No it’s not that but half my family is wheeling their way to the midwest as I type this morning and I feel like I am missing large parts of my life. I AM missing large parts of my life. 

Allen’s parents are scaling back their farming operation and had lots of materials they no longer needed. We, being in the building up mode, had need of them so they graciously offered them to us and he went to bring them back.  Colin went along since he is leaving in a few weeks for the new college (brace yourselves for a weepy post!) as did Moira and the "little boys" as Aidan and Kieran are affectionately referred to.

I had to take another son to town yesterday morning and was in such a rush to get his paperwork together I totally wasn’t connecting that the little ones would be gone when I came back since dh was leaving before that time. They were packed and ready but *I* wasn’t ready and hadn’t passed out hugs. When that hit me on the highway I was devastated. As I was when I came back home some hours later and the trailer and family were on their way. As I was last night passing their neatly made (hey there is your first clue something is amiss around here lol!) empty beds.

After he helped with chores,Asher and I filled the evening downloading new piano sheet music (his passion) and wrapping up his math course so he can dive into the new one.  Alannah and I had learned a new crochet stitch (thank you Becki!) and we got out the paints for a very pleasant evening posing as Susan Branch wannabe’s. <g> Actually we weren’t half bad and the process had a profoundly relaxing effect. We sat on the bathroom floor together later while the baby was bathing and wound yarn balls, a tedious but necessary job that goes much better with a friend. Soon we can begin the new baby’s project.

It got me thinking. (dangerous I know – that means she isn’t done talking…..) So many of us are trying so hard to make quality time for our children. We know we ought to, we know it is the right thing to do. Yet, how many of us are ENJOYING ourselves??  I am tellin’ ya, if you aren’t having fun something still needs tweaking. What is holding you back?  Is it the mess in the school room/kitchen/closet eating at you?  Is it fatigue? Is it upset over another relationship?  And better yet what steps can we take to eliminate those joy-robbers?  Because that is what they do. They suck the joy out of what can and should be one of the happiest times of our lives. This is not a time to survive.  This is a time to thrive and to relish.

Have you painted lately? Not with art store hair brushes and expensive oils but with a buck fifty plastic Crayola watercolors and a small notebook?  That is all I have experience with but it is darn good fun.  Even with the baby threatening to eat the dog’s rawhide the whole time lol! Have you sat with a toddler in a high chair for all of the ten minutes they can sit for and showed him a book and a toy and talked about his fingers and nose?  Because next month he may be beyond that and this window will be closed forever. Don’t miss it. 

One never knows what one is going to do.  One starts a painting and then it becomes something quite different.  -Pablo Picasso