Last 5 for February for 2016!

1) Today Neil came home a little early and we went for a walk in the woods. It was SO nice to have that time outside--it's been a long winter! We all wore our boots and tromped through the streams and the mud and checked out all the newly fallen trees. At one point Neil yanked a smaller sapling out of the root-ball of another fallen tree (the sapling was entangled with the big tree, so it had been blown over too). It was about 30 feet long and he spent a good ten minutes breaking it up into chunks, one of which he challenged Isaac to carry for the rest of our hike--which was about a mile and a half. I was not a fan of this (as I expressed loudly and repeatedly) since I was worried that it would be way too much for Isaac (green wood so it was pretty darn heavy), but man, that kid was determined to get his log out of the woods! We finally made it back to the car and wedged it in so he could bring it home as firewood. Isaac was SUPER proud of himself and wrote a long entry about it in the letters we wrote later than night for FHE, which brings me to...

2) For leap year we wrote letters to ourselves to open on February 20, 2020. Crazy to realize that Abigail will be almost 15 by then! It was really fun thinking about where we would be and what advice we would give our future selves (my favorite was Juliet's advice to her 12-yr-old self: "Wear makeup for special occasions and distribute your money with great thought").

3) I made some Irish soda bread today. Normally I don't like Irish soda bread but a few years ago I found this Ina Garten recipe that I love (I sub in whole milk + vinegar for the buttermilk and use raisins rather than currants) and last night at about 9 PM I remembered that I liked it and decided to make some today. It was just as delicious as I recalled, and I sang along to John Denver as I was kneading, and felt very in love with the world and thought over and over again about one of my favorite poems that is thumb-tacked to my corkboard inside my cabinet door where I keep all the recipes I really love but don't yet have memorized. It's called "Baking Bread" and it's by Carol Lynn Pearson. My favorite stanzas are these:

And never even tried to explain
Her near-religious ritual:

How the flour on her fingers
Was the sun and the rain
And the earth

How the thump of her palms
On the dough
Was the dance of women
On the ancient threshing floor

How the smell of baking
Leavened her
And left her believing that
We rise, we rise

And
How the cutting
Of the first warm slice
For the first child home
Made her a bounteous goddess
With life in her hand.



4) I was able to do speedwork during my run today. This is so encouraging and wonderful! I'm back up to 5 runs a week, and adding in speedwork is the next step. I'm still SO much slower than I was before, but I can see improvements every week. I've read many anecdotal accounts of runners saying that stress fractures continue to bother them for the next year or even longer, so I'm just trying to keep my expectations and my goals reasonable. No more 60-mile weeks for me in the near future, but 30 or 40 is looking pretty darn good right now. :-)

5) I finished my course website for summer over the weekend. This is the first time I will have taught a summer course online, and the first time I've taught summer classes since 2007. I think it should go pretty smoothly, but it's the putting-together of the website that always looms large in my mind, and it's such a relief to have it done and well out of the way before classes start in June! (Yes, I know it's way in advance, but this is when I happened to have the time to do it.) Super glad to have all the coding and file transfers done, especially since HTML is something I've picked up along the way rather than actually knowing how to do because I've learned it formally, so it's still in that super-proud-of-myself stage when I actually get things working properly.

And that's it--Five for February is a wrap! It's been nice to revisit my blog. I think I'll have to do it more often. :-)

2/28

Just about to the end of February!

Today's good things:

1) Nathan finally took a nap today. It's been four miserable days of no naps and up a dozen times at night. It's been so awful, and he has been increasingly cranky and miserable. Today he was throwing himself around on the floor yelling like a banshee before church, so I ended up staying home with him so that he could take a nap. Man oh man I worked for it--took him on a 2-mile walk and then stuffed him full at lunch, and voila--he slept for 3 hours and woke up acting like himself again.

2) Beautiful beautiful weather today--our walk was gorgeous! Sunny and windy and just perfect. And I taught Nathan the great joys of cattails. I loved hearing him chortle as he watching the cattail fuzz sail away in the wind!

3) Neil made dinner today, as usual on Sundays. Always such a treat and I love the opportunity to relax a bit!

4) Our super-diligent hometeacher came over tonight for a nice chat. He has been one of our hometeachers for a few years and he always visits us whether his companion can make it or not. I feel like he really cares about our family and often checks in with us throughout the month to see how we are doing.

