hide me in your heart...i mean cart

every time i'm in the grocery store, i get nosy. i love to see what people put in their carts and ponder their menus. i've been cooking my way through a new cookbook and have found a love for trying new recipes and new grocery items. this past week, it was chobani yogurts. a little pricey, yes, but oh-so-delicious.

other must haves...

arnold's bread: i always upon always buy any multi-grain/whole wheat variety on sale. it's my favorite upon favorite bread.

raspberries/strawberries: we can house a carton in an afternoon. we seriously need to to plant our own....or invest in the berry market.

asparagus: oooh, i love it. reminds me of growing up and fresh asparagus from the garden

butternut squash: chop and roast that baby tossed in olive oil and a dash of pepper...look out...amazing!

scratchy monkey: somehow he always ends up in there :)

i have two firm grocery store rules...

(1) no car carts. i dispise them. they never fit down the isles or checkout lane and they push crooked.

(2) no donuts.

sometimes you just gotta break the rules :)

snap a pic the next time you're at the store...i'd love to see what's in your cart!

perspective

i'm taking steps in perspective. trying to wake up each morning and genuinely be glad it's morning. most mornings it's true...i greet my children with a heartfelt "good morning, i'm so glad you're awake!" but, i said trying. there are days when i fake it...my enthusiasm. my life seems to move in cycles. every three days or so i hit a wall. i awake to find i feel like a soppy rag getting drug across the garage floor. it takes a grand effort to go from lying to sitting. even grander to move into stumbling, er, uh, standing.  i want to greet my children with enthusiasm. trying to remember it's their day too. they do not exist to be toted along in a progression of things that i need or want to get done and shuffled through the day trying to keep up with me...it's their day, too.

i heard a little boy request a few weeks back. the request was adventure. i was apparently on day three because i couldn't find the energy to drag my soppy rag self out the door.
this past monday was the perfect afternoon to grant such a grand request.
the breeze...oh my. it felt like spring. 300 acres of adventure. the shade. the birds. the balmy 74 degrees. the scent. perfection.

as we walked, foster noticed so much more than i. even a GIANT spider web right in front of me that i nearly walked face-first into. we look pictures of everything. rocks. weeds. each other. worms. snack time.

when we got home, i downloaded our dueling cameras and found such adorable perspectives.
after all, photographs are my love language...it seems fitting to get my kids hooked on the same lingo :)

my shot.

his shot.

                                                                          my perspective.

                                                                         his perspective.

                                                                 rowan's perspective.

                                                        "mom, take a picture of me!"

                                                       "foster, take a picture of me...."
                           
                        (apparently my legs and galoshes were the only limbs worth photographing :)

                                                                 then we found this:

a hidden spy cam of sorts. pretty odd.
after snapping a picture (of course) we headed out...unsure of why anyone is filming 300 acres of woods, and pondering what sort of secret spy just captured a shot of me taking a picture of it taking a picture of me.
apparently they have a perspective as well.

camaraderie

it was the final hoorah for clint's softball team last night. we've enjoyed a season of fun watching the men-folk heave-ho home runs and side-arm shortstop their way to the church league playoffs. although i love being on the field myself, i've resigned to spectatorship for one fact only. i love watching clint. granted "watch" is a loose term since spectatorship implies sitting and watching...and mom-ville more accurately admits little watching and more homing-device child perusing. i guess it's more of what i see after the game. a certain rejuvenation in his stature after a hard thrown game. the jousting man-jokes and skin-slapping high-fives seems to give his game nature hope of battling for something...anything...even if it's just church softball...it's the chase of victory. or a laugh or two when victory is occasionally replaced by defeat. the funny thing is, you'd never know it. there's aren't any slumped shoulders or mean spirited words to the guy who missed a fly ball. there are no hats thrown in disgust at the umps or haughty attitudes. they lost their last playoff game tonight. they sprayed each other with water bottles and cheered and praised their fellow team-mates. truth be told, half the time i'm too busy chasing kids to see much of the game, let alone see who was victorious. after seeing their gleeful demeanor after the game i usually take my 50/50 shot and assume they won, only to find the outcome was not so chummy after all. it's the camaraderie. i love it.

