Back-blogging

It happens every winter.  The weather turns nasty at some point and my kids (re)discover the wonders of our basement.  In it lays our ping-pong table and foosball table.  In a family our size, tournaments are possible and very much encouraged by me.  I am selfish.  Yes.  And on account of the fact that right now my kids are in the basement trying to take on their father in table tennis skills, I am going to post pictures from this fall.  Win win.

Galadriel and Rosie on halloween.  Galadriel went as a rainbow and Rosie as ketchup.  Their friends also had homemade costumes and coordinated as a "star" and "mustard".  Very sweet, very cute. Very funny.  But nothing beat Gimli's costume this year.  Clever? Or just totally desperate for something to wear?  You decide.  Yes, our family does reach record lows in terms of public humiliation.  He went as "trash" (in case you missed the label.)

This has not been a season in my life where I'm on top of anything, much less our traditional fall craft of wax-paper, leaves and crayons shaved and melted with an iron.  But...on a walk one day I had the kids grab some leaves.  I set them to work and finished the job with the iron.  I felt like a good mom again.



Sometimes it really is the little things (and no, I realize this does not actually count as something that makes you a good mom; I just felt like one.)

Along those lines, for the past few years I have also dipped leaves in beeswax and strung them in a garland. Long after the colors faded and the majority of the leaves fell, I sent the kids out for some oak leaves (that never ever decompose) and plugged in my little melting pot full of wax.  It took me until Thanksgiving to string these and hang them, but I did it in the end, and once again, I felt like I had managed to cling to a sweet little tradition.  I think more than that I was desperately reaching out to cling to something from this season before it was gone.  Just something to slow down my life as it flies by in a blur of postpartum-ness.  Words escape me.

 

And then it was Advent, and so I marked that too, with the tangible, the physical reminders of season.       It's funny, you just put out your wreath and your nativity sets and they stand there, pretty, in your home.  As the days whirl by, they sit in the corners of the home and wait to be noticed.

I see that my kids have added another figure to the advent calendar, even if I no longer orchestrate that.  I used to have to keep track of who did it last or whose turn was next.  This year, I'm just watching it all sort of happen for me.

This picture of our Jesse Tree ornaments looks nice.  We've lost about a third of them.  Blogs sure look pretty, don't they.  I wish I could say we were faithfully reading out the bible stories for each day.  But once again, where I'm unable to keep up, grace is providing.  My husband randomly grabbed "Read-alound Bible Stories" (an awesome book) and has been reading it most nights at the dinner table.  I did buy the book years ago for home schooling and read through some of it at one point...probably not all.

But I'm seeing that the efforts I put in as a younger, more energetic mom are rebounding to my favor during this season of my life.  Bilbo pulled out a book of Greek Myths the other night and had my husband read it to him.  Back in the day, I would have had that all laid out as part of our history plan. I would have been the one reading that to the kids during school hours.  Now it's just for fun.  Now it's not me reading it.  But the good stuff is in the house, and they are pulling from it.  I'm just sharing this as encouragement to young moms.  Homeschooling kickbacks, right?:)

Guess that's it for now--Arwen's arriving home from pro-life club and I want to go hear how it went!