5) I'm always so grateful for Sunday nights once the kids are in bed and the chance to finally spend some one-on-one time with Neil where neither of us are working or feeling guilty for not working. It's my favorite time of the week!

2/27

Not as regular as I'd like with these, but I AM blogging more regularly! I need some good-things focus tonight after spending 90 minutes putting Nathan to bed (off and on...Neil and I switched off for awhile until he left for work half an hour ago). Man oh man that kid is driving me nuts right now...he hasn't taken a nap the last 3 days; he's woken up at least half a dozen times at night for five nights running, and basically I don't know how he is not keeling over in his tracks because I sure feel like I'm going to!

Anyway, good things from today:

1) We spent a good hour at the library this morning finding old and new favorites. We seem to gravitate to the library a lot these days on Saturday (it's a good post-chores outing!) and it's always delightful the rest of the day because the kids disappear with their books!

2) We also stopped for doughnuts at our favorite local place, which we haven't done in almost a year. I love it so much--donuts are crazy cheap (even their soda machine is still 50 cents!) and it is this teeny tiny little A-frame place that seats about 10 people, and one wall is plastered with business cards and missing dog photos and all the kind of small-town things that I just adore. We don't live in a (very) small town but this place pretends that we do and it is so fun. Plus Luke wore his monkey costume and I got a real kick out of the monkey tail dangling down over his little spinning chair.

3) Neil and I had a delightful 9 mile-run together today. I'm slowly but surely building my mileage back up (27 this week, hurrah!) and it was a beautiful day to run--sunny, blue skies, and the snow encasing everything was melting so quickly we could tell a real difference just on the out and back! I struck up a conversation with a guy we met on the trail; turns out he's the race director for the race we're doing next month! Another small-town kind of feeling and he was just the nicest guy ever and thanked us about ten times for signing up for the race (um, no, thank YOU for the massive organizational feats you are performing!).

4) The kids did a really good job with their chores today and I enjoyed so much the feeling of a pristine house with tons of sunshine pouring in and my beloved John Denver playing loudly as we worked together. I feel like we are ALWAYS cleaning up or doing laundry or washing dishes, but I love the peaceful calm it brings me to see perfectly clear counters and shining floors. I know everyone's opinions on this vary so widely, but I just am 1000 times happier in a clean home in the same way that my body feels better when I am drinking tons of water and eating lots of vegetables.

5) This is from yesterday, but I finished the worst week of grading off and I'm SO glad it's done! I hate grading weeks like crazy.

February hearts

We finally took down our hearts today, so I thought I'd write them down quickly. Each person wrote what they loved about everyone else (Nathan made some beautiful scribbly hearts).

Neil:

• Is a good engineer and always tells me interesting things about machines. (Abigail)
• He is very kind and I love him SO much. (Juliet)
• You have really fun ideas! (Isaac)
• He gives me Tylenol when he thinks I'm sick. (Luke)
• Works very hard all day & then comes home to work hard again as a dad, then goes back to the lab--never gives up no matter how hard it gets. (Rachael)\

Rachael:

• Takes care of me and loves me SO much, as much as I love her. (Juliet)
• Works hard all the time, even when she's not feeling well. (Abigail)
• Sacrifices everything for her family, because she loves us. (Neil)
• Really fun activities for Family Home Evening. (Isaac)
• She helps me write stuff. She's nice. (Luke)

Abigail:

• She plays games with me. (Luke)
• She likes to play Legos with me. (Juliet)
• Works diligently, even when she doesn't want to. (Neil)
• Is very smart. (Isaac)
• One thing I love about Abigail is that she is very responsible and I can trust that if she says she will do something, I know she will do it. (Rachael)

Juliet:

• Is fun, chases me, and a good K'nex creator. (Isaac)
• Is always cheerful--and I love when she is my princessball. (Neil)
• I love how she is always so quick to help Luke and very sensitive to other people's feelings; she is the first one to comfort someone who is sad. (Rachael)
• Always plays Legos with me and is my friend. (Abigail)
• She plays tons of games with me. (Luke)

Isaac:

• I chase him and play fun games with him. (Luke)
• I love how he carefully considers things and wants to know how things work. (Neil)
• Makes huge and fun K'nex creations. (Abigail)
• I love the way Isaac lets his younger brothers help with building structures or puzzles. He is a great teacher! (Rachael)
• He is very kind to everyone. (Juliet)

Luke: 

