Not Much of Anything?

I was about to write that last week was a whole bunch of nothin'.  But then I looked at the photos and realized that by nothin', I was remembering how I hadn't combed anyone's hair or even insisted that people wear pants or use utensils.  Sometimes it's nice to have a break from things like that.  Enjoying having my kids home!  Here goes our scraggly week in photos. :)

Some gardening and weeding action (desperately needed!) and some strawberry picking and spontaneous jam making (SO good!).

 Lots of sleeping in and snuggling.

 My girls made cupcakes on their own.  I found this little boy cleaning up the leftovers (oops)-- he told me, "Mom, I'm just wickin' it!"

 So much bike riding that this little girl has been wearing her bike helmet to dinner.  And the aforementioned no utensils.

 Some band camp (a sibling shot).  Maybe jr. high isn't going to be as bad as I thought-- it's been fun getting him ready.

 Someone doesn't want to feel left out on the band action.

 This one still adjusting to having sibs home all day.  Mostly good, but sometimes frustrating.

 Not happy that I wanted to take another picture.  I just had to get the snow boots/swimsuit/underwear combo.

 No utensils or hair combed or pants.  Again.

 Sleeping out in the back yard in the tent we gave to my hubby four years ago for Father's Day-- just using it for the first time.

Father's Day dinner-- since we hadn't used utensils all week and since I don't cook roasts hardly ever anymore, I was proud of myself and had to take a photo.  We had a great Father's Day-- pampered my husband (I think he enjoyed himself) and visited my dad, too!  So nice to go five minutes away and then come home and put the kids to bed!

Sorry I've been so neglectful.  So busy for some reason!   I hope you are having a wonderful summer so far!

back tomorrow

:)

Moab Part One

 

(this from the end of the hike) ^^

Some photos of our hike to Delicate Arch.  I was really proud of the kids-- I thought this was a pretty difficult hike and they were troopers, including little Miss M., who woke up with a lot of ear pain (no instacare or docs available on a Saturday, I tried several), but seemed okay once she was on some Motrin.  Looking back at these photos, she was not fine!  She looks miserable to me.  The hike was sure beautiful and memorable, on several fronts!  There are some pretty big drop-offs near the top, which didn't worry me with my older kids, but did with the youngest two (because they still like to bolt at unexpected times) :).  I made my husband promise to hold that little boy the entire time-- he thought I was a little crazy, but I don't care.  Protective or over-protective?

If you like travel, check out my sister's blog.  She has been pretty much everywhere and I'm jealous.  But I can live vicariously through her blog, right?  It's called A Hat of Sky (based on a poem by my favorite modern poet, Billy Collins (whose work she introduced me to!  So gorgeous.  Something to aspire to).

Happy Father's Day weekend everyone!  

Rocky Mountain Horror Show

(I found this sight after climbing out of a ten minute shower one day....hard to see, but a little girl had snipped her hair-- evidence at the bottom of the photo, and a little boy had gotten into my makeup, including sticking his whole hand into the Vaseline jar....but it got worse....a few days ago, I emerged to find Vaseline everywhere, all over the carpet, and laundry strewn across the room-- the work of a few minutes!  I'm still learning you see :) )  Good thing they are so adorable!  And I'm thankful its a sign they have a healthy dose of curiosity and energy!

We've had one of those weeks.  Not a bad week, per se, but a very interesting one.  It has been so fun having the kids home from school, and we've had a couple of adventures so far (on Monday, we went to Epic, and on Tuesday, we went to a reading thing at the library with a friend).

But laced among the adventures have been some, well, adventures.  Adventures with bodily fluids, mostly.  I have two kids with sinus infections, who have been coughing so hard they throw up.  One of them, in the car on the way to the doctor's office, in his cupped hands.  I was summoned to the bedroom of an entirely different child in the middle of the night to clean sheets and carpet from another such accident.  An hour of cleaning later (and multiple dry heaves suppressed), I went to bed, not thinking much of it, only to witness her have a similar accident all across the kitchen floor first thing this morning (sorry this is so graphic).  When a four year old recognizes she is having the urge to throw up, there is no running to the bathroom, it is happening NOW.  Poor girl.  She keeps asking me how she can make her tummy feel better.   Aw, so sad that the revelation there is nothing to be done for stomach bugs comes so young.  A different child has started getting sudden bloody noses in the night.  Since she lives on the top bunk it is also hard to get to the bathroom, so her bed cover and sheets looked like WWIII.  She slept with half a roll of toilet paper, all balled up, as a preventative measure last night.

Crazy Funny Girl

This little girl cracks me up.  She really keeps life interesting.  I either feel like giving her a bear hug or strangling her, and it varies from one minute to the next.  She is like a little loaded spring, full of energy.  On this day it was her idea to put on the goggles (which she did herself, as you can see).  The light was so beautiful and she was so cute that I ran and grabbed my camera, sure that I'd probably already missed the moment.

Here are some funny things she has said lately:

1)  In a hot car: "It's sweatin' hot in here!"
2)  Eye level with a watermelon in the store, her chin resting dreamily on her arms: "It feels like I'm in love."
3)  "Mom, can we buy that smell?"  (upon entering the grocery store, she meant for me to buy whatever was making that smell)

Even though she is going through a fairly severe separation anxiety stage and tries to sneak sugary goods from the pantry all day, I wouldn't trade her for anything.

