I had slipped out of Primary to go check on Henry who isn’t technically supposed to be in nursery, but goes anyway because the nursery leaders are pretty awesome. While in there, the primary leaders came and found me and I knew that something had made Curtis upset. “Curtis fell and he needs his mom.” Yep.

I walked over and came upon a sobbing, bleeding boy. At first it looked like his mouth was bleeding, but I didn’t really see anything cut. Then I realized that he had gashed his chin. I felt a connection with him right then. I have personally gashed my chin open around four times and have quite a lovely scar there.

His cut wasn’t that bad. I found a band-aid, and cleaned him up. Curtis was still pretty shaken up. Instead of trying to go back to primary, we went to nursery and had fruit snacks. Fruit snacks can cheer up just about any small child.

Peter started kids club at the garden. We just got through planting everyone’s plants when the wind really started up and soon after the rain.

Today I was stressed about being stressed. And as soon as I realized that, I was fine. My mind can get quite silly.

I’ve really enjoyed studying mindfulness. It helps me be more aware that what is going on in my head is just in my head. I might think for a moment that my life is awful and I hate it, but I can look at my actual life and see a lot of goodness. All the negative isn’t real.

Sometimes my feelings help me to see areas of my life that I need to change. I feel overwhelmed and realize I don’t want to get too busy. I want time to spend with my children and doing the the things I enjoy. But others times my feelings are feeling stressed about stress. They don’t mean anything at all.

Curtis and I went and took pictures of our blessings.

The tomatoes, eggplant, beans, and most of the peppers are now planted. I still have all my cucurbits to plant (fancy word for plants including squash, melons and cucumbers). They happily turned on the irrigation water to flush the system out. It gave us the opportunity to adjust it, and we will also be able to more easily water everything. And the kids got all wet and muddy.

I’m also watching far too many videos on youtube. The kids have been watching lots of mincecraft videos on there, so we played minecraft last night too. I usually hate video games, but minecraft is just pretty cool. I even attempted to play. I’m horrible.

I want to do more of the things I enjoy doing. Reading outside while the kids play. Giving hugs and kisses. Being productive at my chores. Spending time thinking and researching about topics I’m interested in. Physically working hard. Waking up early. Organizing, and planning. Writing, taking photographs. Hiking, gardening, working on my house (but not drywall–that’s no fun at all). Playing games with others, getting inspired online, and more.

During college, I wanted to get a degree so I could be successful and have a career. I married and started a family instead. And during the early years of marriage, when money was tight, I wanted to be able to make a bit of extra money in my free time, and I did. Sometimes I wouldn’t mind being successful in some area beyond my job as a stay at home mom. But more importantly, I want to be happy and progressing where I’m at.

It is really nice when thing go better than planned. We went on  a nice little bike ride together.

I struggle when my expectations fail. Today I had some fun things planned, and the kids were indifferent. I took it way too personally. Sometimes I’m not as grown up as I would like to be.

Second haircut

Yesterday afternoon we had a friends over and weeded out the garden. This morning we also had a friends over. The little boys enjoyed having toddler friends over and I enjoyed talking to their moms.

I made a resolution to be more friendly this year. A lot of times I treat friendship as more of a task to check off my list. Friendliness isn’t quite like that. I do more with friends if I’m simply being friendly than I do if it ends up on my to do list. I’m also more open to help others, to listen and not ignore them, and to not worry about the tasks I need to get done.

We signed Curtis up for preschool next year. I worried so much about Peter and school, mostly because he was my first and incredibly smart. It was difficult to know what was the best option for him. Curtis is a more typical kid and not my first, so I’m having no such dilemmas about him.