Doing His Best

Dan and I are sick.  It means something when Dan admits he's sick.

I feel like crawling back into bed.

Despite this, my littlest one is doing his best to convince the world that babies are the coolest and we should have them around at all times.

If my day turns out like the last five minutes had been then it'll be great.

So Much Good

I see so much good in life and in people.

I see so much hate and anger in life and in people.

I see lessons being taught to my children and myself daily from every possible side.

My daughter was born six years ago this week.  

My son was born one year ago this week.

I've been thinking about them almost constantly and what I wish for them (all of them) so fervently with all my heart.

There are so many thoughts in my head they seem squeezed through my limited ability to put words to them.

Simply put, I wish for them to look to the good.  It is there.

There are so many good things for them out there in life for them to associate with and to build up.

There are sacrifices that they can make that will mean something to them and to those around them.

I feel that we become better people as we search out the good in the people that surround us.  

That right there, is the simple statement that motherhood has taught me.

I know I certainly become a better mother when I search out the good in my children.  I have never experienced a positive change that came from me bringing out the negative in anything.

Find the good in your life and go after it with all you've got.

Happy Birthday to Me

Yesterday was my birthday, or more commonly known in this house as six days before Charlotte's birthday.

I woke up at 5:45am to my cell phone ringing.  It was the school calling to tell me school was on a two hour delay and so none of my kids would have school that day.  And it was really cold and really windy and we'd be cooped up inside and did I just hear the baby wake up from the ringer I forgot to silence before going to bed last night?  Yeah, my birthday.

But I forgot to mention that even though I woke up at 5:45 my first thought after cursing the school for calling was, "hey, why can't my eye open? And why does it hurt so much?"  Eye infection city!  Not exactly pink eye so there isn't any meds to take, but annoying none the less.

So lets chalk all that on the bad side of the day, there were many good sides to the day too and here they are:

My two older children are sleeping in the bedroom in the basement (yeah!) so they didn't wake up early.

We did have pancake cake and I did blow out the candles (even if I did make the cake and light them myself.)

Charlotte consented to taking a bath with Lee in the morning.  They stayed in there for a half hour and all I had to do was just sit there.

I got to shower for as long as I wanted because I waited until after Lee was down for a nap.

My friend Mindy came over to my house and brought lunch with her which is ten times better than what I did for her because I never had to leave my house.  Did I mention that I had a hurty red eye?

Just as lunch was done Dan came home and to prove that he has a great sense of humor he had shaved some of his facial hair off leaving only a long scraggly soul patch with thin line mustache.  It made me laugh so I think he might keep it around for a few days before shaving it off.

Mindy, to further her greatness took Greg with her to play with her boys.

Then I napped.  And napped and napped some more while Dan entertained the baby and did the dishes and hung the curtains.

I spent some time with my neighbor just chatting.  I haven't talked to her for a while and it was nice to catch up.

When I came home I needed to figure out dinner.  Keep in mind that I was supposed to go grocery shopping Monday, but then it was snowy and gross and I hate the grocery store on the best of terms.  It wasn't happening.  So I knew I'd have to be creative.

And here is where the surprise birthday present from my mother-in-law comes from the back of my freezer.  I knew I had nothing in the pantry so I went to the freezer in my futile effort to find something.  Why is it that I always think some sort of inspiration will strike from the frozen hunks in there?  I'll tell you why.  Today I discovered hearty, delicious homemade meat sauce in there.  We ended up eating a delicious dinner and all I really had to do was heat up mix up and serve things.  Happy birthday to me.

Later we had some friends come over for cake!  Cake I didn't make, or clean up after or anything.  Mindy made me a brownie and peanut butter cup cake and it was delicious and I loved it.

So there is the whole of my birthday story this year.  Sorry no photos, but did I mention the eye infection?  No photos of that are needed.

Birthday Happiness

We create memories through traditions.  The small things at we do over and over again that imprint on our minds.  Hopefully, when they are effective, they help us to feel connected and loved.  Like that time my sister secretly drove from Colorado to Utah overnight so that I could have a pancake cake breakfast on my birthday.  There are many traditions and memories that I have of my birthdays growing up.  Like my mom singing me awake with so much excitment I knew, just knew, she was glad I was born and that I was hers.  This memory though was not a tradition, and might not even be from my birthday.  The strength of the memory isn't in the details.  They have faded away through the years with the ever changing tides about my life.  What is most important is how totally loved and important I felt that day.

