Friday Fill-In

1. Tortillas and just about anything you can spread on top make a quick and easy dinner.

2. Dear Husband: Stories, by Joyce Carol Oates is the book I'm reading right now.

3. July brings back memories of birthday celebrations... Mom, my brother Mike, Grandma Skaggs, cousin Carla, my niece Ashley, b-i-l Charles and my dear hubby... all born in July.

4. From my earliest days, my skill for procrastination was obvious.

5. They say if you tell your dreams, people will worry about your state of mental health.

6. It almost never hurts to take a little time to think it over, whatever it may be.

7. And as for the weekend, tonight I'm looking forward to the kids having a shorter list of piddly to-dos for the coming 4-H fair, tomorrow my plans include a family get-together with friends and Sunday, I want to see where the day takes me!

Feeling Unneeded

Yesterday, the librarian called saying the book tape that Little Boy had put on hold was in and ready to be picked up. He was so excited. "Can we go get it, Mom? Can we go get it!!"

In the last couple of months he has taken it upon himself to "read" all the Harry Potter books. Originally, he was listening to the book tapes and at one point he told me that he was going to actually read the final book all on his own. Books one through four were at the library on book tape, so he has been spending a lot of time carrying a CD player around, listening to the stories in the car, in his room, at the kitchen table. It's been fun reliving the story through him.

Then he got to book five and the library copy was checked out. He thought maybe this was his cue to start reading on his own, but after struggling through the first paragraph or so of the book(maybe it was just the first sentence) he asked me if it was a book we could read together. His reading skills are just starting to really come online and he's not quite up to Harry Potter on his own yet. I was thrilled, of course, because reading with my kids has always been one of my favorite activities.

At one point, he asked me if I could do the voices as I read. I tried, but he shut down my efforts after only a page or two. "You'd better just read it straight," he said with a sigh.

So I wasn't quite up to par with the professional, but I have been getting in lots of good cuddle time as Little Boy and I have been making our way through Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix. Then I picked up the book tape at the library yesterday and he brought me the bound copy of the book last night.

"Here," he said. "We don't need to keep this on the table anymore."

He and his dad were cleaning up the project room.

"You don't want to read it together anymore?" I asked.

"Nah. I don't need you," he said with a grin.

I'm going to miss the cuddle time, but I guess this frees us up for the shorter books that he can read to me on his own. Yesterday, he read me the first half of a Robert Munsch story. Since his interest in reading on his own has really blossomed in the last half year or so, he has made rapid progress.

I like the way that he is picking up books now, undaunted by their size or the number of words on the page. Of my three kids, he has been the most open about the process of learning to read, the most likely to talk about what he knows and what he sees and how it all fits together for him. He and I actually embarked on a phonics program, a first in my experience as a mother, but it seemed to fit with the way his brain is wired. He has absolutely loved it.

"You know, reading is not what I thought it would be," he told me the other day. "I thought you had to really read each word, to put all the letters together and sound it out. But now I just look at the words and I know them. Sometimes it feels like guessing, and then I'm right."

We are entering a new era, he and I. For him, it will be a time of immediate satisfaction. No longer having to wait for a parent or his sisters to interpret what is on the page or the screen for him, he'll be off on his own, exploring all those topics the rest of us might not have had much patience for.

For me, it feels a bit like I'm climbing into the backseat of my children's lives. I'm still here; I don't see my input and participation completely fading, but the more immediate "need" for my services seems to be rapidly diminishing. My children read for themselves. They tackle topics I know nothing about and they teach me things I never knew I was interested in.

They are all completely capable of cooking for themselves. Another few turns of the hourglass and I'll have one literally driving into yet another era of independence.

Now it's my job not to mourn this passing moment.

But I can't help but feel a tiny bit sad.

Belated Birthday Blog to My Hubby

Happy Birthday to my Favorite Guy, my Main Man, my Best Friend and Hubby.

We spread our celebrations out around here, so hubby had already had a special day and then a day with cake and gifts for his birthday well before the actual date rolled around.


On the actual day of his birthday, we took him to a lake in Missouri to camp with friends.


Camping in July is a new experience for my family. We are spring campers.

We like to be out when the days are warm, but the nights are still cool. For this experience, we bought a new tent and psuedo slept in the sauna-like environment of a hot Missouri night. I don't think they believe in breeze in Missouri, unless it comes along with a thunder and lightening storm like we experienced in the wee early hours of the first morning. Talk about your nature experience.

It boomed and rumbled and the lightening flickered all around us. I was so exahusted from being hot and unable to sleep that I pretty much just giggled through each bolt of lightening thinking that surely we were low enough compared to all that was surrounding us that we wouldn't be struck. The tent did it's job of keeping the water out.

Then we spent the day on Saturday on the lake. This made up for the sleep deprivation from the night before. You can find a breeze on the lake, and if that's not enough you simply jump in and swim with the fishes. Our friends had rented a party barge, so we pretty much floated and swam the day away. The kids took turns tubing around the lake behind our friend's speedboat and most of the group took a turn jumping from Chicken Rock.