• In dress-up games, Luke is always funny and looks funny, as in cute. (Abigail)
• World's. Best. Laugh. And smackers! (Neil)
• He chases me, and he has lots of ideas. (Isaac)
• He is very cute and I love playing with him SOOOOO much. (Juliet)
• I love how his mind works and all the funny stories he tells & the inventive questions he asks. (Rachael

Nathan:

• Has the best smile and always manages to cheer me up. (Neil)
• Happy, cheerful, and says really cute little things. (Rachael)
• Is fun and really cute. (Isaac)
• He is So cute and I (heart) playing with him. (Juliet)
• He plays a lot with me. (Luke)
• Is cute, tells interesting stories, and loves me. (Abigail)

2/23

Today's five good things:

• Neil did an A+ mopping job on the kitchen floor last night after dinner. It was the first thing I noticed about the kitchen this morning and all day every time I swept something up I felt so loved because of that sparkling-clean kitchen floor, thanks to my thoughtful husband. 
• Luke and I finished On the Banks of Plum Creek today. Man oh man do I love reading the Little House books to the current four-year-old! We read about forty pages today because how could we possibly stop during the blizzard to end all blizzards? (Just wait, Ingalls family, just wait...you have no idea what De Smet has in store for you.)
• We have a crazy winter storm on its way--the kind where the weather alerts keep breaking through radio programming. I am a) excited that we might get ONE decent snow storm this year (we haven't had a single snow day, and that's kind of criminal) and b) really pleased that I went to the grocery store this morning before everyone went all Snowmageddon crazy on the shelves. 
• Speaking of which, if you go to the store at 8:30 AM, you may have two grumpy kids with you who have not fully acclimated to the day, but you can also score individual Chobani cups for 55 cents each. I was pretty excited about that. Nathan ate two for lunch and I was even MORE excited about that. :-)
• I am done with both grading and running for the day, so after I hit publish on this post I am going to bed. With a book. And I will be asleep very very soon. I have been sleeping SO much ever since we left for skiing and I'm still not caught up and feeling energized again yet!

Skiing with the girls, take 2

I went absentee on my Five for February posts since we took a few days to head up to Northern Michigan and ski with the girls. Next year Isaac will join us--I asked him when we were all home again if he's really excited to go next year, and he responded, "Well...kind of. I really want to go skiing, but I love my time with Grandma and Grandpa too, so I will be sad to miss it!" My parents really are the best. Isaac, Luke, and Nathan enjoyed three days with them while Neil & I took the girls for three days of skiing.

The snow wasn't the best this year--it got pretty warm the second day we were there (go figure, it's Michigan, and it's 9 degrees one day and 40 the next), but we still had a blast. We drove up to my parents' on Wednesday, spent the night there, and then drove up to Nub's Nob on Thursday. We got there about 1 pm and skied until 8--it was my first time night skiing and it was 1) really fun and 2) SO DARN COLD. Thanks heavens for those big fires in the lodge--we hung out in there for about twenty minutes and ate some dinner and it got me through the next two bone-chilling hours!

I really enjoyed the night skiing--the snow was absolutely fabulous and was much better than it was the next couple of days, so I'm super glad we did it! It was also really fun to ski in the dark, even if I did practically give myself a heart attack the first time I went down a run solo (Neil and the girls had gone a different way) and I thought my snow spray on the first turn was somebody about to crash into my shoulder. Yikes!

This was also the first time I did a rope tow. Also very fun and super adrenaline-pumping!

We made it back to our hotel around 9 and the girls totally crashed while Neil and I sat on the bathroom floor drinking hot chocolate and reveling in the bliss of actually being warm again. Good times.

 

The girls worked so hard this whole trip on turning and the hockey stop. I was really proud of them! They seriously put in a ton of effort with less than ideal conditions, which made it more fatiguing, and didn't complain one bit. Jules was, as always, a total speed demon while Abigail preferred to be more cautious.
 

 

We had a really fun second day, but decided to skip night skiing and then felt the first drops of rain on our way to the car! Good call on our part, but it sure made us nervous about the snow the next day! We stopped at the grocery store and picked up some sushi, popcorn, and green smoothies to supplement our dinner supplies, and headed back to the hotel where the girls watched some shows on Amazon Prime and Neil & I worked (I graded 21 projects after skiing Friday & Saturday. I was so tired by the time we made it home!).