I was in the third grade (I think) doing my school work when a knock on the door brought everyone's attention in that direction.  The door opened and in came someone carrying a white bear with a Mylar balloon tied to it.  It was for me.  My teacher let me keep in on the edge of my desk and my heart was filled with joy.  It made me know that my mom was thinking of me and thought enough of me to go out of her way for me.

Why do balloons fill a person with joy?  My kids love them too.  We currently have a Mylar balloon sadly, slowly loosing its helium the farther we get from Valentine's Day, but I can't bring myself to get rid of it because as each of the children happen on it they start to pull the string and play with it and the joy starts over again.  I hope that I can find things that mean as much to my kids.

Maybe I'm crazy

Shh...don't tell Dan, but I don't think my kids should be eating red meat.  Or processed meat for that matter.  Or really any meat.  As I'm thinking through this I revise my former statement.  I think it should be eaten sparingly, like on special occasions, but certainly shouldn't be the qualifier for the "real dinner" nights.  Do you have those nights too?  It doesn't feel like a real dinner unless some sort of meat dish is present?  Otherwise it feels like a collection of side dishes without a real purpose?  The side dishes look at one another on the table whispering, asking each other why they showed up so early and when will the real party start.

But here's what I've noticed.  My kids are happy having an apple, carrot sticks, cheese, and a banana for lunch.  They were fully satisfied with tonight's apple German Pancakes, and cottage cheese and pear in the shape of a mouse for dinner.

Also?  Meat is expensive!  Really expensive.  I would really like to find ways to not spend it on not eaten dinners that end up in the dog's bowl. Sorry Percie, but that chicken I made wasn't meant as a super nice food for you.

Probably I'm crazy and my kids are healthy and we are doing fine financially and why does this thought keep nagging at the back of my brain?  But maybe it's there because I should give it a try.

The biggest hurdle in all of this though is that I make meals for my family all day every day.  That's three meals and two snacks that need to be healthy and things they will eat every day.  That's 21 meals and 14 snacks in a week.  Coming up with that many things is hard.  So what do I do?  I do what I did before.  Turkey sandwiches and peanut butter and jelly and pot roast and mashed potatoes. There's nothing wrong with any of those foods, they just need to take a passenger seat.  I don't think ascribe to what feels like vilifying foods either. I love food in all it's many forms.  It's just that possibly (probably?) we've been eating a little too much of one form.

But I also want my husband and I to feel like we are eating a real, delicious, great mouthfeel type meal too.  I don't really like cooking things that aren't going to be appreciated and I don't like feeling like I'm eating "kid food" you know what I mean.

So then I look at all of those hurdles and my brain cramps up and all I can do is yell GAH! And nothing significant really changes.

But there you have it.  Those are my thoughts on the subject.

PS. The don't tell Dan part was totally a joke.  Of course I talk to him about this kind of stuff.

To Remember February

The Trauma Service is hard.  I'm glad there's only three weeks left.  It feels a bit like our family is hibernating and when trauma service is over it will be spring and then we can thaw physically and mentally and emotionally.  But February wasn't all permafrost.  So here are some photos to remember February by.

One of many walks at Quarry Hill.

Kanani (Charlotte's doll) had a birthday so we had a party.  This is the pinata.  Dad, not wanting to get hit with the stick held the pinata with some of his clamps.

Lee finally got big enough to fit into his camo pajamas.  The first night he wore them Daddy wore his shirt and they do blend together.

Another walk up Quarry Hill.

My hair was wet, but I still went along with it.  What we didn't know right then was that Lee's diaper was dirty too.  Let's just say yuck.

Greg's favorite thing to do at Quarry Hill.  There are angels all over the place  there.

Greg also loved eating the snow.

The kids loved this idea and Percie seemed to like it too!

