day 17: fruit

Funny that today was fruit, as I just replenished the fruit bowl yesterday.  The light in the kitchen was very shadowy, thanks to the wild gyrations of the willow tree outside the kitchen door.  It is gusty outside.

{actual post to come}

Day 16: Something you wrote

I wrote this out for my two older kids this past winter.  

Days 10-15

It was bound to happen eventually, this falling off the wagon thing whenever it comes to me doing anything that is supposed to become a daily habit.

Borne of chaos, I am NOT a creature of habit and am constantly, {more often than not, fruitlessly}, striving towards routine and structure, only to abandon any purposeful or intentional endeavors for a more reactive, in-the-moment existence...that usually bites me hard, too.

Preamble aside, I'm behind in my pictures, so without further ado, here they are:

day 9: red

Red (ahem, Maroon) and Gold are the new school colors, and I couldn't be prouder of the new athlete in our family.

Kelsey began running cross country in August, and tomorrow is her final meet of the season.  She didn't run all summer, and yet, she started with a 10:14 mile base (a time for which I had to train for months!), and she cut that down to 9:42/mile for 2.5 miles in her last couple of races, which is excellent!  What's even more mind-boggling is that sub-10 minute pace is with her having walked some of the courses!  

Last week, she was proud of herself (and I was too) because she ran the entire course.  We don't have her time yet, but what an accomplishment!  She told me after school today that she ran Friday's race in 22:07, exactly 2 minutes less than her previous personal best!  We were so proud together.  We celebrated.  8:53 pace, maintained over distance - WOW!  

It's been busy, but well worth it.  I wanted her to have a sense of belonging at a new school, a crew of kids with whom she could fit and we have found it.  The encouragement of the kids on the teams for EVERY teammate is really special and I know we made the right choice to put her in this sport. 

 

day 8: angle

From our hiking trip in Rocky Mtn. Nat'l Park a couple of weeks ago, I love me a little bit of leaning trees ;)

 

day 7: light

The sunrise outside my east facing back door is seen more often now than ever before in my life, due to the whole middle school schedule.  {what brainiac determined that it was a stellar idea to get adolescents up at dawn to begin their days, anyway?}

I thought the street lamp looked lovely in the midst of the blue and orange sky {which, btw, was quite something this morning...the sunrises tend to be much rosier in hue around here - these colors are often reserved for what we call Broncos sunsets} and snapped a pic.

Nothing hugely insightful today ;)

 

day 6: i'm thankful for....edited to add

 {Whoopsie, I totally winged this and did "Something that makes me happy," instead of "I'm thankful for..."  In either case, I limited it to my time-constrained answer, and today, I'm realizing there is a hell of a lot more to put in this post than that which was originally here.  Updated words are in teal.}

My family. {makes me happy.  See also, I'm thankful for....}

In the Colorado mountains (pictured here, Rocky Mtn. Nat'l Park, Cub Lake).

Yeah, we have a lot of drama.  Yeah, family is hard work.  {and so is hiking to the real treasures of the Colorado mountains.  Worth it?  ABSOLUTELY!}

But at the end of the day, nothing makes me feel better than a big bear hug from Kelsey, the latest pop song being echoed by Colton, Christopher's goofy antics or Seth's never-failing humor.

This magical combination of: them + the outdoors = my personal nirvana.

I'm thankful for God's unfailing love for me, especially when I'm clinging to the fear that He's not really there or that He doesn't really care for me.  Yeah, I've had a season of doubt and desert wandering.  It's been intense.  And Satan, that expert manipulator, used someone in the church's good intentions to hurt me and catapult me further into this questioning.

And then God, used the kindness of someone I barely know to raise me up and remind me, bad things happen to good people and life sucks that way, but we can choose to let it keep us down or we can choose to help others going through similar hardships.  I needed that as much as I needed this prompt in things for which I'm thankful.

I'm thankful that despite some rough at-home behavior, the overall product of our family is kids who are loving and kind and thoughtful.  I'm thankful for check-ins with teachers that validate the work is paying off with them, even if I'm one of the last ones to see it.  {we had Kelsey's Advanced Learning Plan meeting Monday, followed by Parent-Teacher conferences the rest of the week}

I'm also thankful that the week of crazy meetings is over and we are back to our regularly scheduled program.  :)  {oh middle school, you and your 8 teacher schedules...}

I'm thankful for Fall in Colorado and the beauty that greets me every day.

I'm thankful that after some slipping up with health and wellness, my two best buds, Seth and Sarah, are taking their on steps to fitness journeys.  It is inspiring, motivating and has helped me get off my duff and make sure I'm eating thoughtfully again.

