Seven Quick Takes

 

~1~

We spent yesterday morning driving around to more garage sales than we've ever managed in a single morning. At several I collected comments in the vein of "those poor little boys being dragged around to all the garage sales . . ."

The funny thing? Ender actually spent the last few days counting down to the first big garage sale-ing day of the season and every morning asked me if it was the Thursday yet.

So far we have scored some books, 2 new table cloths, some vintage buttons, and a cabinet that I'm planning to use for my sewing things.

~2~

I'm in a crafting slump. I can't seem to get up the motivation to finish up the last details on a few projects and nothing has jumped out and said "make me!!!" I went hunting through my ravelry queue and landed on the Tappan Zee cardigan and cast on Tuesday night while we were at the ballpark. It's the first project that has kept my attention in awhile, so I'm hoping it will be the thing to help pop me out of my crafting funk.

~3~

Ezra's birthday is just a few weeks off . . . I'm really not sure how it's been 3 years already! The last few weeks I've been having little flashes of sadness that my youngest is already three- it's a great milestone for him, but at the same time I'm sad because it has been three years without another little one to join our family. Perhaps our two beautiful boys are meant to be the sum of our family, but I find myself still hoping for another if my body will cooperate . . . 

~4~

Ender gets to start his first organized sports experience tomorrow: t-ball. At this age they have 4-5 kids and one parent per station and they work on different skills- running through first base, hitting off the tee, different kinds of catching and running the bases correctly. We've spent the last few days counting down to the first day of t-ball and having repeated "how many more days???" conversations. I *heart* this kind of excitement!

~5~

I moved living room furniture yesterday trying to find the magic arrangement, but it isn't quite working yet. I think I'm going to try pulling a few things from other rooms to see if it will help and with a little bit of help from Superman on Saturday hopefully we'll figure out a good fit.

~6~

I've been organizing some schooly things for fall and we're going to try out something a bit more formal (at least for us) soon. I'm planning a bit of a continent study to help us get to know a little bit about the outside world. My sister and her husband will soon be leaving for the mission field in South Korea, so we're going to learn about the area where they will be and use that as our starting point to learn about a few other places in our world.

~7~

We're off for picnics and more time outside this morning before the heat and humidity drive us back in. what are you up to this weekend?

Summer Re-Do

We are still trying to find our summer groove around here. My work schedule completely shifts in the summer so that sometimes I’m teaching as few as 5 students in a week, and sometimes I have as many as 40. It all adds up to me being home full time Monday, Friday and the weekend, and then working a floating schedule on the other days. I’ve been trying to figure out a workable routine for the 4 days I’m home all day and on the days where I only teach for a few hours, but we’re having a hard time getting settled in.

A few things going right:

Daily Quiet Time- 30 minutes of everyone in their own space in the middle of the afternoon is giving me the bit of quiet I need to recharge and be a better mama for the rest of the day.

Getting our chores done first thing in the morning. A load of laundry, checking the plants, any cleaning that needs to be done . . .

Heading outside early before the heat gets to be too much.


Things I want to incorporate:
 Daily project time. We had this going during the school year when we had much less time. We now have double the time available to us so we should have even more project time, right?

Somehow that whole “we have the entire day ahead of us” thing makes me think the day actually expanded to be 30 hours instead of the actual 24 and I end up getting to the end of the day and wondering where the day went.

A plan. I have to face the music here- I can’t completely wing it every day. “Winging it” for a week just means that I end up with 7 loads of laundry, a dirty kitchen and we can’t find a pencil anywhere. It also means we don’t paint or create or do the stuff we really like to do because I haven’t thought things through far enough to make sure we can actually carry through with our plans.

I’ve always blamed my forgetfulness and lack of foresight on being a creative type, but maybe that’s just me. The truth is that if I don’t take a bit of time to plan ahead (even if it’s just for the next few hours) we all wind up frustrated because we can never really accomplish anything.

Mostly it just means that I need to be better about having pegs in our day in order for us to be sure we make space for the things we want to do. And it also means that we need to have a little morning meeting to see what the boys would like to accomplish that day so that we are still doing things they are interested in.

Maybe by next week we’ll look a little better in this routine thing.

And one more thing, perhaps slightly off-topic, but in the same vein in my mind: I’ve been looking at different learning spaces and house decorating inspiration and feeling grumpy about our lack of space here: my tiny little townhouse in the city . . . but I’m determined to resolve some of those issues this month. Our space can’t change, but my attitude (and our organization and furniture arrangement) can! So this month I’m working on our main living space- the room that has to function as our living room, dining room and learning space. Right now it is heavily leaning in the direction of learning space, and not in a good way. So I’m hunting inspiration! Blogs, articles, pictures . . . anything that you think might jive with the theme in our house: simple, clean, easy to maintain.

Last Week

 

I finished up the studio reschedules for June and started working on the schedules for September.

Yes, I already have to plan for next term in the studio.

 

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Ender learned how to exchange pennies for nickels and dimes.

 

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Ann Voskamp had even more words of wisdom; these are of the marriage variety. I'm ever humbled by her posts.

 

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Lee DeWyze won. I'm so happy for that result, even if it was a weak season.

 

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Ezra kept eating and running and playing. I swear he's grown two inches in the last month, and he's looking more and more like a boy and no longer my baby. Three is just a few weeks off . . .

 

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Superman and I spent several evenings talking and planning for the changes our family needs to make to adjust to life WITH daddy. I know that sounds strange, but we've had a little over 2 years of Daddy being this sort of shadow in the home that showed up every once in awhile for the important things (and sometimes he just happened to have a few slow days at work) and now that he's really home every evening and even on 2 whole days a week it's really strange. Good strange, but a bit of an adjustment.

 

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I learned the coolest quilt piecing trick EVER.

Yes, a project has been planned!

 

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We watched 4 softball games in a row out in the sun over Memorial Day weekend. Despite hats, an umbrella, and SPF 55 applied about every 90 minutes, I got a horrible blistered sunburn on the top of one of my ears. Apparently I totally missed it every time we sunscreened AND it wasn't covered by the umbrella (though I don't know how!). I'm a little more than sore today.

 

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How did your May end up?