You might miss it

I realized Wednesday that Lee likes books!  I hadn't really read him any up until now because he's a baby and my experience has shown me that its kind of ridiculous to try and read to someone that isn't interested and my babies haven't been very interested.  And he wasn't.  So I would look for times when he was napping to read to the others.  And then suddenly he likes books!  Mostly lift the flap books and mostly just one at a time, but books!

And then I noticed that he said Mama and he meant me.  I am mama and I will fix whatever is wrong and so he will come to me when things are wrong and I will fix them.  I love this time of life because I can fix them.  There are things that I can't fix for Greg and things that I can't fix for Charlotte, but for Lee the things he needs fixed I can fix.  If that doesn't make you feel like a million I don't know what would

Then today we were talking during breakfast and he looked over to his brother and said Geg.  I wouldn't have believed it if Charlotte and Greg hadn't heard it to, but they did and we all knew what he said.  Charlotte was hoping that he would say her name and then I had to break the sad news that her name is really hard for babies to pronounce.  He probably won't be saying Charlotte any time soon.

Yesterday he was playing in the drawers and cabinets of the kitchen, a favorite game of his.  I was trying to be patient with it and really wasn't.  He didn't care one way or the other.  He wasn't understanding, or maybe listening to me.  I picked him up and said, "give momma a kiss?"  He stopped squirming for the floor turned his head to me and opened his mouth wide.  The slobber all across my cheek was what I needed as a happy gift from a happy boy.  I set him back down and let him get after rearranging the kid dishes.  Again.

In like a lion

March is a magical month in our house.  We have a three scoop sundae of birthdays within 10 days and then Easter like the perfect cherry on top.  I finally got tired of answering the how many days till my birthday question and had Charlotte make a paper coutdown chain.  Now the question is did I already tear off a ring today?  Naturally after Charlotte got a chain Greg wanted one.  The wait until his birthday will be long and hard for him I suppose. Poor guy.  He still can't get over how Lee cut in front of him in the birthday line.  Dad in January, then Mom, then Charlotte and next should be him, but Lee cut and his birthday comes very last.   I can't wrap my mind around the fact that by Charlotte's birthday it will be spring.  Last year it was so warm we had her party outside.  Right now my kids have the beginnings of a killer snow fort in the front yard that the Pacific Northwest kid inside of me is so jealous of.  Then again it's supposed to rain on Saturday.  That's spring though right?  Snow and rain and sun and then possibly some more snow.

You know what else I love?  Dan and I went into Trader Joe's the other day.  This was a very rare occasion wherein we were wasting time before going to another resident's house for dinner and I made him stop over because I didn't want to be early.  I don't like to be late when someone else is providing a dinner, but I also find it equally flustering as a host when people show up unexpectedly early.  Turns out we needn't have worried, but that's beside the point.  I made us stop at Trader Joe's.  Right as we walk in the front door I smelled the fragrance of freshly cut flowers.  Oh how I love that smell.  It is heaven on earth I tell you and quite possibly the only reason anyone should need to get out there and garden.  I'm getting the itch to garden.  Unfortunately all of our "gardens" are covered over with rocks making it virtually impossible to get any gardening done.  I suppose this is probably
a good thing since we don't have the money to invest in a garden, but I did rebel last fall and poked some bulbs in the ground.  I'm not holding out much hope for them since there isn't really adequate levels of anything below the weed guard cloth I had to cut through.  Wouldn't it be so wonderful if some of them actually poked their little heads up for me though?  That's the kind of magic that March brings.

A post about mostly nothing

Sorry about the lack of posts lately.  It isn't the case of lack of topics in my head or lack of desire to update. It's more like lack of space carved out of my life to fit this in to.  This January was perhaps one of the best ever.  I feel safe to say it was the best since Dan started medical school and I attribute that entirely to a week in the Denver sun while my kids had a fun filled week with Grandma.  I came back refreshed to a household of happy people.  It was great.  Then we had the worst February.  It finally warmed up enough here to snow and snow it has.  Plus the last two weeks of February were spent sequestered in our house because of illness.  We caught a stomach virus that just never quit.  Every time I thought we were out of the woods someone else would come up to my pasty white and say they weren't feeling well.