 On the third day, the girls were SUPER into tree skiing.  They had tried a little the day before, but this day they were totally loving it and the snow wasn't great on most of the intermediate or black diamond runs (we didn't even try the blacks on Saturday because they were getting pretty crummy by Friday afternoon), so we spent most of our time skiing in the trees on the green runs. It was really nice because they weren't very steep and so the kids could concentrate on just having fun zooming around the trees (and the snow was grippy and slushy enough that they couldn't get going too fast). I swear we went on one of those runs a full dozen times before Neil finally said ENOUGH WE HAVE TO GO SOMEWHERE ELSE. We also took about a gazillion videos here. Things I discovered: my kids are much braver/more foolhardy than I am. I'm really glad they were wearing helmets. Neither of them ever crashed or even came close (unlike me--I had one that was pretty spectacular!), but boy I was still grateful for those helmets. And the chance for them to practice tree skiing in a relatively safe environment, since I learned as an adult on double-black glades and it still scares the bejabbers out of me. But the girls improved dramatically over the two days of tree skiing and it made them much more confident in general--it was a great way for them to see how much difference their new turning and stopping abilities made.

They were also SUPER into the terrain parks and kept begging us to let them go on the big double-black one. Hah! They did spend a couple of hours on the intermediate one and seriously had a blast--they were getting pretty high by the end and really getting good at catching air and landing their jumps (another way in which they are braver than their parents!). I kept thinking over and over how grateful I am that they have this opportunity to learn while they are young, since it is SO much easier to pick up as a child than as an adult--both thanks to the physical aptitude and the fact that you aren't half as afraid. :-)

By the end of the third day, we all felt pretty much like this--this is Jules lying down at the bottom of one of the lifts waiting for Abigail to arrive ("but I'm not tired at all, Mom, I'm not ready to leave...having too much fun...just maybe need a tiny rest...").

It was a great weekend and so fun to get out of our normal routine doing something we love so much!  So darn proud of how hard the girls worked, both on getting ahead of homework so we could go and then working their little tails off learning new skills on the slopes. And super super super grateful to my parents for babysitting and making this trip possible!

5 on the 16th

1) Today Luke and I went to the optometrist. Poor little guy has been squinting a lot lately when I read to him, and we found out today that his vision is 20/100. Yikes! So I'm glad we've got some glasses on order for him so that he can experience the magical wonder that is actually seeing the world around you (if you wear corrective lenses, you'll know what I'm talking about! Look! The trees have leaves!). My poor kids--Neil has flawless vision and mine is terrible. Guess who they all take after.

2) I cut the boys' hair tonight. Just so fun to see all three of them taking it so seriously--they LOVE haircuts because they get to watch Youtube videos during their haircut. Nathan is, as always, SUPER obsessed with the Piano Guys, so we watched Jon Schmidt play the piano on top of a cliff. Good times. (Seriously, if you have not yet heard of the Piano Guys, you must check them out!)

3) We had whole-wheat waffles, freshly whipped cream, home-canned peaches, and oven-baked sausage for dinner tonight (best way of making sausage--350 for 12 minutes, shake the pan vigorously so they all roll over, then another 12 minutes. No grease spatters, no turning, no attention). Terrible on the arteries, but so divine on the tastebuds. There's just something so comforting about breakfast for dinner. (Please tell me you do this too...my husband had never done this--or so he says--growing up and he thought I was a crazy person the first time I served waffles at dinner.) This is also my favorite meal to make when we have the missionaries over for dinner.

4) I watched Neil sharpen my skis tonight and felt very loving and grateful towards him. He is so good at so many things that make my life run so much more smoothly. I can't even imagine how I would function without him.

5) I was re-watching Sherlock today during my run and thinking how much I enjoy that series. I was a huge fan of the books when I was a kid and read them all over and over and over again, so I get such a kick out of watching the show now and seeing all the clever little references to 5 different stories in one episode. It's like watching Midnight in Paris. 

14/15

Last couple of days have been rocky, so I'll just combine my good things for both days.

1) Slogged out my eight miles on the treadmill today. We have a busy weekend so I had to get it done today--I had a hard time mentally but it's done and I don't have to dread it anymore! (Man oh man I can't wait to run outside again.) Yoga afterwards was much more pleasant since I got to do it with Isaac and Nathan!

2) The kids had no school today and played really well together all day. That was delightful.

3) Neil made some really amazing snickerdoodles yesterday for Valentine's Day with citric acid in place of cream of tartar. They tasted like pink lemonade and I highly recommend the substitution.