i also love my camera. can you tell i'm in love with all things softball tonight? the 1960's feel of the community that hometown sports creates. grandparents, darby dogs and the row of babyville moms and toting toddlers. the baseball stance of my brother and the WELDON stamped proudly on the back of my husband's jersey. my kids getting covered in fine, orange baseball field dirt...then eating pickles...therefore by default ingesting handfuls of said dirt by-way-of sticky pickles.

oh how i love softball season.
and oh how i love that it's over :)

mr. happy swim trunks

kids are so wonderful and inventive. they can pick up and play something with just about anything and anyone. water in general is a catalyst for great creative play, but add in reece's peanut butter cups, recycling containers, and shade for two tierd mamas, and you have a recipe for the perfect afternoon.

my rowie became one of the big boys today. somehow all of the sudden, he's keeping up. no longer 7 steps behind, he's now joining in. and today, he said goodbye sour grapes, hello mr. happy swim trunks and gave the big boys a run for their money.
my rowie is a conundrum of immense personality possibilities. he not only possesses a vast number of facial glances, most of which containing some type of flirtatious action, but today he found a hose and perilous victims to torture.
he came alive with delight.

as you can see, his victims were miserable :)

squirting and sloshing led to slurping. 

and before we knew, slurping led to spit washing. lindsay, and i looked at each other, shrugged, and said, "if you don't care, i don't care!" 

they are, after all, little boys. who love to spit and pee in the bushes and zerbert just about every moment of the day. what's a little spit water among friends, right?

while the pictures were adorable, watching the afternoon unfold was so picturesque and amazing. it was quite possibly one of the best afternoons as of yet. especially because lindsay and i got to watch from nearby chairs placed strategically in the shade :)

shower or blog. shower or blog.

naps. oh the glory. there is something heavenly in the silent moments of children napping.
the monitor spills tranquil sounds of the boys sleep music and it wafts rejuvenation throughout the house.

should i shower or blog. shower or blog. it would be really nice to stop smelling like a sweaty farm hand. but then again, i could just take a shorter shower, and linger a little longer with my new iced coffee obsession paired with my literary needs. i've felt blank recently. blank in the literary way. it's very unlike me. i can usually write about anything and turn any two sentences into 12. see, i just did it. maybe i'm back :)

the past few weeks have been filled, nay, jammed with activity. we spend most days out-and-about. jetting out half past breakfast, i'm usually winging it coffee in hand, and never without loosing my keys and/or phone somewhere along the walk to the car. we have a large array of daily activity options, most including something free. some spontaneous, some well planned and others not-so-much.
we've been spending very, very little down time.
if the test of my patience were the LSATS, i would be right up there with 'Elle Woods'...barely getting by :)

we are typically in-and-around home people.
i love, nay, crave days with no adjenda and only time on our hands to wander and finger paint and play with some sort of makeshift water feature. before we sold our house, i had lots of things at kid level. markers. paper. hoodie hooks. large toy baskets. an indoor loop around the downstairs for hotwheels and scooters. they knew where their toys were, they knew how to put them away. we would lay around and laugh. wrestle. jump on couch cushions, read books or get muddy searching for bugs. i didn't know how much i missed it until we didn't have it anymore. our in-and-around homeness.

in the absence of permanent living conditions, we are newly out-and-about people.
i've found out just how little i previously regarded the normal, everyday mess that children make. we would always jump up, throw clothes on and bound out of the house (usually running late) with miscellaneous toys and breakfast items running a muck as we closed the door and forgot all about the impending homestead mess.i didn't think twice.
i have this brilliant idea that cleaning comes last and kids come first. it's quite wonderful actually. perhaps its half lazy and half brilliant. :)
in all honesty,  i don't want my kids remembering how much i cleaned, rather how much i sat on the floor kicking it up with them.  i can often overlook a little dust on my picture frames, or extra crumbs under the high chair because after all, it's my house.
don't get me wrong. i savor a clutter free table and the glisten of freshly cleaned flooring. i dream of organized file bins and everything-in-it's-place closets. there is nothing quite so refreshing as waking up to a clean-as-a-whistle kitchen, and my batootie is much happier when resting upon a mr. clean toilet.