But I'm optimistic now that I think that has passed.  Yesterday Greg and I had a rocket ship day with different rocket ship crafts and then learning about what Aunt Katie does.  We looked at NASA pictures and then at a few rocket launches and then two really cool animations of all the things the Orion space vehicle can do.  It is very cool.  The hardest part was to impress Greg with how big the rocket ships are.  When it is lifting off there is nothing in the background to show how big it is and how huge the blast is when it is ignited.  Oh well, I guess that will come later.

In other super huge news, Lee can walk.  He is funny and totally unique in this journey from my other two.  He is simultaneously getting better at walking and crawling.  He's sort of at the anything goes stage of moving.  Perhaps that is more like how other babies learn this task, but my other two were completely different.  Now that he's walking/crawling/climbing the stairs he has become the perfect undo-er.  Good gracious!  The milk, surely I didn't want that on the shelf in the fridge.  The recycling must look much better when scattered across the kitchen floor.  It is his personal mission to never let the dog food be inside of the bowl.  He must think Perci likes to eat it better when across the floor.  And the toilet paper.  Pretty sure that's all I need to say about that.

Today is a snow day.  We're projected to get 8-10 inches before noon.  School is cancelled.  Lets hope we can come up with some activities to enjoy the day.

A Little Bit Sleepy

So here's something weird about me, almost from the moment that I met Dan I started taking asleep pictures of him.  That's weird right?  Weird or not, it's the truth.  I sort of love having photos of him sleeping.  And its been a pleasure to see him sleeping while cuddling our babies.  Here's a small smattering of sleeping photos.

Last night I was listening to the sounds of my house sleeping which has become a common occurrence these days.  I was thinking about my propensity to photograph my husband asleep and my mind wandered to when I first dated and was engaged to him.  The funny thing (at least to me) was my complete inability to stay awake during that time. I'm serious about this inability.  I think it must have been my parents and his parents prayers answered.  We spent so very much time alone together and nothing happened.  Nothing.  And why was that?  Every time we did I was afflicted with narcolepsy.  I'm surprised that Dan never raised concerns about my health because I fell asleep everywhere all over the place.  Then I'd have to wake up and Dan would drive me home and somehow steer me to my bed.  At some point in the middle of the night I'd wake up uncomfortable because I was fully clothed beneath my sheets, shoes and all.  (Usually he did take my shoes off for me though.)  So I guess the tables have turned.  Now instead of me falling asleep everywhere it's him.  All over the place.

Because I Said I Would

For all of you hoping to get a photo of Charlotte riding her first bull here it is.  She loved that thing.  Luckily for her there was a very understanding high school youth running the machine and it went really slowly for a long time before she was thrown off.

Today we're home sick from church.  Charlotte has a cough which wouldn't normally keep us home from church, but when you combine that with the raccoon eyes that both she and her Daddy get when they're not feeling well and her propensity toward cough induced vomit I thought it would be better safe than sorry.

This means that Dan and Greg went to church alone.  And also that Dan will have to not only teach his Sunday School class to the adults, but my primary class of 4 year old boys.  At least we know he wont fall asleep!  What a great guy I've got.

Another post without photos!

Last night after the oldest child in the family finally fell asleep I decided that it would be fun for the kids to wake up to a room with hearts in it.  I envisioned tons of hearts, but then decided that they didn't need that many, but mostly that I didn't want to make that many.  So I cut them out and then sneaked (notice I didn't snuck because my grandma always says, "The only thing you snuck is snot." There see, some things do stick.) into their room and did acrobatics getting hearts at just the right places so they would see them right when they woke up.

Which reminds me about how when I was little I thought my Dad got me valentines every year.  Ha!  That was totally my mom and she never got credit.  Which ties into my story perfectly because the kids did wake up in the morning and they did discover the hearts! And it was a magical moment because they were thrilled by the hearts.  Then I hear Greg ask Charlotte, "Who made them?"  And Charlotte, with the confidence and authority that only comes from being the oldest says, "The Valentine's Day Fairies."  Which is totally enough proof for Greg and so the morning was made even more magical by the magical visit from the night before and I just couldn't take that magic away because today is about love and I love that they can see magic in everything.  So I do the work and the fairies get the credit, but that's ok because I'm Mom and that's how I show them I love them.