4) I made dinner today. Some days that's just a blip on the radar, some days it's a huge accomplishment. Today was a huge accomplishment day so it's going on my list. :-)

5) Isaac and I played Doodle Pro together today. It's so fun to have a special few minutes with him (especially nice since my one-on-one time with Juliet today was fighting about homework that she sooo did not want to do on President's Day, especially since I was making her work ahead in preparation for next week).

Lucky 13

1) I watched the US Marathon Trials today. It's the first sporting event that I've ever made an effort to actually watch (and boy oh boy did I know a lot about it going in! An embarrassing amount, actually). I'm happy to report that I correctly guessed the top 3 for both men and women! It was absolutely amazing to watch and I definitely got choked up watching the finish of the women's race. It embodied everything I love about running--the camaraderie, the encouragement towards other runners while also running your own race, and the sheer supportiveness of the running community as Amy Cragg literally caught Shalane Flanagan as Flanagan crumpled to the street after crossing the finish line. Just beautiful and I definitely got choked up.

2) I ran today. It was not particularly fun (my right ankle is giving me lots of problems thanks to the tendonitis developed by the walking cast), but I did it and that's the first time I've been able to run 5 times in a week in months. I'm creeping back.

3) Clean sheets on my bed tonight--always one of my favorite things. I love that super-crisp feeling. Maybe I need to start changing my sheets more than once a week. :-)

4) I spent about 3 hours working on my summer-term website last night. It's something I've really been dreading doing and I'm glad to have a good chunk of it done.

5) Packed up skiing stuff today for our trip. It takes forever (tracking down every single piece of winter paraphenalia for 7 people, ugh!) and it's another thing I've been dreading, but now it's crossed off my to-do list and everything is neatly bagged and ready to go.

Twelve

above from a few weeks back: my happy little Instant Pot cooking up yogurt and a batch of freezer jam cooling 
on the counter

The last week has reminded me why I started Five for February all those years back: 

February is just a really hard month and man oh man do I have to work to find the bright 

side! I think I've had four days in a row this week where I think, "There is NOTHING 

good from today--what am I possibly going to write about?!" But then somehow I find 

something. So here goes for today. Also, I do not know WHAT is up with the formatting,
but there is something Blogger is upset about today.

1) My car got a flat tire today--the kind where you have to buy a new tire, not just

 patch the flat. Also, it was freezing so very freezing cold and awful weather to change

 a tire. BUT. Neil was with me (we'd met for a Valentine's lunch) and it was the tire that 

he'd told me yesterday we needed to replace sometime this week, and the place we were

 having lunch was less than two miles from the place where we always buy our tires. So

 instead of making a special trip to the tire store this week and/or changing a flat by myself

 in the freezing cold, I sat in a warm heated room listening to Neil explain to Luke and

 Nathan every step of what the tire guys were doing (our car was in the bay closest to 

the window--how nice is that?!).

2) Neil has been pulling a ton of 2-am nights lately, so I told him to just work whatever he
 needs to this weekend and not worry about coming home for dinner and then going back. I've
 also been feeling pretty crummy lately (the cold that never leaves, despite all my Neti-potting!) and so today there was no pressure to cook a decent dinner for my husband--the kids and I
 picked up some pizzas and then ate them in the car while we went through the car wash,
which (the car wash) is the epitome of excitement in their lives and something they are always begging to do. They were in heaven. 

3) My seven miles today felt slow and miserable and awful. I was just really fatigued,
my legs felt heavy and leaden, and I had a big knot of anxiety in my chest that would.
not. go. away. It was not a fun run. But as one of my running buddies reminded me, heavy
 legs are better than stress fractured legs, and seven miles is better than no miles. I'm
improving.

4) I had a really sweet moment this morning with one of my children's teachers that
reminded me how lucky we are to have her in our lives. So grateful. Then I ran into two
 more teachers who have been wonderful for my children and I just thought that we are
 so blessed in our schools and where we have lived during our children's formative years
 and the people who have helped us to shape them.

5) Remember when my sister sent me a super-sweet care package yesterday? The rest
 arrived today. I'm so blessed in my family relationships. Not that gifts = love, but it's
 just so good to have that bond. I'm grateful for our phone calls and family texts and
constant encouragement. I know there are many families who don't have this network
and I feel blessed beyond measure to have it in mine. I had something pretty rough to
deal with a month or so back and my parents & sisters were absolute rocks for me,
and I am so darn grateful for them. 

