Ten things of thankful: First Sunday of Advent

A week ago today, I was on a plane returning from Thanksgiving in Utah. Today, I was shocked to realize that Christmas is three weeks from tomorrow.

1. Completely smooth travel on one of the busiest travel days of the year. Truly, our flights went off without a hitch, and although it was snowing when we landed late at night, the drive home was safely this side of white-knuckle. Even the deer milling around in the middle of the state highway didn't interrupt our travel for more than a minute.

2. Three of my four kids are now adults! At least on paper. Kid 2 and Kid 3 turned 18 on Monday. There have been days (mostly in those first couple of years) where getting us all to their 18th birthday with health and sanity intact seemed like a lofty goal, but we made it. Mostly. If you consider us sane. I know parenting doesn't end once they turn 18, but it does feel like an important milestone.

3. Watching Kid 4 play basketball. I have mixed feelings about adding this into our schedule, but he is having a great time playing on a team with his friends, and I love watching him. Plus, it's great exercise.

4. Spotify playlists. I've been a long-time Pandora listener, but the lure of seasonal playlists enticed me over to Spotify earlier in the fall. I created a Thanksgiving playlist (so easy! and you don't have to own the songs on your playlist!), and today I've been listening to an Advent playlist from one of my favorite podcasters.

5. Checking things off on the college list. Kid 3 is taking a gap year after high school, but Kid 2 has been deep in the application process all fall. This week, he turned in a couple of applications. It's nice to get some of them crossed off the list.

6. Attending the Messiah with Kid 3. Well, about half the Messiah. Apparently, the orchestra objects to performing the whole thing. (I don't blame them. Handel is liberal with the 16th notes for the violins.) This is our fifth year attending, and I enjoy it more each time. It's performed in a small Catholic church with great acoustics, and it's a very peaceful start to December.

7. The high school music concert. The music program at our high school is wonderful, and I always enjoy the band and choir concerts. Kid 2 and Kid 3 both sing tenor in the choir, and they did a great job.

8. Being home with Michael for the first time since mid-October. First, we had a weekend in Nashville with friends, then he was traveling for work, then we were in Utah for Thanksgiving. All good things, but it's nice to have some "normal" time again.

9. Kid 1 is coming home! He decided to return home after he finishes his final college class in a couple of weeks and stay here while looking for what he jokingly called "his big-boy job." I'm thrilled to have him home for the holidays, as it was looking like that wasn't going to happen this year.

10. Advent. My Christmas experience improved dramatically when I added Advent observance, and it continues to bring calm and peace to December. I'll (hopefully) blog more about Advent in the weeks ahead.

No and yes: senior year

I've half-dreaded this school year since my twins were born. I know from experience that senior year can be stressful with one child.
But trying to guide two kids through the college application process?

There is not enough chocolate in the world to cope with the stress, thought I. Thank goodness it's a long way off.

And then I blinked, and here we are.

But I was listening to The Simple Show a couple of weeks ago, and thought I would apply the No and Yes format to this situation.

So, here are the things I say No to about the twins' senior year of high school:

Aggrandizing decisions

Where they go to school is important, but it is not The Big Decision of their lives. There is no One Right School that will magically give them a wonderful life that will be forever out of their reach if they go somewhere else.

Letting the college search overshadow life

This is not only the year they apply to college, it is also their last year living at home. I want to enjoy it, and that means spending a lot of time talking about Anything But College.

Ignoring Kid4 or my husband

Family life needs balance, and that can't happen if I become obsessed or overly stressed about the college search.

Hiding

To somewhat counter everything above, the college application process does need to happen, and that means I need to stay engaged. Retreating to my room with a book, chocolate, and wine is not an approach that works long-term, although I fully expect I'll employ it at least once or twice.

And here are the things I say Yes to about the twins' senior year of high school:

Scheduled check-ins

My kids loathe it when parents bring up stressful subjects without warning. Parent says something, kid reacts out of stress, parent reacts to the kid's stressed reaction, and so forth until everyone is stressed and angry.

