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!

“ To the outside world we all grow old. But not to brothers and sisters. We know each other as we always were. We know each other’s hearts. We share private family jokes. We remember family feuds and secrets, family griefs and joys. We live outside the touch of time.”

– Clara Ortega

This picture popped up when I was uploading and spoke to me immediately. It wasn't the best of the lot, technically.  It's grainy and the children are wild haired and breathless and held still for about the two seconds it took to snap this. And yet in those seconds it caught that deep peace and devotion between them.  That absolute adoration. 

I needed that today.  We tend to evaluate our progress from one increment in time to another.  Sometimes we have pretty good reason to feel like the whole thing is going awry.   What we are building here, though, is bigger than our days - the good and the bad ones.  

Grateful for this reminder. 

So this was last night….

          That's the peanut gallery watching….

…. the sister filming this…

Colin and his fiancee, Julie. 

21.

Just sit right there a minute ok? 

ok.  Why are we sitting here?

Because I want a picture.  I need to freeze this in my mind. Because like two minutes ago your Dad was walking, walking, walking his swollen wife up and down hot Texas sidewalks hoping labor would start before Gramma's plane took off again. Then a few seconds later I was telling you about how to twist those brand new stud earrings so they didn't close over.  And right after that you rode past the window on a big bay gelding, hair flying behind you.  It had to be a minute later you grabbed the keys to drive to work. And I just need a picture of this.

Laura D.  I am sending Katie your info now.  Congratulations!  Your beautiful floral crown headband will be winging its way to you soon.   

Thank you so much to  The Fierce Chipmunk for gifting so generously.  

Pulling together a room is intuitive for me.  Despite thousands of Pinterest pins and what some would consider an unreasonable quantity of decor volumes on my shelves, when actually decorating it comes down to me sitting in a room and seeing what it calls for. The ideas come 'in response to' rather than by superimposing a predetermined design.

(this may or may not be a metaphor for the rest of my life you know) 

The little girls share a small room now for the first time, in a pair of white antique twin beds.  One by one the ideas I had for them when coming to this house were rejected.  When we got here I knew just what I wanted for the windows – storybook style white pricillas, the sort that have graced dollhouses and picture book windows for generations.

I had pairs of these very curtains stored for many years.  They were purchased the same year this house was built – 1979 – for my own girlhood bedroom in Wisconsin.  I spent half an hour today coaxing out the creases and pressing the ruffles for their next stint in Utah. 

The past few weeks have been a whirlwind of activity.  We have been making over several rooms in the house that were not yet updated or not recently anyway.  It is easier to paint before furniture is placed so we just gunned it and tore into several rooms.  

Some of these rooms are repainted now but not completely "done" so I haven't posted updates yet.  I figured what the heck though.  Home improvement for most of us normal joe's happens in increments, right?  Especially when you are working on several spaces. So with that in mind here is one girl's room before: 

Last updated in the 90's I am guesstimating based upon when sponge painting hit its heyday.  The room looked a bit dingy and we were moving white furniture in. Not to mention these walls are listed as some of the top offenders for resale.  Unless you are us, looks like.  The carpet is relatively new and it wasn't in the budget to replace.  We decided on a latte color which took a couple tries to nail down tint wise.  It made the room much cleaner and brighter and tied in fine with the flooring. 

(Moving the furniture in)

Alannah and I managed this room ourselves since Moira and her Dad were taking down wallpaper in her room at the same time.  We were so happy with the after.   Window treatments will happen next (we are recycling panels from our last house)  but meantime it's the perfect space to cuddle with your big sister. 

Painting gets filed under "things that are much easier with older children in the house."  The last time I painted a room was many moons ago back at the ranch.  8yrs? More? Suffice it to say, it takes way longer with babies and toddlers.  Way.  waywaywaywayway

Hello friends! I haven’t fallen off the face of the earth. Big changes are well underway. We travelled to CO to see our sons and daughter in law. Then we closed on our new house. We immediately dove into some remodeling projects we will be sharing soon. (Today’s adventure – wallpaper removal!)
Will be taking a new turn with this space as our focus turns to home improvement for a time. We are learning so much and having a grand time. There is a major case of old house love happening. Hope you will join the fun!
Back soon.