Elevenses

1) Luke and Nathan had a friend over for a couple of hours this morning. While their friend is Luke's age, all 3 of them get along so beautifully and I got a ton of things accomplished while they chased down all the bad guys in the world. I loved seeing their enthusiasm and affection for each other.

2) On a related note, Luke and Nathan are starting to edge out of the "we fight all the time" stage into the "does he really have to take a nap when we're having fun" stage? These two fought more than any of my other kids by a HUGE margin (i.e., I've never had kids who physically fought each other before!). They still wrestle and jump on each other all the time, but they also play so well and are becoming really good friends. It's wonderful.

3) We actually finished dinner & all the cleanup early enough tonight that I found myself wondering what to do in the hour before bedtime. All the kids were off playing by themselves--the boys with K'nex and the girls with Legos--and so I sat down at the piano and started working through my Phantom of the Opera sheet music. About two measures in. Neil started singing in the kitchen. and then he joined me at the piano. He has a really beautiful voice (he just NEVER wants to let anyone know that!) and I love listening to him sing. We played & sang through the whole book and it was delightful.

4) My sweet sister sent me a little care package today and I felt so loved!

5) I've been avidly reading up on all the Olympic Trials contenders and discussing favorites with my running buddies online. It's silly and nerdy and delightful. Can't wait for Saturday! This is the only sporting event that I actually care about...at all.

Day 10

Today's good things:

1) Ran, practiced yoga, took a 10-minute nap, and drank my quart of green smoothie. All things that lead to daily happiness!
2) Abigail wrapped up her monthly project today (think big report and craft EVERY MONTH) 17 days ahead of schedule. Yahoo! She's such a good worker and I'm so proud of her for not leaving things until the last minute (also, super thrilled to have that off my mental to-do list).
3) Everyone's valentines are addressed, wrapped, and hanging in bags ready to go to school on Friday morning. Another thing that I am thrilled to have finished and off my mental list.
4) This for dinner tonight (I sub in 1/3 c. whole milk for the cream & add sauteed zucchini or mushrooms). Always one of my children's favorites (as is anything by Stephmodo! I'm so sad she's no longer blogging, nor are her Zupa's links live).
5) Right now all 5 of my children are freshly bathed/showered, all the laundry is folded and put away, the kitchen is clean, the bathrooms are clean, and the house is vacuumed. Nice and calm and sparkling around here and I'm definitely enjoying having older kids who can contribute so much by their simple daily chores!

Day 9

Luke burrowing through my bed first thing this morning. He was so gleeful I had to take a picture!

1) Abigail was my dinner helper today and made whole-wheat banana bread out of all my elderly bananas while I was checking over someone else's homework. I love having older kids who are so helpful and proficient in the kitchen.

2) Neil and I signed up for a marathon today as a relay team--we really wanted to do a half this spring but couldn't find one that would work with our schedules, but then I realized a local race offered a relay team option. Our plan is to have one of us do the early start, then the other will come over with the kids, cheer heartily, trade off the chip, and then runner #1 will go home with the kids, shower, chill for an hour or so, and then bring everyone back to cheer on runner #2 towards the finish. I'm really looking forward to having the kids there--the girls were there at the end of the 5K I did when I was 35 weeks pregnant with Luke, and the youngest two boys saw me during the half I did right after Nathan was born, but none of them have ever seen Neil run. Should be fun. (Plus it is a crazy cheap race fee-wise and we don't have to pay for travel, hotel, food, and babysitting, which would run about $400 for the other race we were considering this spring).

3) I blogged about Halloween! Post-dated here.

4) And Christmas. Post-dated here. 

5) And I am SUPER excited because Neil is not going to work tonight (oh frabulous day! Callooh callay!) and we have big plans to hang out and eat chips & salsa. We are way obsessed with the organic Simple Naturals salsa from Aldi. I seriously go there just to buy that--it tastes like fire-roasted tomatoes and cumin with just the right proportions of peppers and onions. Can't even tell you how much I love that salsa and I've been craving it like crazy for the last month!

Day 8

(L-R: Mary Beth, Ruth, Mom, Rosalind, Elise, me--not sure what is going on with the weird crop Blogger is doing)

1) Today is my mom's birthday! Happy birthday, Mom! I know I've waxed poetic about her in years past, but here is the short version: my mom is awesome. She is one of my best friends and is endlessly supportive. I am so grateful to have her in my life!! 

