for the future nostalgic

This is how we spent this morning, a slow summer day with nothing planned.  It was beautiful and breezy.  Our schedules were completely clear.  I felt energetic and rested and excited for the day. 

We had cantalope and French toast for breakfast.  During Isaac's morning nap, the girls rode their bikes while I primed their headboard (we're working on redoing their room). We read stories together.  I vacuumed and mopped.  The kids had a picnic lunch (in the garage again) while I put another coat on the headboard.  We played on the swings after lunch and I taught the girls how to open up pea pods and shell the peas out into their hands.  We braided grass stems together into little toys for Isaac.  Abigail ate several chives and reeked of onions the rest of the morning.

After Juliet and Isaac wake up from their naps, we'll take a walk (or go to the library if it's raining).  The missionaries are coming for dinner (whole-wheat bread and white bean soup with kale from the garden), and I'm going visiting teaching after the kids are in bed.

Nothing too special about today, but it's been beautiful nonetheless.  And I want to remember it twenty years from now--that I woke up and could spend the entire day doing whatever I wanted to do with the children.  That is a very real kind of freedom.

Musings

Andrea tagged me with a "five things you may not know about me" thing, and since I've had a lot of time lately to sit around and think (ok, mostly i've been taking really long showers to escape and then i think in the shower) I thought this would be a good time to get out some of those musings.

1) I think I'm realizing that a) I don't particularly want to pursue a Ph.D. right now and b) this is primarily because I am starting to hoard my free time. Abigail gives me two hours of freedom during the day (naptime) and three at night between her bedtime and mine, and those five hours are very, very, very precious. So precious that I've been in a particularly bad mood lately because those hours have gone to grading, rather than lying on my bed reading. Which is my self-indulgence activity of choice. So while I had limitless time pre-Abigail to cram in all kinds of schoolwork and still have lots of "me" time, I just don't think I'm willing to make the sacrifice at this point in my life, since apparently I cannot function without some quiet time to recharge and do whatever I want to do. And frankly, I tried two days of grading while Abigail was awake, and it was absolute misery for both of us. Not because she was cranky about it (she was pretty good, considering), but I really hated putting her off to stare at frustrating papers. Wow. That was a long one. Anyway, it brings me to my next point...

2)...which if you know me well, probably isn't that novel (heh heh--get it?) But I love reading to the point where it's really more vice than virtue. I especially love books that make me hungry or long for travel or to go do something like rip up my entire lawn and plant it with wildflowers. Those books are the ones that really pull me in and make me want to do whatever it is that the characters are doing. I think that's why I enjoy indulging in Rosamunde Pilcher novels--I always put the book down feeling that all I really need out of life is a sunny kitchen full of flowers and the smell of bread baking, with a door opening out onto a flagged terrace surrounded by my well-kept vegetable garden. Lots of sun. And flowers.

3) My fondest childhood memories all center around my sister Mary Beth (sorry to the rest of you, but you just weren't old enough). We were completely inseperable and I thought she was the coolest playmate ever (probably because she was willing to play the Seven Dwarves, Prince Charming, the evil witch, and the horse while I took on Snow White) and one of my most vivid memories is coming home from school, throwing my backpack down on the lawn, and racing off to play with her in our woods house. Good times.

4) I really wanted to be an architect for about...five or six years, maybe? My dad completely indulged me and always brought me issues of Architectural Digest and drawing paper, and I would spend hours in my room hunched over my desk drawing out my latest dream home. I would even draw out blueprints for whatever Lego house my sisters and I were planning to build the next day.

5) There are a some things I am really grateful for from my childhood: no TV, classical music, daily scripture study/family prayer, weekly family home evening and the fact that I never knew what a Twinkie was until I was nine. An odd hodgepodge, I know, but I can attribute basically everything about my growth into an adult to those five things.

and now i tag mary beth, jen, and mom.