I'm thankful for my spiritual family and the tremendous strength I am able to draw from them, even without them knowing it.

  

day 5: shadow

So this is totally the cheater's way I suppose, but here's today's picture:

COMING SOON!

We had a cold front move in, and with it, cloud cover through which light was impenetrable, at least shadow making light.  

And indoors?  My house has little unused wall space on which a shadow could be cast.  And it is a crazy mess.

I will come back to you, day 5.

I was so pleased with the way this shot came out, because it is completely illustrative of what I need in my heart right now.

Yes, there's shadow, and the vast majority of the picture is swallowed up in it.

But there's a sliver of illuminated ground, and that bright beacon burning through the tree that is fighting to be seen.

I need to cling to that light.

 

what i wish she would have let me say to her

Backstory: the latter part of July, I received a msg from a colleague regarding an executive position opening at a local non-profit.  While I am currently at home, it has always been part of the plan for me to return to work when Christopher began school.  We're not quite there yet, but seeing as this opportunity found me {I was not looking} and our finances are still pretty dire thanks to Pneumo-Geddon 2009 and the crapped economy, Seth and I had some very frank conversation about whether I should even pursue it, and decided together that indeed, I should at least test the waters.  I interviewed {x3}, took a personality test, and landed in the top 3 candidates, but alas, it was not meant to be.  And I was actually ok with it.  What follows is a conversation I wanted to have with a friend, after we'd had an exchange that crushed me up quite a bit.


Motherhood should be a blessing, not the guilt-inciting, martyr-making chore that the level of sacrifice you keep wanting me to make has turned it into.  I don't want motherhood to be the cross I have to pick up daily, I want it to be something that I enjoy, treasure and am thus able to offer my best to my kids.  The financial trauma my family has faced in the past 3 years has taken away from that, and I'm seeking to restore the balance of having enough {and my enough is not a materialistic enough fwiw}and being more present with my kids.  I am fully aware that the trade off of time away from my kids seems counter-intuitive from this, but trust me, my eyes are wide open looking into this.  To suggest otherwise was insulting to me, as I thought you knew me to be the thoughtful, analytical person I am.

I'd like to remind you, as I pointed out in subsequent communications, that I know your thoughts on the Mommy Wars quite well; as a result, I did not seek your advice or blessing regarding my potential return to work.

I also did not seek your encouragement after my child let it slip that we needed prayers because mom didn't get the job she was seeking.  But I got it.  Ninety minutes of it.

day 4: what you read

So, despite having kids aged 11, 9, and 3, I recently started going to the brand-spanking new MOPS group at our church. Not because I don't know how the motherhood drill goes, obvs, but because I'm feeling more stretched than ever with the constant hokey pokey of one foot in middle school, an arm in elementary, and the other foot in toddlerhood.

I had heard of MOPS before, but seriously, I thought it was more suited for the Stepford types, and bypassed it for many years. I had some good IRL friends and in the early years with my older two, I belonged to parenting message boards, which ultimately evolved into blogging circa 2006.  Now that I'm doing it, I've often thought, "Where was this in 2001, when I needed it so?"  No matter, things happen the way they're supposed to, right?

This book is the topic of our guided discussions and so far it is pretty good.  More cheerful than I am by nature, but definitely not Pollyanna or Stepford-ish.  Maybe it can help me be more focused on the big picture instead of the crisis of the moment!

day 3: this happened today

So, you can't really tell, but the wind was blowing those leaves HARD when I snapped this.  And that cloud in the background?  Just got bigger and darker as the gusts pushed it in.

We were sitting at a nice 80ish degree day with an occasional breeze, and over the course of the next couple hours, dropped a whopping 40 degrees.

day 2: lunchtime

So, there is no beautiful food picture for my 'lunchtime' photo.

No, today was one of those where we had a hearty breakfast, Christopher had a late late morning snack, I was fully engaged in housecleaning, and when I felt the first pang of hunger, I looked at the clock in the kitchen and saw we were more than 2 hours past noontime.  And, we needed to go run an errand before Colton got home from school in less than 2 hours, which would then initiate the evening crazy: the daily 14 mile round trip to pick Kelsey up from cross country, dinner, and parent teacher conferences (day 2).

So it was lunch on the go.

I hate the convenience of those Golden Arches whose food never decomposes :/

day 1: where you stood

So, in six years of blogging (give or take, what with the 6 month hiatuses and all), I've never done any of these daily blog prompt things, but I really hope to get back in the swing of it, so what better than a quick, easy photo of the day, with or without some words, to dive back into things?

While this is not a great photo, it does represent several things for me about where I've stood.