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I feel aimless this morning….I don’t feel well and my mind is overrun with thinking about all kinds of things, both good and bad.  Are you that way?  When you have so many things to do, you’re not sure where to start so you just don’t start anything?  This week has really thrown me for a loop.  We’re still trying to jump through hoops with doctors to get Gracie some help with her focusing problems.  I’m crazily nervous about Abigail’s surgery in a couple of weeks.  I’m trying to figure out how we’re going to juggle plumbers and contractors and large amounts of upheaval.  But, in ten days, the girls start Spring Break and I’m taking the entire week off of work.  I am so excited that I’m counting the hours!  So, those are the things that are floating around in my head.  I actually took a nap this morning, something I can count on one hand the times that I’ve done in my adult life.  It felt good and I’ve felt slightly less aimless this afternoon.

I’m rambling and this probably sounds very stream of consciousness but that’s the way my brain is working today, apparently!

I’ve started Project 365 at least four times in the last five years.  And, generally I make it through the first three or four months taking pictures and only the first few weeks documenting the pictures and printing them out.  I realized last year that this is completely okay.  Yes, I fail at the project.  epically.  But, here’s the thing, I have at least a few weeks out of our year documented.  And that is better than nothing.  So, just call me the Slacker Project 365er!  So, in that vein, I started again this year.  And, knock on wood, with my new “embrace the failure” attitude, I’m doing better than I have most years!  I’m using Weeds and Wildflowers Every{day} Life Pages.  I’m enjoying it because I don’t really have to think about photo layouts or embellishments at all.  All I have to do is drag the pictures in and journal.  Years ago, I would have thought this was cheating.  What can I say?  I was an idiot – I missed the point entirely!  This makes it so much easier and I’m actually accomplishing something!  And, strangely enough, I’m scrapping other pages because I’ve freed myself up from worrying about Project 365 pages.  I remember someone somewhere saying long ago that if scrapbooking became too much like work then you were doing something wrong.  And, that’s where I was for a long time….it felt like a chore…  But, between the Every{day} Life Pages and switching to using 3-ring binders for my albums so I don’t have to scrap chronologically, I’m actually enjoying this hobby of mine again.

Anyway, how this for a random post!  Here are a few of my 2012 Every{day} Life layouts…I’ve even had a few printed already and they’re in my album.  Hooray for doing something that doesn’t feel aimless!

Gracie was a little late to choir yesterday.  Mostly because ten minutes before we were supposed to be there, she was doing this:

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Sometimes, it feels like we have so much going on between work and school and scouts and piano and soccer and choir and church and reading and reading and laundry and dinner and reading some more that there’s not enough time to stop and smell the salt air.  Yesterday, we took the time.  I sat on the sand and took a hundred deep breaths and the girls ran and shrieked at the cold water.  The laughed and played and found treasures.

 

 

And I watched the pelicans searching for their dinner

I don’t like to be late for things (Steve is laughing manically as he reads this…I am perpetually late!), really, I don’t.  But sometimes, it just might be worth it.

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We celebrated my youngest niece’s third birthday this weekend at my grandfather’s farm.  It was a fantabulous day and the party was over-the-top adorable.  I have tons of pictures and tons of words but no energy tonight.  I have a cold and I’ve run from pillar to post back to pillar today.  But, as I was looking through all the images from the weekend, this one made me smile and I wanted to share it.  It makes me happy to look at it.  You know for all my talk about taking pictures to preserve memories and to have a documented history for my girls, the truth is, the real reason I take pictures is for moments like these.  On my best days my pictures make me happy.  But, on my worst days, they add a ray of joy to even the greyest of hours.  Yep, the memories, and the history, and the legacy are all wonderful amazing things.  The joy, though, when I need it most, is the reason my camera is always close.

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I think it’s pretty obvious that I’ll use any excuse to celebrate with my girls.  I decided long ago that just celebrating birthdays wouldn’t give me enough opportunities to throw all the parties that I want to throw.  Two kids at roughly twelve birthday parties each (and I know the twelve might be stretching it…I’m thinking 12-year-old Gracie might not want a unicorn and rainbow party, but I’m wishful thinking) gives me only 25 parties.  Gracie doesn’t really “do” parties – she’d rather just hang out at home and Abigail’s parties are generally these huge backyard affairs that we have ever two years, because it takes twenty-three months to recover from them.  So, what’s a mom who loves to plan parties to do when she doesn’t have enough parties to plan?

Well, I figured I had two options.  1)Have about thirty more children or 2)Celebrate everything!  I bet you can figure which option won, can’t you?

Friday was Dr. Seuss’ birthday and we celebrated with Seussisms all day long (“A person’s a person no matter how small!  The people who mind don’t matter and the people who mind don’t matter!”) and for dinner, we had green deviled eggs and ham sliders.  The ham slider recipe was from Annie’s Eats.  They were so good, we’re having them for dinner again tonight!  I made Cat In The Hat Cupcake Push Pops – they didn’t turn out was cute as I’d have liked, but the girls loves them and I think that’s all the matters!  I decorated with some Dr. Seuss bulletin board cut-outs and Gracie & Abigail laughed out loud when they walked into the kitchen.  Over dinner I told them some Dr. Seuss trivia (that Theodor Seuss Geisel didn’t have any children of his own and in fact wasn’t even particularly fond of children).

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Was it a little bit of work? Sure, but not much more than a regular dinner and the smiles on the girls’ faces made it all worthwhile.

Yesterday, Gracie was one of the “Positive People of the Day” at school.  Abigail and I went to the media room to watch her deliver the positive thought for the day on the school’s television.

She looks thrilled, doesn’t she?

She did a great job.  Her  thought for the day was “be your best”.  It was just the thing I needed to hear. I’ve been struggling lately with that all too familiar feeling of never doing anything well.  I usually feel this way when I have so much on my plate that I never end up finishing anything.  Steve and I always try to teach the girls that all we expect of them is that they try.  It’s a lesson I apparently needed to learn myself and, as usual, it’s my daughters who teach me!