(Hazel, mom, and I had a nice little "vacation" where Pippa was forced to sit still and do nothing for a couple days. She ended up watching Pirates of the Caribbean on TV, resting, and doing a lot of people watching. What we didn't think about was we had to check out of the hotel room at 11am, and the conference didn't end until 6pm. So mom and Hazel hung out in the lobby and made friends with EVERYBODY. Seriously, best way in and out of every conversation. She's always a hit at conferences because she's so cute and smiley!

The rest of the month flew by with:

mothing experiments for William. You put a white cloth outside and shine a light on it to see what cool bugs will show up. We didn't see a lot, but we did see a Stinkfly/ Lacewing fly.

And I got a cool picture of this little dude.

We went swimming some more at Nenes.

The kids and I picked Queen Anne's Lace flowers to make jelly. And found a fall flowering variety of honeysuckle. (The first batch went bad before I could use it because of the 127 yardsale).

Daddy dug a flat spot in our front-ish field to make a raised bed garden. We spent the afternoon flattening it and removing rocks. I was pooped afterwards (it was also crazy hot).

Sam has also been working on the backhoe some more. In this instance, he was trying to break the clutch free....I think.... So he basically just drove it around a bunch and on bumpy ground to try and break the rust.

William found tadpoles in the old cow water trough we have in the front yard, so we are now 20+ tadpole owners. (If you've been following along on Facebook, you know that Quatro was our first four legged tadpole. I have a video of him as a frog coming soon).

And I spent about half a week getting everything out of the attic to price for the 127 yardsale. I sometimes bundle multiple pieces of clothes together on one hanger, so I always presort by size and gender, pin and price, then re-sort everything according to size and gender and rubber band it all together. I ended up with over 200 hangers.

I made fried apple cookies, and they were amazing! I just made normal sugar cookies (with a smidge of nutmeg and cinnamon in them), punched a small divot in them as soon as they came out of the oven, then fried up some super tiny apples and spooned them into the cookies. So good.

And we finally took pity on the poor ducks and tried to cover up all the mud (from all the floods) with like three packages of wood chips. The ducks look so much happier now, even if they are skittish.

And finally, William ended up with a really gross infection on his face called Impetigo. Long story short, he got poison ivy on his face, and then it turned into a crusty mess. Sam also had poison ivy for like 3 weeks on the same leg (and it was super gross and also crusty). Apparently, both of them got staph infections from scratching so much. So William had to be put on some cream (thank you to our friend Tyler for being the best help ever!). It thankfully cleared his face in just 4 or 5 days because it looked so bad. I think this was actually around the time of vacation bible school, so I probably should have mentioned it earlier in this story, but oh well. And now we (and you) know what Impetigo looks like!

As always, some random cute pictures of the kids!

After one of the floods (this month or last), I made a leaf crown for the kids to try on!

Rylee drew this ADORABLE little ballet dancer. She said she was really proud of the nose because she'd never drawn a nose that way before.

And one morning the children decided they wanted to know how many honey wheat Cheerios they could stick to Hazel's forehead to turn her into a princess (they thought it looked like a crown).