 Preparing to take the plunge.

 We recently made a trip to Southern Utah-- it was gorgeous.  I think we got there right before the real summer heatwave.  I have more photos to share another day, here are just a few.

My husband told everyone to "pretend that you're hot and tired!"  After which Ava said, dumbfounded, "why would I want to pretend that?"  "I AM hot and tired!"  Now that I see this photo it is even more funny.

One more funny thing, just for good measure: the little boy, who is still nursing, exhaled a happy sigh afterward nursing one day and told me "that's a good drink!"  Lol. :)

Happy Monday!

P.S.  One thing I'm working on this month is patience.  Normally,  patience is not something I struggle with.  But I've had a hard time with it the last couple of months, especially as the strain of my anxious little girl has frayed my nerves and put extra pressure on me at most waking minutes of my day (not only does she panic over any type of physical separation, even as small as my going to the grocery store, but she wants me to be with her wherever she is in the house, including bathroom trips and small incidental times like that....sometimes she follows me around so closely that she bumps into me if I stop).  I know she'll grow out of it, I just need to be patient!  I'm trying to pause a little and take, if nothing else, a mental deep breath.  Update: 12/31/13: the separation anxiety phase didn't last much longer after I posted this, both of us going back to our more normal selves.

Moving On

This boy just graduated from elementary school!  I am so proud of him.  I couldn't ask for a nicer kid.  He has been such a joy.

When we dropped him off at kindergarten for the first time, I surprised myself by bursting into tears.  A seasoned mom standing close by looked at me like I was crazy.  I thought maybe I was, as I wiped my wet cheeks and tried to pull myself together.  I thought I'd probably get over it some day too, and stand there like the rock she was.  But the first couple of years were still a little rough.  Every time I dropped him off, my heart would do a little number.  (it seems like forever before your little ones go to school, but once they get there, you think where did the time go?  Then it just goes faster and faster)  I had a good cry when I sent him off to first grade, too.  The last few years, though, have been a blur.  I got into a routine and sending him off to school was just part of it (unfortunately, my last parting words, to help him make it to the bus, are "RUN!" and then a "love you!").  And honestly, even though this is the end of an era, I am so proud of who he is becoming (he was always wonderful!  it is fun to see how he is progressing).  His teacher has said he has been such a joy for her to teach that she would just love to take him home with her (so thankful for good teachers! and she is just awesome).  On this day we got to sit on the grass slurping watermelon and crunching conversation between our chips at the 6th grade grad luncheon-- laughing about how some kids in his grade anonymously invited the local cop (she is young and blonde after all) to get a "couples pass" to the local trampoline park, or one who posted a tiny note with a ring drawn on it and two boxes marked "yes" or "no."  

So thankful for him, even though I'll always miss my little boy, I wouldn't trade who he is today for anything!   Such a privilege to watch him grow.

Memories.  Ah.

Had a little mishap with a jutting rock on our school clothes shopping trip a couple of days before the start of school.  My hubby teased him, calling him "geyser" for a while because he was looking back to see if a fountain was going to spout water when he ran into the rock.

Comparison is the Thief of Joy: Generational Edition

 Do you ever compare yourself with some mythic ancestor, whom you imagine scrubbing floors on hands and knees while making jam and nursing a baby at the same time?  Ok, not that particular combination, but do you ever compare yourself to women of the past?  Wonder how they managed to cook, clean, scrub the whole family's laundry by hand on some knobbly washboard?  Do you picture them doing it in a beautiful home sewn dress that perfectly accentuates a trim popsicle waist?  With bright red lipstick and perfectly curled hair and a sweet expression on face and issuing from her lips toward her angel children?  Maybe I'm crazy, but sometimes I do.  When we are having pizza, again.  When I'm in my pj's at noon.  When

I beat myself up a bit then.  I compare myself and I see myself waaaaaay short of that ideal.  And then I label myself with unkind words like lazy, inefficient, incompetent, poor disciplinarian, .  Maybe not outright, but under there, that is what I'm thinking.

One thing that doesn't contribute to my worthless feelings at this point is that I had ancestors who were Mayflower emigrants and others who were Mormon pioneers.  So not only are they so beautiful and fabulous and perfect, they were tough.  Doing it all in the desert with a million children and no air conditioning. 

So, the first question is....is it really true?  Did women in the past "do it all?"  The short answer is: no.  Absolutely not!

When I'm having a particularly "what-did-I-just-do-today" sort of day, I try to brainstorm ways that this generation, this particular one, has it harder than the ones that have passed.

1.  No internet.

2.  No devices.

3.  Papers.  Darn papers.

4.  Boxes, bags, packaging, oh my.

5.  Floods of cheap toys, stickers,

6.  Shuttling/taxi driving.

7.  Far away family. (husband helps)

8.  Larger homes.

9.  More comfortable way of life, more fun-centric, entitled rising generation.

10.  Junk mail.

11.  Modern news. (afraid of all that can happen)

12.  Empty neighborhoods and inside kids.  (if there is no one else playing outside, or riding his/her bike to "x"  Less cooperation and watching out for each other.

13.  Danger of cars.

Pros:  modern medicine (yet, advent of well-check and preventative screenings), time saving devices (yet we tend to still clean as much, we just buy more and clean more things in total, so its not always a time saver),