Because it was his birthday and all, hubby jumped from Chicken Rock a couple of times. That's me below, cheering. He's certainly no chicken. I, on the other hand, did not jump. I really thought I would, but once I got to the top, my whole body said, "this really isn't necessary." So I walked back down and slid into the water gently. No regrets.

Blog Thoughts

I've been super slow at the blogging lately. Any attempt at something more than a quick note about my day seems to turn to long-winded navel-gazing or sparks into something I decide is more appropriate elsewhere. If any of that elsewhere ever gets published, I will certainly share the link!

I must also admit that I've fallen further into the clutches of Facebook communication. I find I'm beginning to enjoy the brief, conversational forum. Less me on my soapbox all alone here, more like talk over morning coffee with friends you might not be able to meet up with on a regular basis otherwise. (If you're there -- feel free to "friend" me.)

Freelance writing work was going gangbusters this year, and now the pace has slowed considerably. I am happy for it. June and July seem to always be the months when we fill up the calendar with stuff to do. I guess it's my time of year to leave my cave and stretch my legs and drink up the sunshine while it lasts. I'm just starting to find myself eyeing the calendar, beginning to long a bit for another change of season--autumn, the cozy life that winter will bring.

But I'm content that for another three weeks or so we will stay busy, busy, busy with travel, 4-H, and a few extra extracurriculars.

Among victories of this summer have been hubby's oddly placed tomato plants. We dropped them right in the middle of the yard this year so that we could just mow around them. They aren't leafy or bushy or pretty in any way, but seem to be more than capable of producing lots and lots of tomatoes. Did I mention, Yum?

One of my consistent writing gigs has been on the topic of healthcare - management methods and guiding philosophy of some of the major hospitals and health organizations in the United States and Canada. It is, at times, fascinating work and it has kept me very busy wrapping my mind around the various aspects of healthcare. Unfortunately, the more I learn, the less sure I am about the direction we should be going. My own conclusions regarding the state of healthcare in our nation have a bit of a disastrous, cataclysmic, end-of-the-world-as-we-know-it sort of ring.

I'm just not sure I'm ready to go there, but some days I really do feel my inner pessimist showing.

In the meantime, hubby and I have been seriously looking at ways of enhancing our wellness, which seems to me to be the ideal way to manage the whole healthcare crisis anyway. Let's just stay healthy. Let's pour all our efforts into eating good food and getting lots of exercise and see how far that takes us.

This week's goal has been starting each day with an 8-mile bike ride. In an ideal world, this sort of thing would be routine. It's not so much the physical effort, but making/taking the time to prioritize the activity that is difficult. Yesterday we had a slight variation in schedule, but made the ride anyway with two of our three kids. There was an unfortunate tire blow-out incident, which meant that I ended up walking one of the bikes about three miles home, but that was okay. Walking is good for you too.

We're shaking things up with a new goal next week, because I guess I'm motivated by goal setting, or just too easily bored by the same old thing, although hubby said something this morning that made a lot of sense.

If you make a goal to do something good for you every day for five days, at the end of the five days you have succeeded. If you make a goal to do something good for you every day for the rest of your life, when you miss on day six you have failed.

I suppose it's a sort of living in the moment thing. Extended moments, but achievable goals.

Ah, the mind games we play with ourselves.

Happy 4th!

Started early today! I hope I make it all the way through fireworks tonight. Hubby participated in the Twin Rivers 15 mile bike ride this morning. I thought about giving it a go, but since the trail was all dirt road (and hills) and I have kind of a pansy bike, (that's right... the bike is a pansy, not me!) I decided to stick to cheerleading.

Before the ride:

After the ride.... still smiling!

We had visitors for the afternoon. Made homemade pizza with a yummy whole wheat crust. Hubby's sister taught the kids and I how to weave baskets. If it weren't for the promise of a fireworks show tonight, I'd be calling it a day.

Post-Camp Bonus for Mom

When I first saw that Munchkin Boy was wearing the same shirt the day I picked him up from camp that I sent him off in, I honestly thought he had probably cycled through all his shirts and had just put on whatever he could find in his suitcase.

Then I noted that his soap hadn't even been opened... and when he came out of the shower at home he was several shades lighter than when he went in.

Unpacking his suitcase, I discovered the shorts and shirts just as we had matched them, all neatly folded together. His clean underwear was also neatly folded and stacked in his suitcase, just the way I had left it. He had gone through every pair of socks. Go figure.

For a minute, I thought he was going to tell me they took the time to do laundry at camp. But instead he said, "They made us take showers before getting into the swimming pool."

These folks are obviously seasoned campers. I bet they had more than one boy wearing the same clothes day after day while at camp. At least showers prior to swimming would knock the top layer of dirt off and keep the pool cleaner.

So a bonus for mom post-camp... less dirty laundry than I expected.

Timeless Tuesday ~ Good Choice

There are days when I wake up and think, wow... here's this guy I picked up something like forever ago and he's still here. He's been here for a long, long time now. How did I get so lucky? How did I know enough way back then to choose so well?

When you consider that I moved away from home the year I turned 18, I've been hanging with this guy longer now than I even spent living under the same roof as my parents.

Fate.

Chance.

Kismet.

The alignment of the planets.

However it happened, I am thankful for this man in my life every day.