Last night as I was changing for bed I realized I had spent right around three hours online during the day: about an hour at naptime and pretty much every moment from the time I tucked the kids into bed until then, as I was getting ready for bed.
It embarassed me.
I have been known to think of other people, "If he didn't spend so much time staring at the TV he could accomplish so much more." Or, "I don't know how she stands wasting hours every day watching the meaningless stuff they put on the television." It's not pretty, I know. Everyone has a right to choose how they spend their downtime.
Last night I felt like a hypocrite.
It wasn't like I was paying bills, or blogging, or doing research for school for those three hours. I was just tooling around, clicking from one link to the next. Watching the meaningless stuff people put on the internet. Not accomplishing anything.
The list of things that I want to do is long. I have Christmas projects to get started on. I love to read. I've stopped journaling and have been meaning to pick it up again. I haven't been setting aside time to pray.
So if I have all these activities that I both should do and want to do, what am I doing sitting in the most uncomfortable chair in our house staring at the computer screen?
No idea, other than this clicking around aimlessly makes me feel like I'm busy while putting forth almost zero effort. And sometimes at the end of a hard day, it is nice to have that for a few minutes. But for three hours? That's a little extreme for me.
Today I spent an hour online. That's an improvement I'll take.
Monday, October 1, 2012
Monday, July 16, 2012
Blueberries
I love to pick blueberries. I've been picking them with my mom since I was a little girl. She loves picking blueberries, which, I'm sure, is where I got my enthusiasm for it.
Today we introduced the rest of my family to our blueberry patch--a U-pick farm market twenty minutes from our house. I wouldn't let the kids come with me to pick strawberries, because I was afraid they'd run around unintentionally stomping on berries. But I figured they couldn't do too much harm to the blueberry bushes and it would be a good way to let them see how some of our food grows.
When Ben found out we were going, he offered to come with us even though he'd have to get up after only five hours of sleep. Turns out he'd never picked blueberries before either.
Last night I read Blueberries for Sal for our bedtime story, trying to drum up some excitement for our berry picking adventure. Plus, I just love that book.
I kept my expectations low, since Mom and I would be picking with three children under the age of six and one husband without experience. Turns out low expectations were unneccesary.
The berries were just ripening, so there were more green ones than blue. (I may have jumped the gun on picking, but I just wanted fresh berries so badly! We'll go back when they are more fully ripened.) The kids each took a little bucket. Anna started filling hers with hard little green berries, but soon gave that up for eating almost anything off the bush she could. After a few sour ones, she got pickier.
Lucas started by trying to fill his bucket. He picked a lot of purple ones, which Mom and I tried to explain to him would taste sour. He insisted he liked the sour ones. In fact he told all of us several times that if we picked a purple one on accident he would eat it, because he likes sour ones. Soon he had eaten everything out of his pail and, like Anna (and Sal), moved on to just eating straight off the bush.
By this time Ben and Nick had wandered farther down the rows to find some easier, and shadier, picking. After a long time Nick came back asking if we wanted to see his berries. I was shocked to find that his pail was half full of beautiful, big, blue berries. There wasn't a green or purple one to be seen. He went back to his dad and picked until the little kids started to get antsy and we got ready to leave.
I was so proud of him, not just for picking good berries, but for being so cheerful and happy about it. Because Nick doesn't like blueberries. He won't even try them. But he was having so much fun just hanging out with Ben in the berry patch that he didn't care. He picked a little over a pound all by himself.
So in the end I got about seven pounds of fresh blueberries and a happy morning with my family. What more could I want? Maybe we'll have to make family blueberry picking a summertime tradition.
Today we introduced the rest of my family to our blueberry patch--a U-pick farm market twenty minutes from our house. I wouldn't let the kids come with me to pick strawberries, because I was afraid they'd run around unintentionally stomping on berries. But I figured they couldn't do too much harm to the blueberry bushes and it would be a good way to let them see how some of our food grows.