In an attempt to head those exchanges off before they happen, I have declared Sundays at 1 PM our Hot Chocolate College Chats. One hour to focus on the college application process. If something occurs to me during the week, I am going to write it down and bring it up on Sunday.

Automated nagging

We already have a family Google calendar, and I fully intend to use it for all college-admissions-related reminders. Let technology be the bad guy instead of me.

Being involved

I want to be involved in this to the extent the kids will let me. Right now that mostly looks like facilitating college visits and helping with internet searches, but I expect I'll be reading essays before long.

Enjoying our time together

I want to sink into this year and relish every moment of connection and joy.

Ten things of thankful: Not moving edition

I learned on Wednesday morning that we will not be moving this summer as we had hoped.

We really wanted this move to come through. It truly seemed the best thing for us as a family and for my career. There were a lot of items in the Pro column, and we wanted those pros.

I devoted Wednesday afternoon to an intense internal temper tantrum and pity party. Thursday was spent wondering what this says about my relative value to my company. It was Friday before I could bring myself to tell extended family. And ever since, we've been trying to figure out What Comes Next.

But even on Wednesday afternoon, I was aware enough to know that this is not the end of the world. Many people I know and love are going through much, much, much worse. Seriously, this doesn't even make the list.

So, to help drive that point home, I challenged myself to come up with 10 things I am thankful for about not moving. I am writing this as I think. Let's see if I can get to 10.

1. My twins can graduate from high school with the kids they've gone to school with since preschool. I know! What kind of crazy parent moves her kids right before senior year? (The kind who thinks CA in-state tuition is a good thing.)


2. My youngest can finish elementary school with the kids he's gone to school with since kindergarten. They go on a sixth-grade trip in May and have a graduation ceremony in the evening with speeches and everything.

3. Another cross-country season. Here, as many kids as want to run can be on the cross-country team. The move would have put our kids at a much, much, much larger school. (Not hard to do.) The odds of them making the cut to be on a team were slim. I love our cross-country team, and I'm thrilled that Kid2 has another year. (Kid3 is considering not running this year.)

4. Another New England fall. Fall up here really is as amazing as the rumors say. I'm going to soak up every minute of it.

5. More time in my office. The office of this house is amazing. I know I will never have another office like it.

6. More wildlife. Although our creatures are nowhere near as tame as the deer on my parents' property (those guys are seriously blasé about humans), we've seen goshawks, turtles, bear, deer, beavers, porcupines, and owls. Not to mention all the frogs, salamanders, toads, squirrels, and chipmunks you could ever want.

7. More time to tick the last few boxes. Although it feels like we've done all the tourist things to death, due to the age spread of our kids, Kid4 either hasn't done some things or can't remember them.

8. Easier transition to driving for Kid2. We drive late on my side of the family, and so far, our kids are all taking after me. Kid2 has his permit, but not his license, and staying here for another year will give him time to develop his skills in a calm driving environment before tackling the big city.

9. Easier time zone for work. Even though the move would have put me in an office on a regular basis for the first time since 2003, I would have still spent a lot of time on the phone with people in other time zones. Eastern time works better for my natural rhythms. If I have quiet time, it's early in the morning, which is my best time for getting in the flow and working on key projects.

10. More breakfast dates with Michael. Typically, when we are both home, we go out to breakfast one morning a week. We're both morning people, and we both love breakfast food. Even though I hoped to work from home one or two days a week even after the move, breakfast dates would have been hard to schedule (see #9).

Hey! I made it. And I can think of a couple more good things about not moving this summer--like more time to declutter and finish home repair tasks before putting the house on the market, chatting with my husband in between meetings, and getting to wear comfy clothes every single day.

Again, not the Pros list I was hoping for, but I might as well try to enjoy the list Fate handed me.

