Haircuts

The month of May was haircut central in our family. Rose started us off at the beginning of May with a darling summer bob, and she inspired Amber to follow in her footsteps a few days later. Next Jeff went under the clippers, taking up my offer to trim his wild winter hair over the weekend. Yesterday I went to a new salon and had a few inches snipped off, and this morning I cornered Jay and buzzed his head before school. We are all trimmed up and ready for summer! Now we just have to wait two more weeks for school to finish up so we can begin summer officially.

Memorial Day

Memorial Day 2019 was everything a "second Saturday" should be. Long weekends are so luxurious! We all needed some down time to continue recovering from track season, so my wildest dreams for the day were to run somewhere interesting and spend time close to home with family. We ended up having a well-balanced day, with satisfying exercise in the morning and a long lazy afternoon with the cousins.

Jay turns ten

Happy birthday to our sweet Jay! He is an entire decade old, which means I am ten years old as a mother. I love Jay so much. He is 4'10 & 1/4 inches tall. He is so tender and loves hugging me, always patting my back gently for the entire hug. On Sunday during church, Jay put his arm around me and gently patted my upper arm/shoulder for a few minutes. His simple affection warmed my motherly soul. I love my gentle soft-hearted boy. I love his goodness, his patience, his quick wit, his faith, his voracious reading, and his freckle cheeked grin.

A picnic, a swim, and a recital

Saturday, May 18th was full to bursting with activities. I got up early to run eight miles before Jeff left for the district track meet. Once he was gone, the kids and I got ready for our ward's annual walk and picnic. It is a simple fun ward family gathering where we get together, go on a walk, and then have a picnic together afterwards. The Sunday school is in charge of the picnic, and they grilled hot dogs for everyone. I love low-key unstructured church activities. No pressure, no weirdness, just good old fashioned sitting in the grass and chatting with the nearest person. I had a few husband-pangs when I saw all of the happy families with both spouses enjoying the picnic, but Jeff was at the very last track meet and the end was in sight. With my husband gone for the day, I felt extra grateful for my church friends and the adult company and family feel they provided.

Mother's Day: a new perspective

I.
For the past couple of years, I have struggled with mother's day. Selfishly (and in spite of my best efforts not to care), I expected my family to make the day amazing for me, pridefully reasoning that I do so much for them every day, I deserve a day where they make an extra effort to help me out and share my load. Yet somehow I never came close to having an amazing mother's day. I finally "got over it" this year though. It all started when I realized two things:

Snow Mountain Ranch

One of my favorite springtime family traditions is going on a yearly springtime hike to search out wildflowers with my mom. Southern central Washington has a surprisingly beautiful selection of wildflowers in May, and this year we found the best floral array we've ever seen on our dry side of the state. I recently downloaded the All Trails app, and it is a gold mine for helping locate trailheads. Gone are the days of driving aimlessly around bumpy gravel roads trying to follow decades-old guidebook directions and hoping for derelict trail head signposts. Now I just select a trail in the app and tap "directions." It takes me straight to Google Maps and calculates an accurate route. Yes!

A field trip, a haircut, and a kite

Last week the kids had lots of different unrelated activities, so here's one paragraph for each kid, in no particular order.

JAY: I dropped Jay off at the school at 5:45am Friday morning (May 10th) so he could go on his field trip to the zoo in Seattle. He was gone for 12 hours! He had a good time, but he was extra fatigued from the social strain of spending all that time with his classmates. The boy is clearly related to Jeff and me. He dreamily outlined an ideal day, snuggled up in his room alone with the iPad, Nintendo, his Kindle full of books, and some food. I assured him that he would recover and enjoy spending time with friends again soon.

Shouting

After school yesterday, Rose went on her one mile run around and around our driveway loop. (Jay's lastest ankle injury is still preventing him from running--that boy twists his ankles so often!) Looking out the window, I noticed that Amber had joined Rose and was merrily biking alongside her favorite sister, training wheels a-rattling. When they reached the slight uphill rise one one side of the driveway loop, Rose circled around behind and pushed Amber up. It was so sweet, I went outside and took a picture.

Star kids

This post is reserved for Jay and Rose, the star school-kids of our family, who are not home with Amber and me during the day and therefore have far less photographic representation than the Amb-monster. Jay and Rose are also not quite as mischievous as Amber, so I have less ranting/therapeutic writing to siphon off in regards to them. Rose and especially Jay are also getting old enough to tell their own stories, so it's beginning to feel more... invasive to tell stories about their experiences on my blog. I am determined to keep them in this narrative somehow, though! Yesterday (Sunday), Jay and Rose were both bright shining stars at church and they set my mom-heart a-glowing.

Weekly

It was another long week, but long isn't always necessarily negative. Long weeks are tiring, though. I just glanced through my journal entries for the week and I saw lots of positives mixed in the negatives. That's encouraging! Jeff had two moderately late nights of parent teacher conferences and two very late night track meets, so he was only home during the wild witching hour (before 8pm) one weeknight this week. We were/are both exhausted from it! Track season ends in two weeks. The story in John chapter 9 about the blind man receiving his sight really seems to describe my week...

Mt. Si

Yesterday (Saturday, April 27th), Jeff stayed home with the kids all day while I ventured forth for a Day of Shaina to recover my sanity, balance my inner zen, and brace myself for the upcoming week of Jeff-less-ness (two nights of parent teacher conferences plus two track meets). I looked forward to my Shaina-Day all week long. The anticipation sustained me through various challenges. Time is the best gift. The knowledge that I would have an entire 12 hours to myself to do my own thing was exceedingly inspiring. At last the day came. I packed my backpack full of supplies, kissed my husband goodbye, and was driving westward by 7:10am. My destination: MOUNTAINS! TREES! TRAILS! PARENTS!

Upland Girls

After spending last week being pummeled and pestered by a bored Amber, I decided to make a daily effort to siphon off as much of Amber's boundless energy as possible. Usually I make sure to do something specific with her each day, but reading stories or pushing her on the rope swing don't even come close to tapping into her vast energy reserves. So on Monday morning after Jay and Rose got on the school bus, I quickly finished some housework, packed a picnic lunch (with much rejoicing from Amber), and headed for the hills. Using the All Trails app, I found a nice set of trails located a gentle 50 minute drive from our house: the Cowiche Uplands.  We've hiked the Cowiche Canyon before, but the trails up above the canyon were new territory for us: just the kind of adventure we were looking for.