The stupid circle of life

I guess I didn't blog last week.  Whoops.  The deal is pretty much.  I had a cold.  I am tired.  I don't feel well 30% of the time.  I probably did in fact have something to blog about.

Plus last week was dumb.  My grandpa went back into the hospital having had another heart attack.  And he had pnemonia and later they found some lung cancer (not a surprise for a pack+ a day smoker for 60 years but still).    The weekend we trekked down to the Tri Cities for an SCA event and fathers day.  Bill and Miriam camped one night and had a good time.  Found out that Bill's mom tipped her scooter one day the week before and was bruised up.  She started seeing double a couple weeks ago, had a head scan and found  a tumor (s?) in her sinuses/around her optic nerve.  Really awesome.  I talked to my Dad on Fathers Day and found out his Mom in law (my Memaw) had taken a turn for the worse.  She died on Monday.  I can't say I knew her as well as I would have liked.  And I was just this little step grandaughter, but she always remembered us at holidays and at Christmas and treated us like special people.  Family was important to her.  Plus I am mad at myself for not insisting that we find some way to go through New Orleans a year ago on our Trek from Georgia to the PNW, so she could meet our babies.  Nothing to be done about it now, just one of those things.

Okay, I'm exhausted from all of that.  So I'm going to hit publish.

Flowers

It's finally summer here.  I feel like it's finally hit us and it's going to disappear in the blink of an eye.  I use to pick strawberries in April in Georgia.  Here I am still waiting for people to bring them to the farmers market.  I don't dig bad weather and lack of growing season.  Welcome to the northwest.

I always liked to get pictures of the flowers in our yard. I missed the tulips here, but here is one of the irises.  We have red and purple.

Liam was checking out these rose looking flowers.  He likes to help in the yard.

Our lawn is going to die unless I figure out how to get the sprinkler system back on.  I bought some lilys at the store yesterday and some little flowers called stepables at BiMart to cover part of our yard.  My Dad and Dede had them at their house, in between their stepping stones.  I loved them. 

We have lots of edible stuff and I even found two lemon balm plants when we were out photographing flowers.  I just don't know what to do with it!

My pretty girl!

I'm tired

I am pretty tired.  Today that might be because my son woke my up at 5 and I could never get back to sleep.  Hello 6a.m.  The rest is pregnancy and energy levels being generally low. 

Two days ago I spend a lot of the day trying to reclaim my house from some of the mess.  Kids helped me pick up the floor and the kitchen (as much as they could stand I guess).  It's not close to done but I felt so much better stating out the day with a mostly clean floor.  Silly little pleasures I guess.

Yesterday I thought about my life as a parent to one child.  She was one year old.  We were living in an apartment in the south. I felt like it had taken me months, but I was into a pretty good routine.  There was almost no television in the house.  During nap time I had a chore of the day, plus my regular "pick up all the toys in the sun room" routine (since getting out all the toys and books in the sun room was part of our morning routine).  Then I would sit and coupon or read something until nap time was over.  I was cooking dinner at night.  Although I remember feeling like I was always stuck cleaning up in the kitchen until 9pm, which I hated.  

And looking back I'm thinking,  "what on earth was so wrong with your life? Nothing is what.  "

Now I've got two. It's messier, there is less routine, more television and I'm tired. 

There is nothing wrong with my life now either.  I'm just wishing for a little more control over my own space.  I think I'll even take perceived control over real control.  And maybe a regular nap time.  That would be a definite improvement.

Memorial Day

I was thinking about re-posting a post from Memorial Day last year, because it really sums up how I feel about memorial day and my gratitude for people living through some of the challenges that being in the military brings.  But yesterday, at an SCA event, they were doing toasts, and a gentleman got up to honor those who were part of the group that are or have served in the military.  He mentioned the time period that he was in the military (1960's-70's) and I thought about what it must have been like for him.  And I remembered a lady I met many years ago when my husband was deployed to Iraq.  I don't know if I've ever written about her, since this blog was begun later.

I was in the dressing room of the LDS temple.  I have no idea how we got to talking and how she found out that my husband was deployed overseas and that we had been students at Eastern.  She expressed her gratitude and told me how thankful for how different things were today.  Her husband had gone to Vietnam.  She had been left at home to single parent their five children.  During that time she decided to go get her Masters degree from Eastern.  I've often thought about this because of what must that have been like?  To be a "single" mom to five children, in an environment that was particularly anti-war, and treated soldiers that came home that way. 

And while we honor those that made the ultimate sacrifice, my mind rests on them, vets and their families that were treated like dirt because of doing what they were sent to do by their country. I hope we always remember that even when we feel like the cause is not just.  And I hope it doesn't happen again.  That we have no cause to treat a soldier that way, or try to extract guilt when there is already suffering (seen and unseen) we don't comprehend. 

So I seek to honor the dead and the living for their sacrifices today.

Decided over lunch

A friend of mine and I met this week for lunch. It was, in so many ways, wonderful (good food, nice break from kids, great conversation) and we got to talking about or long neglected blogs.  the short of the long is we decided to be accountability partners in blogging.  Once a week.

I know how much I've appreciated having a book of my blog I can look back on. But these will only be as good as the memories I write down.  So we agreed to set aside the expectations of being witty and great and just write about our lives, for ourselves.
already this week I've found it a little challenging to sit down and do it, which is why I am using the blogger app on my phone while my kids take a bath, completely ignoring the fact they are throwing water at the cat with their shovels.
Sometimes it might be one liners (see my posts for April). Or pictures! Next year when I am looking at my new blog book and remembering what it was like to only have two children I don't think I will mind.

Hard and wonderful.

Morning sickness is hard.  Having a cold stinks.  Getting a stomach flu is horrible.  Your five year old getting it...sad.  The 19 month old getting it, crying for hours and puking all over you...there really are no words. 

But when it's over you get to enjoy a sweet girl singing a song for you that she tells you is her favorite.  The sun comes back out and she plays for hours with the little boy across the street. ( and throws a huge tantrum leaving, ah well ).  You get to play catch with the little guy and tag/ race around the car.  Icing on the cake, morning sickness is almost gone.