A Season for Everything

It seems summer will be ending soon whether I like it or not. I like summer. Sure it's hot, but with a god mix of a/c, sprinklers and pools it can be really fun. What I love most is the freedom of summer. I'm not on anyone else's schedule. Ryan is great at getting himself up and ready for whatever the day has in store and Lily has been sleeping until 9:30 some days. So I have been able to sleep in which is heavenly for me. Summer has been great.

Fall will bring a new season in my life in more ways than one. Of course it will cool off and the leaves will turn many beautiful colors. This fall will also mark a new season in motherhood for me. Lily will start preschool which means I will have regular and scheduled time alone. This is both exciting and hard for me. It will be hard to send my babies off to 3rd grade and preschool, but I'm excited to have time to do things like get groceries and run errands alone. It's the little things really;-)

I'm hoping to use my time so well that I'm able to do projects that have been waiting years for me. Maybe I'll get those scrapbooks I've been wanting to do done or reorganize the spare room so it's useful again. Maybe I'll even be able to keep my house clean enough to have visitors more often! Okay, so that's a pipe dream;-) If I can at least keep it clean enough so I don't feel guilty doing other projects that would be a major win for me. I have a list a mile long of things I want to do. I need to figure out a way to break it down so I don't feel overwhelmed and end up doing nothing.

And now I will leave you with these famous words adapted from Ecclesiastes 3...

"To everything
turn, turn,turn
there is a season
turn, turn, turn
and a time for every purpose under heaven." -The Byrds

Now it can be stuck in your head like it is in mine:-)

Time Out

My child cracks me up sometimes. I was at the table eating and I heard him stomping up the steps. "What's wrong?" I asked.
"I'm giving myself a time out."
"What happened?"
"I'll tell you later. I can't talk right now. I'm in time out."

Laptopless

It's not as sexy as it sounds---get it? lap top*less;-) Yeah, you're right, it's not that funny. Jay has my laptop again. He had it all last week because he was on a trip with the middle school ministry at church. He was supposed to be off work, but he had to log in and work a couple hours each day because his co-worker was sick. It's a good reason and I'm glad he was able to work it out and still go on his trip because it was a great trip for him.

Still, I really don't like not having my laptop. I don't know how people sit at desks all day. It's bad enough that I have to do all my photo editing at the desk, but now I have to do all my web surfing and e-mailing here, too. Blah. Plus I have a project where I have to transfer a bunch of information to a spread sheet. I actually may end up doing that on the desktop since it has 2 screens and that makes it easier to see the information I'm transferring, but I started it and got about 1/10th of the way through and had to stop for a while. I took a break from the desk and now here I am blogging from the desk...I guess that's not very responsible of me, huh? Well, I do have until September to do the project, so I think it will be okay;-)

So yeah, like I said, Jay has my laptop again because he is on his way to Michigan for a funeral and his co-worker is due to have a baby any day (like several people I know). Jay wants to be prepared to work just in case. Another really good reason. I'm really glad he is being so responsible and prepared, but I miss my laptop.

You may play the violins for me now. LOL

Woohoo, We Got Out of the House!

I have not been out of the house since Sunday and Lily has been cooped up since Friday. We like being home, but there is something about not being able to go out that makes a person a little stir crazy. So first thing this morning (for Lily at least- she didn't wake up until 10) we counted $3 out of the change jar for each kid and I took them to a surprise destination. Ryan came up with all kinds of guesses as to where we were going, so many I feared he was going to be disappointed with our destination. I was really only planning on taking them to 5 Below. I figured in a store full of stuff for less than $5 they were bound to find something that would be exciting for them. I'm glad I counted out the money before we left because I was tempted to give the each a few more dollars a couple times. Lily was so excited about so many things and Ryan really liked some of the $5 items. I did tell Ryan he could use a couple of his own dollars if he wanted something bigger. He is such a miser though, he wouldn't part with his money. As  matter of fact when we counted out the money this morning he asked me if they had to spend it. I told him he did. What kind of kid doesn't want to spend free money?! My kind I guess. He gets it from me. After all I'm the girl who didn't apply to Hopkins because it had a $50 application fee and I might not even get in. Ugh, I know. I realize now how silly it was. I really want to teach Ryan about value and using his money for things he values instead of squirreling it all away for no particular reason. It's funny the things you think about when you're a parent.
We went through the whole store. Lily found a necklace and bracelet pretty early on and though she saw some other things she liked nothing topped the necklace and bracelet. Ryan took a little longer to decide, that might have something to do with the extreme girlie-ness(is that a word?) of the first area we explored. He eventually found a soft, Nerf type sword that he could use to fight his brother since he has a similar one that came with his Playmobile knight set. Yep, that seems about right, dress up girlie stuff for Lily and weapons for Ryan. I was a little surprised he didn't want a USA soccer ball, but he does already have like 3 soccer balls and I'm sure he'll get another one when the fall season starts. All in all a successful outing.

update?

Why am I so bad at keeping my blog up to date? Maybe it's because I have too many blogs. Maybe it's because I don't have anything to say. Maybe it's because I don't make the time. Maybe it's because I spend too much time on the computer already. Maybe it's because Facebook requires less thought. Maybe. Yep, that's it- all of that.

We've had a good summer. The kids have been great at entertaining themselves when we're home and we've had enough stuff to do outside the house to keep a nice balance. It's a nice balance for me anyway. I like to keep the scales tipped a little more toward being home than some people. I like our house. It's comfortable. On a side note, our neighbors had a baby boy last week. His name is Ryan :-)
 
I'm really enjoying the summer pace. The kids sleep in, I sleep in. We go places if we want to, we stay home if we want to. It's good. I really liked our vacation a couple weeks ago when Jay got to join in our summer days. I really like that the vacation house was on the bay situated in such a way that I could get sunset silhouettes near the water. The kids really enjoyed the pool at the house. Ryan's swimming lessons really paid off. He was all over the pool. He's really excited to start camp next week. I suppose it's time for some structure to re-enter our lives. Luckily camp doesn't start until 10, so we still get to sleep in. I may end up having to wake Lily up though as she is still asleep right now and it's about the time we'd have to leave.
I'm really excited for Ryan. I think he's going to really enjoy camp.

Let's see, what else has been going on? We've made some decisions and our fall plans are not so up in the air anymore. That means I get to keep doing some activities at church that I wasn't sure about at the beginning of summer. That brings a lot of peace of mind.

I've had just about the right number of photography clients. Enough to keep me busy and bring in a bit of spending money, but not so many that I'm feeling like I've shorted my kids.

My garden is doing fairly well. I think I over planted it though. Next time I might just have to plant the vine plants in a different spot with a bigger, sturdier trellis.

I probably should have bulleted this post, but I wasn't really planning it that way. It just sort of happened. Consider it stream of consciousness.