When Ben found out we were going, he offered to come with us even though he'd have to get up after only five hours of sleep. Turns out he'd never picked blueberries before either.
Last night I read Blueberries for Sal for our bedtime story, trying to drum up some excitement for our berry picking adventure. Plus, I just love that book.
I kept my expectations low, since Mom and I would be picking with three children under the age of six and one husband without experience. Turns out low expectations were unneccesary.
The berries were just ripening, so there were more green ones than blue. (I may have jumped the gun on picking, but I just wanted fresh berries so badly! We'll go back when they are more fully ripened.) The kids each took a little bucket. Anna started filling hers with hard little green berries, but soon gave that up for eating almost anything off the bush she could. After a few sour ones, she got pickier.
Lucas started by trying to fill his bucket. He picked a lot of purple ones, which Mom and I tried to explain to him would taste sour. He insisted he liked the sour ones. In fact he told all of us several times that if we picked a purple one on accident he would eat it, because he likes sour ones. Soon he had eaten everything out of his pail and, like Anna (and Sal), moved on to just eating straight off the bush.
By this time Ben and Nick had wandered farther down the rows to find some easier, and shadier, picking. After a long time Nick came back asking if we wanted to see his berries. I was shocked to find that his pail was half full of beautiful, big, blue berries. There wasn't a green or purple one to be seen. He went back to his dad and picked until the little kids started to get antsy and we got ready to leave.
I was so proud of him, not just for picking good berries, but for being so cheerful and happy about it. Because Nick doesn't like blueberries. He won't even try them. But he was having so much fun just hanging out with Ben in the berry patch that he didn't care. He picked a little over a pound all by himself.
So in the end I got about seven pounds of fresh blueberries and a happy morning with my family. What more could I want? Maybe we'll have to make family blueberry picking a summertime tradition.
Tuesday, June 26, 2012
Onions and My Son
At our house, new dishes are referred to as "experiments". It lowers the pressure on me to only try new dishes that I'm sure everyone would love. Because, hey, it's just an experiment.
Today I experimented with Ham and Noodle Casserole. The impetus for this was that I made my menu plan for last week without actually looking in the freezer, and I assumed that I had more ham slices in there. Sadly the day came to actually eat said ham slices only to discover they were gone and all that was left of my giant ham was two cups of diced ham.
Ham, noodles, and cheese...how could this go wrong? Well, the onions. My oldest son doesn't like onions. But I knew that this dish needed them for flavor so in they went. Sadly, in my first bite, I got a "crunch". Should have sauteed them first; they weren't raw, but they were really, really noticeable. Even Ben commented that he didn't like the onions so well, and he never complains about my cooking.
The good news is that I didn't have to pick them out of Nick's meal. Of course, that's only because he wouldn't even try a single piece of ham.
So why was I picking onions out of the casserole?
Because of Lucas. He wanted to eat them. By themselves. And the ones on my plate that I tried to quietly set aside. And the ones on Ben's plate. And the ones stuck to the serving spoon.
Happily he did also eat the ham and noodles.
Today I experimented with Ham and Noodle Casserole. The impetus for this was that I made my menu plan for last week without actually looking in the freezer, and I assumed that I had more ham slices in there. Sadly the day came to actually eat said ham slices only to discover they were gone and all that was left of my giant ham was two cups of diced ham.
Ham, noodles, and cheese...how could this go wrong? Well, the onions. My oldest son doesn't like onions. But I knew that this dish needed them for flavor so in they went. Sadly, in my first bite, I got a "crunch". Should have sauteed them first; they weren't raw, but they were really, really noticeable. Even Ben commented that he didn't like the onions so well, and he never complains about my cooking.
The good news is that I didn't have to pick them out of Nick's meal. Of course, that's only because he wouldn't even try a single piece of ham.
So why was I picking onions out of the casserole?
Because of Lucas. He wanted to eat them. By themselves. And the ones on my plate that I tried to quietly set aside. And the ones on Ben's plate. And the ones stuck to the serving spoon.
Happily he did also eat the ham and noodles.