2) Tonight for Family Home Evening we each wrote down something we loved about everyone else in our family. I loved watching the big grins on my children's faces as they read their hearts aloud and listened to what everyone else loved about them! It was a perfect activity and I'm looking forward to seeing those hearts up in our kitchen every day. (Also loved hearing Juliet and Abigail solemnly tell each other, "We've got to live up to our hearts!")

3) My sister Mary Beth visited me a couple of weeks ago and brought me a big stack of books. I've been working my way through and it's such a treat! Makes me feel so loved and I'm always crazy excited for the end of the day when I can really settle down and burn through a few hundred pages.

4) My horribly drippy nose was driving me insane yesterday--I literally went through two rolls of toilet paper. It was disgusting and wretched and not at all pleasant. But today I had a magical hour of drip-free time when I was running--I have no idea why, but it just dried up while I was running (and then promptly started again as soon as I hit down dog while stretching afterwards, but whatever). I know that's gross, but I was really thrilled. :-)



5) Ski helmets during homework today to honor the measly little flakes of snow drifting down outside. We're counting down the days until we head north for some real snow and some schussing down the slopes!!

Day 7

Five things I am very very thankful for. :-)

Day 6

No post yesterday because I felt like death (thanks, head cold) and pretty much all I accomplished was making meals and getting my biking/yoga in. That knocked me out for the day and I went to bed as soon as the kids did!

1) Slept in today, hallelujah, sing the weekend praises! In 5 school days we had 4 early-morning appointments, and I do not love having to be somewhere at 7 am. But now we're through dental and orthopedic and parent-teacher conference appointments, and that is a lovely lovely thing.

2) Neil and I had a lovely little 6-mile run together today. It was beautiful weather--about 40 degrees and so sunny and gorgeous that by about 2 miles in I was perfectly comfortable in tights and a short-sleeve shirt. Amazing for February, given that last year at this time it was -40.

3) Today I ate dessert for the first time in three weeks (that may not sound impressive, but it feels that way to me!). It was delicious, since it was Neil's famous chocolate-chip cookies, and now I'm good for another few weeks.

4) Every month or so we have Classic Movie Night, a.k.a. we watch a movie as a family on the computer so that our kids aren't completely clueless about some of the really great movies out there. :-) I love not actually having a TV in our home, but I also really enjoy these nights. Tonight we watched The Man From Snowy River and Nathan (above) was so incredibly enamored of the cowboys' attire that he wore that outfit to bed and talked about "brumbies" the rest of the evening. (Previous nights have included The Love Bug, Seven Brides for Seven Brothers, The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, Meet Me in St. Louis, Back to the Future, Star Wars, and The Music Man). I'd love to hear what movies you consider to be must-sees!

5) I am really thankful for my Neti squirt bottle. It's so much more effective than the Neti pot and we've been inseparable buds the last few days. And on that note, I've got a date with the squirt bottle and a giant stack of tissues and a couple quarts of water--I have been so thirsty the last two days!

Day 4

Oh gosh, this day has been absolutely insane. Lots of tears. Good thing I have this little five happy things exercise to keep me looking for the bright spots!

1) Once a week, Isaac gets to check out books at his school library. Without fail, he carefully selects construction-based picture books for his little brothers, and then gathers them on the couch as soon as he gets home for storytime. I love to see his tenderness and love for his little brothers.

2) Exercise was good to me today! I ran 6 miles, did a quick 20-minute recovery yoga circuit, and lifted weights. All while Nathan and Luke massacred a batch of play-doh and ate lunch (there were a few breaks for me in there to help them with things but they really played wonderfully together!).

3) I made a new-to-me dish for dinner tonight. I loved it. Neil loved it. Abigail ate it. The other kids cried after a few bites (too spicy!) and ate PBJs once I realized it was quite a bit more heat than I'd anticipated. But we ended up having a really nice dinner nonetheless (which is not always the case, since often I'm just irritated at the complaints), probably because of the once-every-two-years parental caving on letting them eat something else (it really was too spicy!). We had a lengthy and very energetic discussion about what each of us would pick if we could choose a superpower or random magical object. Neil chose teleportation, Juliet and Abigail picked shapeshifting, Isaac wanted an endless supply of wishes, and I chose a bottomless wallet of $100 bills. Luke never actually picked anything, but we all died laughing when Nathan insisted--four times--that all he wanted was for the smiley faces on my leggings to be real so he could eat the red one. (Maybe he thought they looked like cookies?)

