I’ve let a whole year go by, full to the brim with memories and meals and friends and kids who just keep growing and growing. We are two weeks away from a whole new season around here: kindergarten. New school shoes have been purchased and just today a ‘big-kid’ lunchbox and water bottle.
I have resisted documenting the day to day because I’m hyper-sensitive to the criticism that blogs aren’t an authentic representation of a person’s life. Also, there’s a lot of navel-gazing and it’s as obnoxious to write about as it is to read sometimes.
But I just read about how when you tell a story, you have to narrow the big picture down to one tiny corner. Just describe that little spot in the upper-left hand corner and then go from there.
So here is a tiny corner, a little tidbit, that hopefully someday will jog my children’s memory and cause them to smile:
We are deeply entrenched in summer living. The house is almost always in some form of disarray. It’s cold cereal for breakfast and peanut butter for lunch. It’s too hot to play outside in the afternoon and Legos can literally be found on every surface in this house. I found some in my bed yesterday and stepped on one in the shower. How this happens is beyond me.
The boys are deeply tanned from a summer at the lake, riding bikes and swimming in friend’s pools. Scarlet’s baby-fine hair is bleached out and her cheeks are perpetually sun-kissed.
The wrestling is constant. So is the eating. But when I can step back from the chaos (which I’m not always very good at) I really relish at what good friend’s the kids are. They are happy and robust and so so loud. I beg them to sit down, to chew with their mouths closed, to pick up their shoes. But then they spend hours building legos or making forts or having some sort of complicated war/adventure in the backyard and I just love them so stinking much.
Isn’t that the crux of family life? It can be so constant, so totally taxing yet its the very best thing and when even one of your people is missing, it’s almost like you’ve lost a limb.
We took a day trip to Mount Rainier last weekend. We needed trees and fresh air and a break from the heat. So we loaded the car with water bottles and sandwiches and headed west. In the 9 years we’ve lived in our little Valley, we’ve never ventured there and now we regret every day we DIDN’T go because it was so stunning.
We chose a 1 mile each direction hike and set out. Luke and Scarlet climbed in and out of the stroller. We got in people’s way. There was a fair amount of whining. Aaron and I looked at each other silently wondering if this was worth the 2 hour drive. And then, all of a sudden, the kids spotted a snow field off in the distance and they pumped to see snow in August. And suddenly our little hike turned into a way bigger one but everyone was happy and energized. We made it to that snow, tossing soggy snowballs at each other, cooling down from our hike. We dipped fingers in glacier run-off and scooted back to the lodge for much-deserved ice cream cones.
It was a good good day. One of so many. I just need to write them down more often.
A New Day Rises 