A slacker….
A busy person…
Someone who definitely should not be called a blogger…
Whatever you want to call me, I will happily answer (unless you call me stupid, in which case I will put you in timeout because you are likely one of my children who disagrees with one of my parenting decisions). Life has been busy of late. But life is always busy because that’s life. I’ll spare you the soliloquy on busy-ness.
Instead, let me regal you with highlights of the past year.
The Wordsmiths is still going strong, though now I am entirely mobile in my work endeavors… working mostly at our kitchen counter (much to Simon’s chagrin because my husband likes things IN THEIR PLACES and my office is downstairs, NOT IN THE KITCHEN – bygones). I also work at Starbucks, local coffee shops and onsite at client’s offices. The joy of writing and designing is that it can be done from anywhere – including kitchen counters.
Shortly after spring break last year I picked up a part time job at our church as the communications coordinator. Not because I needed the work, but more because I love that particular work and it’s nice to be in an office 1.5 days a week with people I really like working with and enjoy spending time with. I have yet to regret picking up the extra hours – even when some weeks are super crazy with both jobs, kids and the rest of life. The church work is a perfect balance to the corporate work.
Last summer was packed with vacations and camps for the kids. We spent a week with my parents at the hilariously named Starvation Lake in northern Michigan. My kids would likely agree that it was like “starving” for them because of the lack of Wi-Fi – truly first world problems for them. We also spent a week with the Sawyer side of the family at a friend’s cottage on Little Whitefish Lake – glorious weather, good food and wonderful company. The kids only spent 5 weeks at daycare, filling the rest of their time around the city and state at various camps and activities. We also joined a neighborhood pool which made up most of our late afternoons and early evenings – we’ll be back again this summer and I can’t wait. They spend HOURS jumping off the diving board and I spend HOURS chatting with my friends and reading – I cannot imagine a better way to spend my time.
We took a break from taekwondo that turned into a permanent hiatus when Liam started flag football in the fall and Jack picked up gymnastics after that. Both boys will be participating in football come August – flag for Jack and full-on tackle for Liam. Should be interesting, or enlightening, or at the very least, entertaining. Jack also discovered last weekend that he might love baseball… declaring that he’s going to be the next Jim Abbott. My children do not lack for confidence in their athletic abilities considering Liam is convinced that the only thing that might keep him from the NFL draft is going to Calvin for college since they do not have a football team. We has assured him that if he gets recruited to a university for his football playing skills then we will let him go there and NOT to Calvin where we get the tuition discount. We’ll have a discussing about balanced expectations sometime in the future. Until then, we keep the hope alive because “nothing is impossible” according to Jack (thanks, Rend Collective and your song, More than Conquerors). I have tried explaining that while nothing is IMPOSSIBLE, some things are IMPROBABLE.
We got a happy visit from Australia with Simon’s niece, Jess, and her boyfriend, Louis, came to visit us just before Christmas. We so enjoy having visitors and a piece of Oz here in the States! So come visit us!
Simon’s still coaching rugby at Calvin and picking up more reffing jobs around the area for the high school games – he loves it and we love that he loves it though we miss him during the dual rugby seasons in fall AND spring. But someone is getting older and won’t be able to be out there forever so he might as well get some runs in while he is still “youngish.”
We still like our neighbors (even the ones who encourage us to workout and eat clean). And very much enjoy our neighborhood – like a whole lot. We really did luck out when we moved here… three years ago on July 1. Talk about God taking care of the details on that one.
We road-tripped once again to Texas, after taking last year off, and had a wonderful two weeks shared between my parents in Corpus Christi and Marty, Lynn and Mitch in Houston. Texas feels like a second home, but one I am happy to give up come summer and humidity. Plus we got to see Mumford & Sons in CONCERT and that ticked something off my life list. SOOOOOOO GOOOOOOOD!
For the summer we’re looking forward to camping (we bought a pop-up camper with friends last year), concerts, pool visits and sports activities, and camp at Portage Lake.
And there you have it – our year all wrapped up. Oh wait, that’s just the nice, scrubbed up version; trust me when I tell you it was also peppered with a whole lot of yelling, frustrations and things that are better left untold. Because at the end of the day, those things, while annoying at the time and certainly not some of our finest moments, are things that don’t make up the memories and stories worth recounting. They just are.
There were also a whole lot of boring, mundane moments, too – because they are part of it all, too. I welcome the boring and mundane along with the fun and the re-tellable moments.
Maybe I’ll come back to blogging, maybe I won’t. Maybe you’ll have read all this and maybe you won’t. Either way… we’ll still be friends. I still love you. God is still good. The world is still going ’round. [And George is still alive – as depicted in illustrated form below. He is, however, arthritic, going blind and on bland dog food due to bladder stones. High maintenance all the way.]
ememby 