Saturday, May 12, 2012
April Goal Update
Well, here we are, almost the middle of May and I have yet to report on how close I came to reaching the goals I set for April.
There's a reason for that.
Big Project Goal: Clean the Garage
I did make huge strides in the garage. I cleaned the entryway and under the stoop. I swept grunge and cobwebs off many of the walls. I threw stuff out. Ben put a new spring I found on the garage door and it doesn't go thunk when it moves now.
The back of the garage is still in need of sorting and cleaning. But the improvement is vast and makes me feel much better about the garage as a whole. Now that the weather has, mostly, improved, I'm dedicating my out door time to the actual outdoors...weeding, transplanting, weeding, putting in annuals, weeding....
Daily Habit Development: Get to Bed on Time
This was just a great big failure. I went through a couple of weeks where I just couldn't make myself go to bed. I'd find myself standing in the bathroom reading a magazine. I was tired, I was sleepy, and yet I was up.
I still think that adding this habit to my day would make a huge difference. I still hope to get to the point where I'm going to bed around ten. But for now, I'm just working on relaxing before I'm exhusted, so that when it's time to get into bed I feel like I'm ready for sleep, whatever time that may be.
There's a reason for that.
Big Project Goal: Clean the Garage
I did make huge strides in the garage. I cleaned the entryway and under the stoop. I swept grunge and cobwebs off many of the walls. I threw stuff out. Ben put a new spring I found on the garage door and it doesn't go thunk when it moves now.
The back of the garage is still in need of sorting and cleaning. But the improvement is vast and makes me feel much better about the garage as a whole. Now that the weather has, mostly, improved, I'm dedicating my out door time to the actual outdoors...weeding, transplanting, weeding, putting in annuals, weeding....
Daily Habit Development: Get to Bed on Time
This was just a great big failure. I went through a couple of weeks where I just couldn't make myself go to bed. I'd find myself standing in the bathroom reading a magazine. I was tired, I was sleepy, and yet I was up.
I still think that adding this habit to my day would make a huge difference. I still hope to get to the point where I'm going to bed around ten. But for now, I'm just working on relaxing before I'm exhusted, so that when it's time to get into bed I feel like I'm ready for sleep, whatever time that may be.
Friday, April 13, 2012
Five Minute Friday: Good-bye
The Gypsy Mama gives us a topic and we write for five minutes, unfiltered, no editing, no going back.
Good-bye.
I've been thinking lately about the slow way we say good-bye to our children every day. As they grow up, needing us in different ways, they start to leave us behind. And because it is so gradual we never actually stop to say "good-bye."
In fact I'm so busy doing the million other things that need doing, that sometimes I don't even notice until weeks later that something has changed.
My daughter used to pull a chair over to the sink and stick her little hands in the water everytime I washed the dishes. It drove me nuts, but part of me loved that she wanted to be right next to me. She hasn't done this in weeks.
When we moved my three-year old started coming into our room in the middle of the night to snuggle for a few minutes before heading back to his own bed to sleep. I loved his warm little body curled up next to me. He's only done it once in the last month, and he climbed into bed on my husband's side.
My kindergartener...here's where I really see the good-byes coming my way. I like the quiet of only having two while he's at school, but it's only a couple days a week. Next year he'll be gone all day, every day. I will miss him. So much. We will have so many fewer opportunities to talk, to play, to hang out.
I don't like good-byes. And I'm not good at them. So maybe it's for the best that so many of these childhood connections pass quietly. Because as much as I mourn the loss of their baby and toddler days, I know I have so much more to look forward to.
Good-bye.
I've been thinking lately about the slow way we say good-bye to our children every day. As they grow up, needing us in different ways, they start to leave us behind. And because it is so gradual we never actually stop to say "good-bye."
In fact I'm so busy doing the million other things that need doing, that sometimes I don't even notice until weeks later that something has changed.
My daughter used to pull a chair over to the sink and stick her little hands in the water everytime I washed the dishes. It drove me nuts, but part of me loved that she wanted to be right next to me. She hasn't done this in weeks.