So after discovering all the hearts from the fairies we go to the kitchen and discover candies and notes that Daddy has left for us to tell us how much he loves each of us individually and the happiness in our house sort of bursts forth and splashes over everything.

Did you know that I never really understood Valentine's Day?  If you love someone then you shouldn't wait to tell them.  They should already know.  But today I totally get it.  Today we took extra time to tell each other we loved each other and basked in the happiness and goodwill that it produced.  So here's hoping that the Valentine's Day Fairies make it to your house too.

Best Commercial Ever

This evening I gave Lee a bath by himself.  As a third child that is actually pretty rare.  Or maybe I'm weird, but at any rate the baby by himself in the tub is rare.  So there he is moving around nearly drowning himself trying to reach the faucet and then flopping down on his back and nearly drowning the rest of the bathroom as he joyously kicks his legs in the water.  It reminded me of all the baby baths for Charlotte and then for Greg.

Did you know that we went back to school shopping for the kids over the weekend.  My sister reminded me that the after Christmas, end of season combination makes for some pretty great deals on clothing.  So I forced Dan to come with us on his one day actually off in a month (and I am not even exaggerating there) to go shopping with me.  He is actually quite a good shopper, I think it must have to do with all his experience looking through fabric and yarn shops growing up. At any rate, he went, and it was a good thing too because he is so good at keeping me within reason.  You see my way to avoid overspending is to never go in a store that I like things in if I can avoid it.  Once in the store I have a very hard time saying no to anything.

So anyway, back to the bath.  There is my baby flopping and splashing around the tub and I'm folding size 7 and 5 clothing.  My babies!  On the one hand, I love who they have become.  They get to be so much more interesting every day.  Charlotte and I can talk about topics other than sparkles and she understands so much about human emotions and Greg has gone well beyond simple facts (although he can tell you many facts about monster trucks and animals) to relationships between them.

But seeing my baby just reminds me of how much I loved them as babies.  I do miss it.  And strangely, part of me already misses Lee's baby time.  Pretty soon he'll decide that walking and running and talking are more interesting and then where will we be?  Oh, we'll be in love so I can't worry too much I suppose.

It all makes me realize how hard it is that grandmas have to live so far from their grandchildren.  Grandpas too I'm sure, but as I'm a mother I can only speak from my view.  You're done having babies, and you wait and wait and then when the grand babies come they're miles and miles away.

Which brings me to my point.  Ha!  You thought I didn't have one, but I do!  And here it is!  Tonight Charlotte, Greg, Lee and I were watching AFV and the win a free Disney Cruise portion of the show came on.  Charlotte said, "I wish we could just go on that.  I don't want to have to win it or anything I just want to go."  So that's an idea *wink wink*

Monday Morning Moments

It snowed a bit again last night.  It was also 7 degrees this morning.  Both of those combined made for a beautiful sunrise.  Charlotte said that the snow looked like "God's glitter" the other day and she was certainly right about that this morning.

Then I got grumpy because I had to go out and shovel the glitter.  That is not fun.  While trying to keep myself in a good mood I decided to think of positive thoughts about living in the upper mid-west.  That led me to think of the other day at bounce world.

Bounce world is an indoor play area with tons of those blow up bounce house things inside.  It also contains a lot of blow up slides, a mechanical bull (I have pictures I'll put up of Charlotte on that thing soon) and face painting.  One of the activities set up was a miniature football goal with nerf footballs and a stand to set them on so you can kick a field goal.  Greg wanted to give it a try, but sadly, and perhaps embarassingly, I couldn't remember how to put the ball on the stand so as to kick it.  I say embarassing because if you knew my dad you would know that I really should have paid a bit more attention to him growing up.  Anyway, I looked around and saw a dad there with three of his own kids.  I interrupted the fun he was having with them to ask him how the stand thing works.  Not only did he stop what he was doing to show me how it worked, he took a few minutes to "coach" Greg on how you should kick the ball.  It was amazing and I thought to myself that right there is why I love living here.

