a mini kind of vacation

One thing I love about the schedule of kindergarten so far is that we get mini vacations inbetween school days. Meaning, our daughter doesn’t go to school every day of the week – just a few, but all day when she is there.

It gives me time to plan my house, to care for it and keep it clean. To bake snacks and have dinner ready and maybe even have coffee with some of our very favorite friends and family (all of them!).

I love being able to have lazy days inbetween the hour to hour, wall to wall schedule of a school day and the weather is still nice enough to be outside at parks or taking walks or enjoying a color tour with hot chocolate.

We’re getting closer and closer to actually moving into the home we’re building and this time of year is just screaming for me to hunker down, create something, be inside and decorate. Which is all on hold until we move.

This weekend we ventured back to the junk yard of antiques and I can no longer hold myself back. There are approximately 37 things I would like to buy and create for the new house but I’m holding off.

We don’t have room for me to “create” something right now nor do we have the space to store anything more.

Instead I peruse the internet for the best way possible to execute my ideas, we take walks along beaches and collect drift wood, Monarchs and blue stones and I’m putting small weathered work into making the last couple months in our apartment beautiful (and for free).

Also? Traverse City Cherry coffee is divine and waking up on the water is a cleansing for my soul in a way that prayer and singing old hymns is my favorite Love Language to worship in.

Life, my friends, is really wonderful. And so dirty and uncanning and messy, as well. We’re in the middle of it all, the trenches, decisions and worries of building a family and raising them well – of growing up without losing our younger ambition to be better … we’re here. Right now. This is it.

And I think that’s enough.

from my pages

I wrote this a couple weeks ago after realizing I was having one of those moments I never wanted to forget in my life.

I’ve gotten back to writing with pen and paper and doing so often – I love this.

“Aug 15, 2010

What I love about today – Right here.
– The views of old buildings and tree tops
– The feeling of freedom
– How grown up this new experience makes our kids
– That we all fit
– Character of an old home
– Easy to care for
– The brokenness of the space is like a smile – and not a gnashing of teeth
– Huge porcelain kitchen sink

baking

– Big bedrooms and roomy closets
– It’s our secret
– Blank canvas
– Jessica’s favorite: Riding bikes and going to JP’s almost everyday
– Our family isn’t so much taped together but glued to the floors boards and we love it
– How open we are to possibility
– The feeling of coffee in the morning – kids waking slowly – with a day ahead of us

first Morning.

– That we just spend the last 10 minutes on half of our original couch watching the same movie on Aaron’s phone over and over and over again
– That Jessica will always remember this
– We have kind neighbors”

stupid rug

Coming home. Again.

There are no soft floors in this apartment. Meaning we either walk on hardwood, tile or linoleum all day long and it works just fine. Aaron brought over this rug from our house when we moved here and although it’s a bit small for the space, it worked … until it all of a sudden very much did not work. Here’s why.

stupid rug

This is a pretty rug, I’ll give it that, and my son has enjoyed hours of non-annoying play atop it’s kind of soft wooliness but this rug? It sheds. It sheds and it reminds me why I will never ever own a hairy animal inside of my house. Ever.

stupid rug

All you have to do is look at it and it sheds. You THINK about walking on it and cries buckets of microscopic wool fibers ALL OVER THE FLOOR.

stupid rug

Gross. Not so pretty anymore is it?

stupid rug

This is from a 4 hour period of time. That period of time being from when I last swept. I hate this rug. What a stupid rug.

So I’ve started rolling it up and putting it in the corner only to have Aaron come home, unroll it and then watch me crumble into a million pieces because he touched the forbidden rug.

It took him 3 nights in a row of “putting the room back together” to finally catch on that the rug was expelled from this apartment. That I was taking sides and if he wanted the rug so bad, he could sleep on it. Outside.

I kid. I kid.

Sort of.

No really, though, this is a very pointless rug in a home with all hard flooring. The fans and window units we have going just blow the dust around and create Arizona-size bunnies of wool particles and dust in my corners and since I have all of 4 rooms in which to escape to … the last thing I want to be confronted with in any of them is a furry creature made of foot dander, know what I mean?

So now? No rug. Just flooring. Just planks of hardwoods, nice and woodish. Nice and clean and woodish.