Surprise!

Heh heh heh.
This past weekend we snuck up to Manitoba to surprise my Dad for his 60th birthday. (It's actually next week, so I think we managed to really get the ol' heart pumping since his suspicions were targeted a few days out.)

Super fun to see everyone but, of course, super short. We made it to church, which gets stranger and stranger each time we go. It's the same...but not.

Always seems weird to be in Steinbach and *not* see certain people - to know that you're kilometres or even blocks away from people you love, yet they are oblivious to your presence and you're staying under the radar.

Oddly enough though, as we drove home (second time I've done the there-and-back-again-in-less-than-two-days trek in three weeks, gah), I was okay with it. Usually I'm super sad to leave. This time it wasn't so bad, maybe because I'm starting to realize that people haven't forgotten us like I feared, and that even though our visits are short and infrequent, they're still possible.

When we moved, Minneapolis was the second on a list of two - the first place was Winnipeg. Even though my heart is in Canada, this is the largest centre within a day's drive. And that "day's drive" was important. It meant no looking for flights, seat sales, car rentals, or having to plan at least a four-day trip each time. This particular "7.5 hour drive" might mean a new country and work visas and the Tea Party, but it also means I can go home when I need to.

And for surprise birthday parties, I totally need to!

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Making Space

And suddenly life got very full, very fast.

Everyone I talk to seems to agree, whether or not they have school-age children. Labour Day was some kind of crazy "on your mark, get set, GO!" moment after which we all found ourselves running the 100-yard dash.

(And we didn't even know we signed up for it.)

School is definitely the source of some of the busyness. We're back in the homework groove, although much more quickly than last year. The Girl has really matured (or just been beaten down into submission), and keeps track of her assignments and records her reading minutes with pretty minor supervision. The Boy's lone math sheet of the year prompted a lot of tears, but I imagine increased frequency will help there.

Extracurricular activites are another time suck. Football and soccer for The Boy, on Saturday and Sunday respectively, which has effectively destroyed any weekend plans until November. Piano for The Girl on Wednesdays, but I really shouldn't complain since we are super spoiley and the teacher comes to our house.

Plus, we haven't even started our church small group and we've only had one band practice. Add our new roster of orthodontic appointments, and my calendar's looking mighty crowded.

What makes this most ironic is that this schedule is the result of a concerted effort on my part to be less busy than last year. I've said NO to everything that permitted a graceful exit - teaching ESL, teaching Sunday School, directing the Christmas program. We postponed kids' swimming lessons until after the football season.

Heck, I'm even blogging less than my usual "three posts per month" of late.

And despite what looks like a crazy schedule, it's kinda working. I manage to be home four weeknights out of five, and I'm turning into a model of domesticity (partly a reflection of the season - y'all know how autumn makes me want to hibernate). There's homemade pasta, muffins, cookies, and soup - always soup this time of year. I'm making time to just sit down at the piano for an hour. I'm reading Encyclopedia Brown to my son at bedtime and helping my daughter figure out whether a square is a rhombus.

(Aside: Is it just me, or are the various polygram designations a la trapezoid/rhombus/hexagon and their ilk worth anything? The last time I had to know them was grade four.)

So if it's quiet around here, it's actually a good thing. No news is good news (albeit somewhat boring news, I suppose).

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And They're Off!

Here we go again:What's the craziest thing about this picture?

a) How grown up they both look?
b) How small a height difference there is between them?
c) How humongous his feet are?
d) How it's the third year in a row we have a back-to-school picture at this address?

Answer: All of the above, of course.

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'Tis the Last Rose of Summer...

Well, no roses here. But lots of "lasts" today - last morning sleeping in, last evening with no homework reminders, and last lunch-packing-free morning.

Sigh.

Usually I love Labour Day. Fall is my favourite season, and I'm typically totally happy and so so ready to return to the rhythm of regular life after the loosey-goosey-ness of summer.

I'm having a tough time this year and really can't figure out why. It's not that I didn't have time to myself or a good vacation or get outside to enjoy the sunshine. Maybe it's because there was so much of it I loved that I'm just not ready for it to end.

And yet, the suddenly cooler days and darkened mornings are nonetheless having their predictable effect on me, despite my wish to ignore the calendar page turning. I'm craving squash and potatoes and apples and whole wheat bread - all those autumn favourites that have taken a backseat to basil and tomatoes and peaches. I baked monster cookies today in preparation for after-school snacks, and am almost looking forward to getting the backpacks ready for tomorrow's first day back to school.

I find myself wanting to clean out cupboards and stock my pantry, readying myself for the hibernatory season ahead. I made myself a cup of tea this afternoon, which I rarely want to do during the hot summer.

Even my literary tastes are changing, with a natural turning from beach reading towards more meaty stuff. I find myself wondering how soon I can start Middlemarch again. [Answer: when the snow flies. It's a blizzard and hot chocolate type of book.]