4) I was thinking today about how grateful I am that my older two girls are getting really self-motivated and responsible about their homework. They both work super hard in school and actively try to do their best. It's so wonderful to see them diligently plugging away and I'm really proud of their independence and work ethic, especially since there is quite a bit of homework in those high-ability classes! (I don't remember ever having homework in elementary school, but man these kids have a lot!)

5) I am super grateful for all of the little systems we've instituted around our house that shift responsibility to the kids (above is the photo my mom snapped of our bathroom chore chart, which I stole from her FB page). Not only does it make my life way easier, but I love seeing that they are independent little people who take care of their laundry, pack their lunches, lay out their clothes for school, do their dinner jobs, vacuum and sweep, and keep their bathroom clean. I still have to do a fair amount of reminding, but by and large they are getting so good at such a wide variety of daily tasks. I like to see that they are not only active contributors in our home, but that they will be able to do the same in their own homes as adults.

Five for February, Day 3

Above: Nathan in the "trap" Luke built for him out of Magnatiles. Good times.

1) Made cranberry-blueberry whole-wheat muffins and green smoothies for the kids for breakfast and sent everyone off to school with the happy consciousness that they had tummies full of good things.

2) Had dinner simmering away in the crock-pot by 9 AM, which made the after-school hours sooo much easier!

3) Today was a yoga day. So good to relax into those stretches and feel some of the aches and pains smooth themselves out. I love high-intensity cardio, but man oh man does yoga do good things for my mindfulness and awareness of my body.

4) Somehow I managed to squeeze in a 15-minute nap while Nathan was asleep and before I left to pick the big kids up from school. I was running on 5 hours of sleep for the third day in a row so that nap made all the difference!

5) We had a super fun activity tonight for Activity Days (an hour in the evening with the 8 to 11-yr-old girls in our church congregation). One leader talked for a few minutes about our bodies and how keeping them healthy in turn benefits our minds and spirits, then walked the girls through the process of creating an exercise plan and handed out some planning materials that they could use to complete one of the Faith in God requirements that centers around physical health. A second leader helped the girls to make tiny individual pizzas. Then one of my friends who is a certified Zumba instructor taught the girls a 30-minute class--it was SO fun. She had all kinds of props that really made it exciting for the girls (my favorites were the scarves hung with hundreds of gold coins that we used for a Bollywood-inspired routine). And to finish things up, another leader and I made a couple of different veggie smoothies for the girls using my Blendtec & the other leader's juicer. Such a fun evening and a good workout too!

Five for February, Day 2

I love my Five for February series, so I'm back! Maybe I'll even manage to blog about Halloween, Thanksgiving, Christmas, and New Year's while I'm at it.

Today's five good things:

1) Got my MRI results and they were clear!!!!! Such a huge relief. Still experiencing some pain every now and then, mostly when driving, but it is 1000x better than it was a few months ago when I couldn't sleep because it hurt so much.

2) I ran 5 miles today--for the second day in a row. Exciting stuff to see it coming back little by little. No 55-mile weeks anytime soon, but I'd be thrilled with 20! This is Week 5 of my return to running and I have to say it's gone really well. I worked like CRAZY keeping up with cardio and weights during the eight weeks that I couldn't run, and it definitely paid some dividends (we won't talk about the 15 lbs I gained which seem to be par for the course with an injury like this--you go from running 200 miles a month to zero and your body is not exactly sure what the heck is going on...).

3) Thanks to the clean MRI, we went ahead and started booking things for a ski weekend with the girls. Couldn't be more excited and my boys are SO over-the-moon thrilled that they get to spend the weekend with Amma and Grandpa!

4) Loved listening to the girls' piano lessons tonight--they both practice so diligently all week and they are really getting good! Their teacher commented that it was a great lesson and it really was--I was so proud of all of the effort and work that they are putting in to their music.

5) Went to storytime at the library today with Nathan and Luke & we made these snowplow thingies for the craft. Nathan was SO enthralled with his (combination of getting to do his very own craft, since we haven't made it to storytime forever thanks to that darn leg o' mine) AND the fact that it was  a bulldozer-type thing that he insisted on sleeping with it during his nap, and it was the first thing he wanted to show the biggies when they got home from school. Too cute.