Thoughts

I was writing an email to my mom and realized that all the stuff I was telling her was stuff I was wanting to record on the blog. So here it is:

My pans in the fire...

Now that the triathlon is over, I'm revamping my schedule to fit in volunteer farm work. There's that church farm nearby, Sola Gratia, that I'll be working with this summer. My first day is tomorrow. I've been assigned to work with the head planting guy, but he might just show me where to weed. LOL. 

The tri also introduced me to road cycling, which I like a lot. It's super practical in some ways (biking to appointments/errands) and just plain therapeutic in others (long stretches of quiet time outdoors). The extra large garden was therapeutic last year, but the garden is Alice's this year, and I'm mentoring a young couple nearby through their first growing season *sigh* I don't feel like any sort of gardening expert, but I do know that you don't plant 8 packets of seeds into 4 unlabeled trays and promptly throw all the empty seed packets away. Maybe I can be helpful to someone after all.

My mind's eye is already turning to the summer months with kids out of school in 25 days. That's a rough transition for me. For all of us. It's great in some ways, and really hard in others. I've planned out the skeleton of the whole summer (trips, camps, bucket list activities) but the day-to-day running of the household with everyone home is something I can't really prepare for. The kids will fight. They'll play. They'll want to go out and do things or stay home and read, but not always when I want them to ;) Thankfully, Alice and Robert are old enough for me to leave home alone for short periods of time. I won't have to convince all FOUR kids that they want to do such-and-such right now.

It's a big summer for us this year. Alice has a mile-long list of projects she wants to organize (Toddler Time, Kid Camp, garden produce stand, bake sale, babysitting), and I get the feeling I'll be shuttling her here and there quite a bit. Fortunately for me, most of her friends live close by and she's a confident biker. I'm pretty sure she and Robert will be biking themselves to and from piano lessons, at least. We'll see about play dates.

I get to begin my 40th year this summer (turning 39). I've been thinking about what I would like that to mean. What do I want my 40th year to look like? I can use the whole year to celebrate and appreciate and try new things. I did something similar with my 30th year, and that was fun. It gave me permission to do things a little out of the ordinary. I was a little more daring, I think, because of it. And since I had all year, I got to be more deliberate with what I did and with whom. A few things I'm thinking about for my 40th year: 40 handwritten thank-you notes to others, 40 hours one-on-one with each of my kids and spouse, training for another physical endurance event (triathlon, long cycling race, or 10k run), traveling off the continent, riding in a hot air balloon, taking a girls' weekend with old friends. I welcome your suggestions :)