When we moved my three-year old started coming into our room in the middle of the night to snuggle for a few minutes before heading back to his own bed to sleep. I loved his warm little body curled up next to me. He's only done it once in the last month, and he climbed into bed on my husband's side.
My kindergartener...here's where I really see the good-byes coming my way. I like the quiet of only having two while he's at school, but it's only a couple days a week. Next year he'll be gone all day, every day. I will miss him. So much. We will have so many fewer opportunities to talk, to play, to hang out.
I don't like good-byes. And I'm not good at them. So maybe it's for the best that so many of these childhood connections pass quietly. Because as much as I mourn the loss of their baby and toddler days, I know I have so much more to look forward to.
Thursday, April 12, 2012
April's (midmonth?) Goals
When I started writing this post it was the beginning of the month. But, somehow, I never got around to posting it. So without further ado, here are the goals I've been working on in April.
The Big Project
April's big project is the garage. We don't actually park in the garage; I'm not really sure why this is. What it means though, is that we can just stash stuff out there and then forget about it. Ben actually got started on this for me earlier in the year so the main area is sort of clear.
Mostly I need to sort out the junk from the stuff we actually use and want. There are still a lot of miscellaneous items left from my grandpa and all of the stuff that we moved in with that just sort of got buried. Some of it will go straight to the garbage, some in the yard sale pile, and whatever Ben says we still need I'll try to find a home for.
One I get the trash separated from the treasure, I actually need to clean the garage. There are years of cobwebs out there to sweep off the walls. Sand from the kids' toys needs to be swept out. I've started by cleaning the door. It looks much better, and I'm no longer afraid to push it open with my hip when my hands are full.
The ultimate purpose of all this is so that I can move the ever-expanding pile of garage sale goods out of the basement and start organizing for the actual sale, which will be at the beginning of June.
New Habit to Form:
I considered taking a month off from this to work on maintaining the previous habit-goals I'd set for myself. I really didn't do very well in March. Although I continued getting up and showering right away, I bombed on writing in the kids' journals every week, and I wasn't very disciplined in exercising each morning.
But then I glanced over my master plan, which has ideas from which to draw these monthly goals and I realized that if I want these ealier habits to truely stick, it was time to begin working on another one: Go To Bed On Time.
I'm so very bad at this. I used to go to bed at ten or just a bit after every night. But when there is no one here to go to bed with, I tend to find all sorts of little things that need to be taken care of before I head upstairs. So while I think I'm going to bed at ten or so, by the time I'm actually in bed turning out the light it's after eleven. Which just isn't enough sleep for me.
I'm attempting to get my bedtime back to the 10 to 10:30 range. That should make getting up in the morning easier. And then instead of just stretching in the morning, I could sneak out of the house for an early morning walk as the weather gets nicer and the sun rises earlier.
Mid-Month Confession
Since almost half the month has already slipped by, I will admit right now that I'm flat-out failing on the going to bed earlier business. Last night I turned off the light at 10:50. But I was up at 6:30 this morning, if that counts for anything. Here's to improving my discipline over the next couple of weeks.
The Big Project
April's big project is the garage. We don't actually park in the garage; I'm not really sure why this is. What it means though, is that we can just stash stuff out there and then forget about it. Ben actually got started on this for me earlier in the year so the main area is sort of clear.
Mostly I need to sort out the junk from the stuff we actually use and want. There are still a lot of miscellaneous items left from my grandpa and all of the stuff that we moved in with that just sort of got buried. Some of it will go straight to the garbage, some in the yard sale pile, and whatever Ben says we still need I'll try to find a home for.
One I get the trash separated from the treasure, I actually need to clean the garage. There are years of cobwebs out there to sweep off the walls. Sand from the kids' toys needs to be swept out. I've started by cleaning the door. It looks much better, and I'm no longer afraid to push it open with my hip when my hands are full.