one thing i've learned over the past few years is that our day moves smoother when i let go and leave the mess for the moments of peaceful slumber when i can scour the counter tops on my own time.

but now, living in someone else's home, i'm making a conscious effort to always-upon-always leave the house in a perfected non-child-wrecked state. i vacuum, pick up, put back, straighten, scuffle, scour the living space each and every time we depart.  i just don't feel right about subjecting our kind house sharers to the natural disaster that comes with little fingers and toes. and i'm sure they appreciate not stepping on random fighter jets as they peruse the kitchen.

in an effort to be honest, i just have to say, i'm loosing it a little. some days, i'm loosing it a lot. maybe its the stress of knowing we have no promising housing prospects on the horizon, or a strange nervous anticipation because our adoption is progressing, or perhaps it's just the stress of so much transition and all of the out and about.

everyday i find it increasingly difficult to (a.) maintain a non-irritated vocal tone when the boys dump a bucket of domino's and proceed to catapult them across the floor as we are walking out the door, (b.) clean the same exact area 4 times (c.) keep my sanity. (d.) suppress my desire to rip open a carton of chocolate peanut butter ice cream, smack a large spoon right dab in the middle and eat myself into a fat induced coma.

so we are out-and-about. all the time. everyday.
most days, it works out well. we pack a giant man sized pouch of fruit, an array misc lunch items, a change of clothes varied enough for a football team, and one of those giant blue ikea bags full of random toys (today it was 2 fishing poles, 4 fish, and a baseball bat. yesterday it was 3 tonka bulldozers and a pile of wifle balls).
my car looks more like a moving van on the verge of transforming into a trash compactor.

yesterday, i got caught up in our barrage of never being home.
nothing was specifically out of sorts, well, nothing except for me. i couldn't get my attitude to turn positive. i was sick of not having a house. sick of no air conditioning. sick of my kids running a muck and acting as if i was too busy. and guess what? i was. too busy. too selfish and irritated to stop and just "be" with them. too full of complaints to even glimpse the fact that i don't have it all together, so i should stop letting my non-togetherness get to me.

at some point, everyone looses the control of having everything under control. right?
i sure hope so. because right now, this very moment, i'm out of control. i-can't-handle-another-minuet-of-me-tyring-to-control-EVERYTHING. i'm controlling myself crazy, that's what i'm doing.
i'm sure my husband would confess i have used up every complaint possible and i shouldn't be allowed to complain any more.
i'm confessing that i am over it. i'm letting go.

i'm starting today.

i walked outside with the boys. i closed my eyes, took about 45 deep breaths, and lingered. and listened.
i played baseball with rowan.
i chased him as he giggled and we rolled around in the grass. i couldn't remember how long it had been since we grass rolled. too long.
we stayed in the grass and oohed and awed over foster learning to ride his new green bike.

                                  we found 5 baby frogs. i found out rowan is no longer afraid of them.

                                           found lollypops and barefeet are a perfect conbination.

                                        found an indoor tennis court that allows lollypops and barefeet

found the planets we made last month in the garage and also found 15 new questions i have no idea how to answer. "why don't planets grow?" "what is inside of planets?" "where are planets going?" seriously. i'm not a scientist. i need help. how in the world does a 4 year old think about these things! i've never once wonder why planets don't grow. well, at least not until today :)

                             

                                                                 i remembered how much i love little shoes.

and my mom's laugh

and boys in hats

i discovered my camera again. it's soothing qualities. it's ability to make all things beautiful and interesting.

and we found a place to rest.

after dinner, i jumped in the pool with my clothes on because it made the boys laugh.

and guess what i found?
life is better when i don't try to control it.
in fact, i'm better. i laugh more. i listen a LOT more. and my kids smile...that's the best part :)