Ten things of thankful: Summer arrived!

After a very long wait (see my previous post), we are basking in summer. In fact, I am writing this post on my deck.

After the office, the deck is my favorite part of this house. Now that the trees have fulled leafed, it is in shade all day long, so I don't need to worry about sunburns. There is a hammock for naps, a comfy chair for when I want to sit upright, and a great view of the bird feeder.

I also love the sounds from the deck: the brook across the road, the bamboo wind chimes, and the birds, including the neighbors' chickens and ducks.

Right now, our lilacs are having their best year ever, and the scent is heavy in the air, especially when the wind blows.

This has been a great year for flowers all around. In some cases we know why--Michael gave the lilac bushes an aggressive pruning two years ago--but others are a mystery. What made the apple trees so beautiful this spring? Why did more daffodils bloom this year? As we move from spring into summer, it appears that every blooming plant is having a great year.

I'm trying to enjoy it and not erode some of the joy by thinking, "I bet next year is going to be a real disappointment." (For those of you wondering about the move, we still don't have an official answer, but it's beginning to feel physically impossible to move cross-country before school starts. Can you even book movers on this short notice?)

For the second year, our bird feeder has attracted a wider variety of birds than we saw when we first got here. Among the more colorful and amusing: goldfinches, cardinals, nuthatches, and purple finches.The indigo sadly didn't stick around our yard, but I caught a flash of him on my walk the other day.

One of the things I don't like about where we live is how buggy it can get in the summer. Bugs love me. I taste great, and my wardrobe contains a lot of blue, which they are attracted to. I started the summer trying to tough it out, going without bug spray or using the natural stuff I got at the farmers' market last year. Which smells great, but doesn't seem to actually keep the bugs off. A few days ago, when I realized I was sitting inside because I didn't want anymore itchy bites, I went rummaging and found a container of Off Deep Woods. I haven't had a bite since. 

I love the play of light through the trees. Whether I'm on the deck or in the house, life has an underwater feel during the summer.

Of course, there's a downside to having your forty-year-old cedar-shingled house surrounded by tall trees. Some areas of the siding have been nagging at me, and this week we had contractors come fix the worst of the areas. They'll be fixing two more areas in the weeks ahead. I get a jolt of pleasure every time I see the new shingles.

I almost wrote an entire post of thankfuls about my dad, since this is Father's Day, but as I thought of the things I would include, I realized it sounded very familiar. So, go read this post from 2013.

And I'm thankful for Michael, who is such a great dad to our kids. The teen years can be hard, and they don't make as much use of some of his strengths as the earlier parenting years (he's a rock star at parenting babies and toddlers), but he is constantly thinking of them and their future and the world we are creating for them to live in. And more immediately, when it's my turn to cook and I ask the kids what they want to eat for dinner, inevitably the first four things each kid mentions are things in Michael's repertoire, not mine.

And now I'm going to try to link up to the blog hop, which I'm embarrassingly bad at.

Summer will come eventually, right?

I am not a fan of hot weather. One of the things I love about where I live is that it never gets hot. It has literally never reached 100 degrees here since they started recording temperatures.

However.

It's June.

A daily high above 69 doesn't seem too much to ask, does it? We had a high of 70 one day last week, and the forecast shows 70 as the high this coming Saturday, but our projected high tomorrow, the 5th of June, is 59. Fifty-nine.

And, although I have the webbed feet you would expect from someone born and raised in Oregon, even I get tired of this much rain in the summer.

If I weren't aware that the world does not revolve around me, it would be tempting to draw a parallel between summer's extreme tardiness in arriving and my company's extreme tardiness in deciding whether we will be moving this summer.

But humans can only live poised on the knife of uncertainty and the unknown for so long before they fall over to one side or the other.

So, despite the weather, and despite the uncertainty, we are starting to make plans for summer, in the hope that the sun will break out, and clarity will come.