The ultimate purpose of all this is so that I can move the ever-expanding pile of garage sale goods out of the basement and start organizing for the actual sale, which will be at the beginning of June.
New Habit to Form:
I considered taking a month off from this to work on maintaining the previous habit-goals I'd set for myself. I really didn't do very well in March. Although I continued getting up and showering right away, I bombed on writing in the kids' journals every week, and I wasn't very disciplined in exercising each morning.
But then I glanced over my master plan, which has ideas from which to draw these monthly goals and I realized that if I want these ealier habits to truely stick, it was time to begin working on another one: Go To Bed On Time.
I'm so very bad at this. I used to go to bed at ten or just a bit after every night. But when there is no one here to go to bed with, I tend to find all sorts of little things that need to be taken care of before I head upstairs. So while I think I'm going to bed at ten or so, by the time I'm actually in bed turning out the light it's after eleven. Which just isn't enough sleep for me.
I'm attempting to get my bedtime back to the 10 to 10:30 range. That should make getting up in the morning easier. And then instead of just stretching in the morning, I could sneak out of the house for an early morning walk as the weather gets nicer and the sun rises earlier.
Mid-Month Confession
Since almost half the month has already slipped by, I will admit right now that I'm flat-out failing on the going to bed earlier business. Last night I turned off the light at 10:50. But I was up at 6:30 this morning, if that counts for anything. Here's to improving my discipline over the next couple of weeks.
Thursday, April 5, 2012
My March Goals Results
My big goal for March was to paint Anna's room. The blue-grey wallboard was not doing it for me when it came to my little girl's room. So to cheer it up a bit I chose a creamy beige that makes the room feel much warmer and complements all her little pictures and knick knacks.
Thanks to my mother watching the little kids while Nick was in school one day, this was a success. Everything got one good coat and 3+ walls got a thin second coat. Unfortuantly, I then ran out of paint. The blue splotches show through in the area behind the crib and wall hanging, so if I ever rearrange or redecorate I'm going to have to spring for some more paint to do a cover up.
I was also supposed to be developing the habit of exercising daily. I started out a little slow, but was into it by the second week. The time change actually helped me fit it in each day because the boys were sleeping in a little later than they had been previously. Then we had the most beautiful weather the next week. It is so much easier to get out of bed when I don't start shivering as soon as I throw the covers back!
But then last week we returned to regular March-like weather and getting out of bed in the morning got a lot harder. And then my in-laws were visiting for a few days. And here we are in April.
So while I wasn't successful at keeping up with this every day, I did learn that I like a little warm-up first thing in the morning. I actually missed it on the days I didn't do it. Even though ten minutes seems a little pathetic, it really made a difference in the beginning of my day. My body felt awake and prepared to get going. I didn't stand in the shower half asleep. And since I liked it I don't think it's going to be too hard to get back on track and keep this as a daily routine.
Thanks to my mother watching the little kids while Nick was in school one day, this was a success. Everything got one good coat and 3+ walls got a thin second coat. Unfortuantly, I then ran out of paint. The blue splotches show through in the area behind the crib and wall hanging, so if I ever rearrange or redecorate I'm going to have to spring for some more paint to do a cover up.
I was also supposed to be developing the habit of exercising daily. I started out a little slow, but was into it by the second week. The time change actually helped me fit it in each day because the boys were sleeping in a little later than they had been previously. Then we had the most beautiful weather the next week. It is so much easier to get out of bed when I don't start shivering as soon as I throw the covers back!
But then last week we returned to regular March-like weather and getting out of bed in the morning got a lot harder. And then my in-laws were visiting for a few days. And here we are in April.
So while I wasn't successful at keeping up with this every day, I did learn that I like a little warm-up first thing in the morning. I actually missed it on the days I didn't do it. Even though ten minutes seems a little pathetic, it really made a difference in the beginning of my day. My body felt awake and prepared to get going. I didn't stand in the shower half asleep. And since I liked it I don't think it's going to be too hard to get back on track and keep this as a daily routine.
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