So there you have it, we have glittery snow (which by the way was so cold that the sidewalk underneath the snow was completely dry while I was shoveling it) and complete strangers willing to stop and help out.

Happy Monday.

Unexpectedly clever

This was too good to forget.  Today at lunch I had the kids finish off stale bag of Doritos.  Needless to say they were mostly crumbs or parts of chips.  Greg found one that was a significant triangle.  He said, "Mom!  This is a rocket going to the moon!  Do you know what kind of rocket it is?"  I said , "Challenger." He said, "No! It's a rocket chip!"

Pretty funny to have come up with it on his own.

Pardon The Mess

If I'm working on something, and I mean something I really care about, I don't usually want to show anyone until its done.  They don't need to see the unpicked seams, the cracks in the drywall, or the un-frosted cinnamon rolls (unless, of course, that's how you like them, then you're crazy because frosting on cinnamon rolls is a must, but if you insist you can have yours un-frosted if you like.)  I much prefer the before and after shot type reveals in my life and judging by anything HGTV puts out most people enjoy that much more too.

Only, here's the thing, my life is continually a long process of change.  My biggest, and most valuable projects are me and my kids and those projects are constantly on display for everyone to see.  And they will be.  Forever.  Remember that time I went out of the house wearing exactly what I wore to bed the night before and a hat over my hair?  Oh yeah, that was this morning.  Everyone sees when I loose my temper and react poorly, they see when I show lack of wisdom or understanding and they see when my children require more from me than my particular skill set.

I'm not trying to disparage myself here.  I'm sure that everyone else also sees the sparkling successes too.  The best dressed Sunday with hair done and the time my kids stick up for what is right.  That is observed too.  It's just that sometimes I wish I had a sign I could hang up next to me or my kids in particular situations that said, "Pardon The Mess, We're A Work In Progress."

Because aren't we all?

What is a potato?

While in Denver I got to watch Jeopardy every night.  And also Wheel of Fortune.  Dan and I used to watch Wheel of Fortune every night, that is until kids bedtime got in the way.  As I'm sure all of you, my dear readers know, one of the recent answers on Jeopardy was about a root vegetable with an almost black skin and purple center.  The question being what is a potato.  The ear doctor got that one right.  Tonight I decided to make dinner in honor of that question:

Did you know that when you boil these the water turns green?  Neither did I, but it was a fun sort of surprise.  It felt a lot like when you do the acid/base experiment with red cabbage in elementary school.  You know, the one where the cabbage water turns different colors at different pH?  Am I the only one that remembers doing that?  Well, it was cool and everyone should remember that one.

I tried to take some photos of my sister and her little cutie.  I'm pretty much horrible at this sort of thing, but I did like these two:

Too bad the first was was so washed out.

Do you see that her little guy is totally smiling up at her?  I don't often have the right timing to get something like that.

Also I thought you might like to see some of the things Lee is now doing.  Standing by himself:

On vacation he really liked getting into Aunt Katie's cupboards.

 And playing with Roscoe.

 Who tolerated him because he was feeding the dog all the time.  I couldn't get him to stop.  Or leave the dog alone. 

 We went on walks.

 And ate at restaurants. Oh how I love eating at restaurants!  It is my dream.  It makes me feel a lot like Fancy Nancy, or Eloise.  Probably Eloise.

 We watched a sheep sheering at the Stock Show.

 And played a bit with some of the wool.

 But mostly he just loved Aunt Katie's cupboards.

 Oh!  And did I mention we loved eating out?

Probably I should have staggered the photos into a couple of posts, but it seems that is something I need to work at.  We had such a great time.

A Swampy Mess

I didn't clean up like I should have before Christmas.  We traditionally do an old toy roundup and send them to The Goodwill.  It didn't happen.

Then it was Christmas.

Then we left for Great Grandma's house.

Then was the post vacation clean up.

Then I left for Denver.

When I came home fromDenver I realized that I had let the toys sort of take over everything.  They mate I'm sure of it.  When my back is turned my little ponies and automoblox are getting together and creating....what, I don't know, but they must be having babies and I've got a fourth generation infestation around here.  Trying to make it from the door of the three kids' bedroom to the crib in the middle of the night was a torture of sharp edges and mysterious goo.  Last night I realized I was wading through a swamp of toy quicksand and I was going to be pulled under.