The twins are each taking a college class this summer. We've tentatively blocked out a week for a family vacation, and a destination for a couple's weekend getaway. There's an outdoor concert I want to attend, and I'm 90% sure I want to train for a 5k.

But I have decided not to plant tomatoes, even though we're finally past our last frost date.

The way this summer is looking, it's doubtful I would even get one to ripen.

I'm pretty sure you need sun for that. And temps over 69.

Mindful order

At the end of last year, I decided to join the people who pick a word or phrase for the year, instead of setting resolutions. My phrase was Mindful Order.

Order because there are some areas of my life that are less organized than I would like, and the disorder causes me persistent low-level stress.

Mindful because if I get too focused on order, I can overreact to things like socks left on the kitchen stool. (When the kids were younger, I used to dream of moving to someplace warm enough for the kids to wear sandals all year long so we could eliminate socks entirely.)

I wanted to remind myself that often (always?), choosing to play Settlers of Catan on a Saturday afternoon is a better use of time than organizing a cabinet.

Over the winter, I focused on getting all the loose photos into the photo albums and made some progress on consolidating some investment accounts to give me fewer things to keep an eye on.

The last two weeks, I've started reducing the amount of paperwork we have filed. Depending on how you look at it, I am either very good or very bad at keeping papers. The paperwork is organized. With rare exceptions, I can put my hands on the piece of paper I need in a matter of minutes. But I am very bad at letting go of papers.

In our current house, this isn't that big of a deal, because we have plenty of storage, but as we look ahead to downsizing (either this summer or next), I know I'd be happier with less paper to store.

So I've begun switching us to electronic statements on various accounts. Frankly, I should have done this years ago.

We unfortunately need to keep a lot of records because of tax deductions (my husband is self-employed and works from home), but I've been downloading as many as I can still get online and backing them up, and then shredding the paper copies.

And there are a lot of papers we don't need to keep at all. (For example, statements of benefits from health care visits 9 years and three insurance companies ago.)

I'm currently very fond of 1) my shredder and 2) curbside recycling.

These are the days of . . . (Winter 2017 edition)

I wish I could remember where I saw this post format, but it seemed the perfect way to capture the overall mood of an season.

I know for most of you, we're well past winter, but I still have ice on the pond and patches of snow in the shadiest parts of my lawn, so I'm declaring it not too late to blog about winter.

So, in no particular order, these are the days of . . .

Candles
I went searching for better ways to use candles and discovered two winners. In the living room, I set a group of white pillar candles in a circular wooden tray with deep sides and then filled the tray with coffee beans. The lit candles warm the beans and release the wonderful smell of coffee into the air. And the coffee beans protect the bowl from the melted wax. In the dining room, I found a glass trifle dish at a second-hand store, filled the bottom with salt, and placed a group of the same pillar candles in the bowl.

I also put a candle in my room so I can read by candlelight.

Uncertainty
There is a potential cross-country move related to my work that has been on-again, off-again for months. One of the challenges of this winter has been to stay present in the here-and-now while also mentally preparing for the move.

Buffy
I introduced Kid2 and Kid4 to Buffy the Vampire Slayer, and we managed to get into season 5 before it went off Netflix. I love this show, and it was super fun to share it with the boys and see them appreciate it.

Machu Picchu
I have wanted to visit Machu Picchu ever since elementary school, when Heather showed us pictures from the National Geographic. This winter, I finally got to go. It was a magical day, despite getting soaked even with my rain coat. It was the culmination of a week of Inca ruins, each grander than the next. We hiked Wayna Picchu in the morning for some amazing views, and then spent the afternoon exploring the ruins. The combination of natural grandeur and archeological splendor does not disappoint.

Big Fish
Kid2 and Kid3 were in our high school's product of Big Fish. Kid3 had enough lines that he got a microphone, which was a new theater experience. The show was amazing, as always, and we are almost caught up on the sleep we lost during production week.