Funny how in tune we can be to the seasons, I guess. This summer I've been trying to be more aware of what I eat, selecting local and in-season produce whenever possible. It's helped me to catch just the teensiest glimpse of the rhythm of the earth as I watched the spinach disappear from the farmer's market only to be replaced by the summer squash.

And, in the same way that I crave spinach now but know that its time is past (for this year, anyway), I think I am craving those lazy-daisy summer vacation days. And deep down I know that if I tried to force those days out of season, they would be tasteless and seem off-kilter even as the spinach would be if I bought it from the grocery store today.

So, I'll aim for contentment today and patient waiting for tomorrow. I'll try to embrace the coming season of plenty with its return to routine and its ever-shortening days, knowing that both spring and spinach are really just around the corner.

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Back to Reality

I've got dreams on the brain. Dreams and - given this past week - waking up from them.

We went to see Inception last night. Loved it. Layered plot, stunning (yet somehow unobtrusive) special effects, and enough cheekbones/three-piece suit prettiness from some of my favourite actors to elicit significant swoonage.

(Aside: Movies in the theatre really aren't my best. I go for the ones that require big screen viewing, but I spend most of the movie tense that someone around me will start talking or crunching their popcorn loudly during crucial scenes [oh, The Husband. I am so looking at you] or will laugh too loudly at a not-so-funny joke.

Yesterday there was this hissssssssing noise in my left ear that I initially blamed on a crackly speaker until I realized that the guy one seat over had some sort of medical device in a backpack that was running. So I grumpily acceded his constant need for some sort of life-saving potion, and settled back into my seat with my hand cupped over my left ear to block the sound waves from that direction.

[Still, though. He COULD have sat on the aisle. If I had a hissing medical device that needed to accompany me to a movie, I'd like to think I'd be careful about putting it next to someone who paid a bazillion dollars to be there and is looking at me and my friends suspiciously trying to ascertain whether our boisterous joking will end after the previews as she tries to consume her weight in popcorn.])

Anyway, the reason I'm even able to go to the theatre as opposed to my personal viewing palace (i.e., my basement) is because my Littlekins are rocking it up with their grandparents this week and next. We've called them a couple of times and they are all giggly and breathless and wild and falling over each other trying to be the first to report on the day's events. The Boy keeps calling me "Grandma" and then starts laughing at himself and has to start his sentence over.

Having no kids this week was definitely a good thing, as it helped make that dreams-to-reality transition from vacation to work a smidgen easier. Not easy, of course. This was one of my worst "back-to-work" weeks ever, I'll admit. Chicago with the kids was so much fun, and then Vegas with my hubby and some BFFs was so very, very good.

It also doesn't help that I got back to a pile of "back-to-school" letters and notifications or that the mornings are dark and crisp. You can feel fall in the air. Usually this gets me excited, but I'm just not ready for summer to be over yet. The past three months have flown by so much faster than any other summer, and it feels like we just got started.

But I've got one more week, I guess. I suppose this is that last few minutes of a dream, where you know it's a dream, and you know the alarm will go off, and there's something niggling at you about a deadline at work that you'd been successfully ignoring until now, but until then you are going to squeeze your eyes tight and try to stay out of reality for just one more minute.

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One Down, One To Go

And one night at Hotel PM in between.

Got back from our family vacation yesterday. We had a FAB-yoo-luss time - hit a water park and then a theme park on our way and then spent three days touring downtown Chicago, maxing out The Boy's museum-attending abilities along the way.

Strolling Michigan Ave. and chowing down on loot from the Hershey Store.

Astonishing - the thickness of the deep dish pizza. More astonishing - the kids each ate TWO pieces (and pronounced the Super Vegi to be "totally awesome" - broccoli and all).

Playing in the colour room at the Museum of Science and Industry.

Standing on a glass floor 103 stories above the city. (Heh - The Husband can't get on it. His brain goes into self-defense mode and he literally can't move his feet over the edge.)

Eating at Ed's.

Splashing in Millenium Park.

Lost in legs.

Family portrait a la Bean

Getting ready to ride

Post-ride soakage

Fortunately, it was a very hot day. It only took us 2 hours to dry off.

Water is so much more fun when you are actually wearing your bathing suit.

In short, a good time was had by all. The Husband gets a Big Star embossed with real 24-karat gold foil for his hard work in planning our itinerary/booking hotels/finding astonishingly good local breakfast places/saving us $130 and a massive traffic headache by figuring out a way for us to leave our car at a park and ride and take the train into the city.

The kids get similar stars for being extremely well-behaved on very little sleep and with very tired legs from walking miles each day. .

And I get a big gold star, too. Just because.

Last night we stayed in our own beds enroute from Chicago to Manitoba, where we will drop off our kids for two fun-filled weeks at "Grandma's Farm" later today. Then it's back home for the two grown-ups via a super fantabulous weekend in Las Vegas with some BFFs.

Onward and upward - off to pack the two loads of laundry I did last night back into the suitcases and head off for round two.

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