You'll now find us over at littleelephants.com - come on over!
Looking up
This is a little reminder just for me: sometimes you just need a different perspective to catch the unexpected beauty around you.
A couple days ago I was hanging out in the hammock & looked up to spy these bright red blossoms at the end of this tree's branches. It's like it was decorated for Christmas in May. I couldn't help but smile.
Next? I heard funny little noises above me. One was a striking blue bird calling to announce the bounty available in the feeder. The other? A very young squirrel, poised directly above my head -- I'm not sure which of us was more startled to see the other :-)
Still here.
In case anyone's been worried that we've fallen off the face of the earth, I figured I'd post some photographic evidence to the contrary. This busy mom has been just too, well, busy to blog.
Hope you are enjoying this lovely winter season as much as we are!
- Vero.
My never ending quest to get (/stay) organized
This year just before school started Tomas ordered me a copy of the Mom's Family Calendar. It was a sweet gesture, but I hate it. Really, I do. It does its job reasonably well, but it is butt ugly.
It's covered in stupid Boynton cartoons that are great if you are a kid, but they are not for me. They irritate me to no end and are an obnoxious smudge on the start of my lovely creative space. The space that is intended to be filled with beautiful things & thoughts.
You can imagine my joy when I discovered that the folks over at Busy Body Book now have a wall calendar for 2009 that is cleanly designed AND has SEVEN columns for me to use (the utter joy in my head!!!).
I've written previously about their planner that had five columns that suited me just fine at the time. My categories were Family : Work : Maggie : Bjorn : Tor. But now I can add Menus and Household Maintenance now that I have a house to maintain!
I'm also thinking of picking up a copy of this awesome Action Book which is designed by the folks at Behance, to keep handy for capturing work and blog ideas (no space in my life/brain to keep the two completely separate).
I love the simple tools that help me keep control of my busy life, don't you?
Three years, a month, and a day
I'm shocked. Honestly shocked, that none of my friends or family have given me flack over not posting Tor's Third Birthday a month ago. How utterly shameful!
As you can see here, he's growing and full of life like just his big brother and sister ( I have, ahem, active children). He's a tough little guy and loves to hang out with the big kids, even if they'd like a little space here & there.
In this picture he's modeling a Halloween Tie Dye t-shirt he got from my sister & wore for for three days and nights straight. Have I mentioned he has a rather forceful personality?
I'm looking forward to the adventures he'll take us on as he continues to grow :-)
Bjørn turns eight!
It's so hard to believe how quickly eight years have passed! As I was giving birth my OB exclaimed a very helpful "Holy Moly, that's a BIG head!" Pretty much all the encouragement I needed to Get Him Out.
Today he's an incredibly handsome (have you seen his eyes when he wears green?!) and sensitive kid. Always game to try something new. Currently obsessed with his Nintendo DS, and yes... we still got him two new games even though we're constantly threatening to take them away because he gets so deeply drawn into those virtual worlds.
He'll also spend hours walking around the garden with his sister playing the Imagination Game -- an invented cross between Pokemon and Dungeons & Dragons where Maggie acts as narrator and Bjørn (and any extra friends who happen to be around) explores an ever changing story.
Happy Birthday my Bjørno. I love you.
15 years
15 years legal or 23 years and 219 days together. Any way you count it, I'd do it again :-)
Things that were mine
One neat thing about living in my childhood summer home is finding the bits & pieces left over from way back when. I thought I'd share a few: the raspberry bush I planted, bongo drums, an easel, and my swing. I'm glad to have these around for the kids (even if they do fight like mad over the swing ... sigh).
Is this thing on??
Hah! So it's been like a couple months or something since I thought I was going to get my blogging back in gear and what do I have to show for it? Nada.
Life took a little turn and my creativity went missing for a bit. My poor Maggie has been the one who's probably missed it the most ... she suggests with a huge smile that we should do a craft, and I come up with nothing. It's like my mind has gone completely craft-blank. Sad, sad stuff.
The good news is that we're all pretty happy and healthy, even if it is hot and muggy outside. School's out for summer, I've got a new job (love it!), and Tomas and the kids are getting their summer planning together. It's Camp Tomas for them this year, so I might end up posting about the things they do while I'm tucked away in the office.
A particularly horrible graduation speech at the elementary school has us researching the alternatives even though the kids both tell us they want to stay there ("where would we make friends?!"). I just can't stand to see the light and genuine curiosity sucked out of them (a bit melodramatic, but that speech sure had me feeling that way -- the principal was all about how the kids needed to do their assigned reading over the summer, and how their new teachers were going to judge them, and how everyone they would ever meet would judge them, bla bla bla -- Gah!).
So, yeh. A bit of homeschooling research and experimentation might be coming your way this summer. We're not set on it just yet, but at the very least we now know that we'll need to actively supplement what they're getting at school.
Wow. I'd forgotten how good it feels to get stuff written down like this. Must remember to do so more often :-)
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