This is life right now. In short stills. 

Starting very early when the phone rings in the bedroom.  It is Teen Son confirming we have his 6am practice on the radar and one of us is in fact coming down to drive him there.  "Of course!" I say as I come to and negotiate with husband. 

Clearly my rock-paper-scissors skills need some work because here I am at "6 o'clock Lights."  It's like Friday Night Lights except you know, 6am.  Sheesh.  Tired.  Upside was seeing the moon over the canyon just before sunrise. 

Home for breakfast.  I drink green lemonade channeling my best High Desert Susan except I am not tall and lean and blonde but short and vein-y and age spotty but hey.  I am drinking vegs for breakfast and there should be points for that right? 

After feeding folks and passing them to a big person I drive Moira to work. On the way there I politely listen as the Civil Wars wail or Taylor Swift sings about her boyfriends.  Then I pull out of her workplace drive and hit 80s on 8…

It gets loud.  When I am alone in the car I am this guy y'all.  Totally.  

 

So by the time I hit the house again I am caffeinated and have cleared my lungs by singing at the top of them. Jumped, shouted, and let it all out. Inside of my head I am now 16 and feeling the noise, thinking about dancing at the rec center on Friday nights with this boy I ended up marrying.  80s.  Hair bands.   Sigh.  And then giggle.  Because I have this flashback to Dana Carvey spoofing our favorite bands.  So I walk in the house and download this and make the teens listen. After trying to explain who Dana Carvey is.  Was.  Sigh again.

 

I apologize for the ear worm : )   So anyway.  I move back to grown up mode and we spend the mornings doing lessons. Here they are very psyched about new binders and new books. 

We have a new bag of library books. I took a picture because the base library has no online computer system for us to track them. It's a little twilight zone-y since it's so much like it was when we lived here in the 90s and hasn't been since. 

 

This is my new read…

And we have a new piano teacher who is all kinds of awesome. She worked with us to alternate girl and boy lessons each week.  It saves us money and frankly it gives me extra time to ensure everyone has mastered their homework pieces before the next lesson.

She also has a beautifully landscaped yard full of raised bed gardens which were overflowing. After we got Tess all settled she handed Abbie and I baskets and gave us the tour telling us to please thin out the veggies.  This is pretty fabulous considering my garden now finally has exactly two tomatoes and three tiny rock hard green peppers.  Not my forte. As in, if we had to live on what I could grow our little clan would have died of starvation long ago. BUT we have piano teacher/gardener extraordinaire now so we bag enough tomatoes to make a vat of salsa.

 

Or rather, hand off the tomatoes for Alannah to make salsa.  Me?  I am surfing for this…

 …because it is game time for two boys.  One is a home game, one meets the bus, and a third comes to a game in practice gear to be dropped off to his team at halftime.

A glance at the dining room recently. Because dinner happens.  Sometimes super late. It's the one constant.  Besides my singing in the car. 

More often than not the doorbell will ring just after dinner and they will run around with the neighbor girl for "just a couple minutes please!"  I asked if Archie could run with them instead of tipping the garbage can over while we do dishes.  They say sure.  He can be "it."  Wanna bet who wins? 

This day ends with rosary on the deck and the smoke from a distant fire. (sorry, couldn't resist. Still tuned into oldies radio)   There is a lot on my goals list not happening lately.  I stopped looking at the list because pretty much if it doesn't start with school, football, food, or work/carpool it probably isn't going to happen just yet so there's no point. Trying not to stress over that.  (too much)  The kids are happy and the stuff will get done eventually. If you come to my house I will feed you salsa while sticking to this story should you notice my growing list. 

Ok super late again.  I will regret this tomorrow but wanted to snapshot life right now.  What does life look like right now in your world?  If you do a phone snap day do link!