That is how I can explain the crazy behavior of today.  I cleared out the kids' room.  Completely.  There was not a single toy, necklace, or scrap of garbage in there.  And, because when I meet my tipping point moderation isn't even I my vocabulary, I also went through the mountain of books and sorted clothing to pack up into the attic.

Only here's the problem with doing everything in a day.  Yes, their room is spotless, but now my basement is over run with toys that I have to sort and find homes for.  Also my bedroom has piles of too small for them clothing.  But my body is telling me to stop.  That's it for today.  I think I might just have to carry the crazy over into tomorrow.

Windows and Mirrors

Isn't it strange how things seem to never change and it feels like sometimes they will never change and life will always be exactly like it is today?  I will always be wearing spit-up, I will always be young and in love, I will always be getting up in the middle of the night.  Then you wake up the next day and everything seems to have changed.  A slight shift of light and dark and suddenly what was hidden from my eyes and mind seems so clear or clearer anyway and I realize that perhaps things haven't been the same at all, they've been quietly changing and I just never noticed.

My life isn't counted by the calendar year.  New Year's hasn't traditionally given me any meaning.  I don't think its counted by my birthday either.  Don't get me wrong, I love my birthday, but it doesn't signify any meaningful change in my life.  You know what does signify change?  The school year.  I've kept track of my life, and then my married life, and then my family life each year beginning in September and ending in August.

This school year has been one of realizations so far.  Realizations about myself, about my husband, my marriage, my children (always I'm learning about my children).  I started this school year wondering what I was missing, because I knew I was missing something.  I couldn't figure out what it was.  I was obsessed with what trying to figure out the source of that feeling.  That was in the shadows, but I knew something was missing.  Unfortunately I still don't have a concrete answer to what that missing thing was.  I feel like the shadows seem to be moving so slowly, like when I would sit in my red carpeted front room as a child and watch the dust move between light and dark and the sun never, never moved.  The light seems to be moving slowly, but I've come to the realization that I don't need to know.  I need to be searching and in that search I just might find something of value to me.

Like finding peace within myself.  And joy in my children.  And rediscovering all the emotions in my marriage.  (How do you even name those emotions?  If you can then you're better than I.)  So what's the point of this post?  I don't know, all I know is that coming home from vacation, with a pep in my step, and love in my heart my home hasn't changed one bit, except for it totally has and I'm excited by the new vista.

Oh the zero

When Dan and I were first married I sat down with pen and paper to write out a projected monthly and yearly budget.  Well, actually many pens because nothing makes a budget more impressive, more meaningful and thus more easily attained than different sparkly colors.  After I was done I was heartbroken because there was absolutely no way we would be able to make it. WE WERE DOOMED!  I worried and fretted about it over the course of a few days until I finally sought help.

My mistake was discovered embarrassingly quickly and it came in the form of an extra zero tacked on the end of our textbook allotment increasing it by a factor of ten.  I went back relieved and dejected and jotted down a correct version of our budget with pencil and paper and that ugly thing was what we operated under for the remainder of our undergraduate studies.

Jump forward to last week.  So here is something else embarrassing, since I had Lee doing the budget just never happened.  Yikes, I know.  That's why when the kids and I got back from Grandma's house I sat down with Dan's new iPad and made us a handly little budget.  I used mint.com and that program is amazing.  It is almost as wonderful as multiple sparkly pens.  Our new budget is a thing of beauty with pie charts and bar graphs and everything.  I was so excited that now I could easily show Dan where we've been spending and our budget and he could be involved.  Then I stressed for four days straight.  No matter what I did we would be short each month.  I couldn't bridge the gap.  At one moment I decided not to tell Dan the next he needed to know.  I finally told him and when he got around to looking at the thing my mistake became apparent.  I had flipped an 8 and a 0 in our mortgage payment.  Oh you zero!  You always make a fool of me!  We are still tight on the budget, but at least we won't have to drink powdered milk.  That stuff is gross.