Weekend Update: Christmas Coming

What a weekend.  Whew.  Up at 10:30 last night still doing laundry.  Christmas Parade.  Decorating.  Indoors and outdoors.  Christmas Village up, paper chains made, nativity out, Advent calendar started.  Then why did I think this was the time to enroll the girls in Taekwondo classes three times a week?

I...am...officially...insane.

Rudolph the Red Nose Reindeer at the theatre next Saturday, get the Christmas tree Sunday, girls are to go shopping with Mom on Sunday for my gifts, then an invite to Karelyn's best friend's Christmas play.

Whew.

Last weekend before Christmas is dedicated to cookie baking.  This tradition we will not miss.  No way.  The presents are all purchased, most of them wrapped, cards are sent, decorations are out.  So why do I feel so darn wiped out?  Too much at once I guess.

But I adore this time of year.  I like having so many traditions and things to look forward to.  I really wish we could hold on to these feelings all year long.

But this pace.....never.  I'll almost be happy when I'm at Mom's house on Christmas Day, girls having already come astonished downstairs to see what Santa has brought and safely tucked off to their Dad's and I'm sitting eating her delicious dinner with a glass of wine and warming myself by the wood stove.

Ahhhhhh.....sweet rest.


p.s.   love the advert!  how sweet!!

weekend update: lots of leaves

8.3.11

Jennifer - Porch Sitting

the tastes and sounds of summer.

I have just officially posted the same photo on two blogs.  Oh well, it's not that I don't have other photos it's just that I like this one very much.  This morning's breakfast, that's banana there in the middle and fresh blueberries, all the farms are touting their blueberries right now.  Strawberries are gone until next year (boohoo) and blackberries are just coming on, we had some of those also, not shown.  This is the time of year that I am happy to live in the country.  Not so much in the winter when I'm sliding and weaving my way down the  back roads, white knuckled in the snow and ice home from work, but this time of year is lovely.  The crickets and the cicadas are kicking up some beautiful music at night.  I know you detest flying bugs so I'm guessing jumping crickets and giant cicada's aren't high on your list either?

But I love them.  My ex-husband hated crickets.  He grew up in the outskirts of the city.  If we got one in the house the sound made him crazy, not me.  I grew up surrounded by ten acres of woods so that is summer song to me.  We had no air conditioning and the upstairs was always sweltering and we always had the windows wide open to get any sort of breeze you could in.  Hearing those babies is like being home to me.  Add the call of a whippoorwill and I'm twelve years old again.

Last night I stood in the window about midnight, getting ready for bed and just listened and listened.  Time is going by so fast.  One season seems to roll right in to the next and then all this will be gone.  Soon though we get fall, perhaps my favorite season.  Crisp air, falling acorns, the smell of woodsmoke again, apples and pumpkins, colored leaves.

Aah, I'm in a good place this weekend, a complete opposite to earlier in the week.  Another reminder that letting go is the best medicine.  And those twelve thousand things that were waiting to be done here this weekend; they are still waiting.  I know you know how that goes.  Life is too important to let the petty stuff get in the way.  The layers of dust on my surfaces will still be here this fall and winter but a moment standing in the peace of a summer evening, that goes all too quickly.

{my} weekend.

happy monday!  i hope your weekend treated you well.  i hope you had a country drive.  i love your tales and your photos from your weekend country drives.  we basically live in the country but we headed out to the park this weekend.  it was father's day today, so my father and i did about a two-three hour hike today in one of the county parks nearby.   i took this photo along the way.  you can walk for about an hour on one of the fire trails and think you are so far from civilization and then you meander back to a fenceline like this and see a farmhouse in the distance and then you realize you are not quite so far away.  all in all it was a good time.  my father and i have a love/hate relationship.  he loves to give me a hard time and i hate that he does.  my mother says we fight like an old married couple.  it's just that we do spend a good bit of time together as he is retired and helps me with the girls before and after school.  in the end i know he would do anything to help me, so after breakfast with my sister this morning i invited him out on the trail with me.   

other than that it was a quiet weekend.  the girls were at a sleepover at their other grandparents house with two favorite cousins so i actually had most of the weekend to myself.  the bad news is i laid about quite a bit.  the good news is i actually did some writing.  really it was quite exciting and i found myself really happy with myself, having a bit of time to do the things i really like, finishing a book, watching a movie, having a glass of wine, sitting down to eat dinner at 8:30 in the evening just because that's when i got around to it, not having to do tuck ins three times and still have someone climb in bed with me in the middle of the night.  i got up to go to breakfast and it took me fifteen minutes.  i got up, got dressed, took the dog out, made a cup of tea and off i went.  no pleading, or hassling, or impatience.

i love my girls.  truly i do. but sometimes it is nice to have that small break.  to have a weekend to myself.  it so rarely happens that when it does i feel like i am on a luxurious vacation, even if i am still just in my own living room.