Another gorgeous Sunday afternoon

The hibiscus are blooming everywhere right now and it makes it look like a tropical paradise all around our house! So pretty!

Gah! I need to get serious about a photography class--I need to do things justice!

At the start of our afternoon walk (and right beside the No Fishing No Swimming sign haha) we watched a kid catch a HUGE fish right as we walked by---ten pounds at least! Sterling took a picture for him and then he released it. The kids were very fascinated by it all.

Walk this road every day to and from Ruth's school, and to run, and for bike rides. It's so pretty!

At the end of this stretch is Ruth's school. Usually on a school morning they start at the beginning and race to the end and then chat with the crossing guard while they wait for me to catch up. This Sunday walk was so cute that they were holding hands!

Will wanted to make sure I got his blue dog in the picture. So on his birthday in February the crossing guard, Maya, gave him a cardboard blue dog with a little string leash. He has literally dragged that dog EVERYWHERE with him ever since. Until it got so worn out it just fell to pieces. So we made another cardboard dog, that he drags around--but he told me "I can't wait to show this to Maya! She will love it!" Poor kid needs a real dog haha!

I took this picture to remember Will at that moment. Because it is so typical I think I take it for granted, but I want to remember it for always. Wearing his blue shoes. Dragging his blue dog and holding a ball. Seriously the epitome of Will for the last few months!

Her ornery face that she gives me when I'm saying no.

It was a beautiful Sunday afternoon. And the next morning Sterling started surgery. Sigh. 

I always have ALL these thoughts in my head throughout the day that I think I want to journal. I want to get down. I think they might help someone. Or help my future daughters. But it's so hard to find the time at night. Or make it a priority when there are other things to do. Or find the energy to put into it. And then I worry that I'm not thinking through my writing well enough and I should take the time to do a first draft and then focus it better later on. But, basically all my worrying about it not being perfect is holding me back from ever journaling at all. So I want to be better about it. This blog will eventually be printed out as our family photo albums, so I don't want to be too personal--but I'd like a few more things down in writing.

This year has been the best year ever, I feel like. I just keep remembering my sister Andrea, when I was sitting in her tiny kitchen when she lived in Clearfield and I only had Ruthie and she said "Just give it five years. The first five years of parenting are lonely and hard--but then it gets SO much better! I can't even tell you exactly what makes it better, but it just is." Truer words have never been spoken. I don't know if we have similar personalities, or similar situations in life, but I feel like the last year has been amazing in so many ways. 

Some of this is location-based. My kids don't walk out of our front door onto a heavy traffic road/parking lot in a city of 5 mil people that makes me nervous to let them outside at all. We have a GORGEOUS front porch with friends on both sides of us in our townhomes and parents that I don't feel judge me when I let them outside for a while by themselves (usually because I am feeding the baby or finishing up dinner and then I head out...but the freedom of those few minutes of not having to have a constant eye on them is a much bigger stress reliever than I realized it would be. Makes me wish for a backyard more than I ever have because then I can truly just let them roam for long amounts of time!) Also--the smaller city and less traffic is huge. Instead of forty minute drives to playgroup and literally planning every single task around traffic (or spending hours a day in the car if you didn't plan around it) I have all my needs within a ten minute radius just about. If not, then easily twenty minutes. The grocery store, a walmart, the library, the beach, the pediatrician, etc. So those two things alone, based off location, have been a huge lift in my life this year.

Some of the amazing-ness has been age related. Ruthie and Will go to school. Don't get me wrong, I LOVED having all of them home--but somehow this year is the golden era that I always imagined when I imagined being a mom. There's enough organizing and shuttling to keep me busy and on my toes, no room for laziness, but enough slack to enjoy my kids and just really live in the moment. For the past three months, every single morning and afternoon walking to and from Ruth's school I literally get this huge smile on my face and just BREATHE in the sunshine and cool air. The 75 degree weather. The sunshine. The green leaves. The kids running and biking and giggling ahead. Sometimes falling and scraping and crying. Sometimes arguing and whining. But the vast majority of those times in our day there is a lot of joy in my heart and in our family. I have this somewhat panicked voice in my head that I literally keep hearing that says "Lindsay you better enjoy this. You better be totally in this moment. This is the golden age of your children. They are happy and carefree and little and beautiful and wondrous. They are content and they are yours. All yours. And this will never happen again. This time is GOLDEN." It's like this chanting clock that I can't turn off. And I say to myself, "I am! I am enjoying this so much! My eyes get misty every day for the past few months! I love it! It's amazing!" But...I just can't seem to feel like I am enjoying it ENOUGH. Haha. I am, I know I am. Honestly, if I looked back on our entire eight years of married life and six years of parenthood, this is the year I would live over and over and over again. 

My kids fight. They argue. Sometimes in the space of an hour I think "Can you please just say one nice thing out of your mouth and keep your hands to yourself for ONE SECOND!" But, it's not tiring in the same way that three toddlers were tiring. I feel like there are more teaching moments where they actually get it, where you are actually getting somewhere and getting a return on your patience, instead of just redirecting and trying to muddle through until nap time (toddlerhood, right?).

Maybe it's the conversation? Maybe it's the jokes and giggles and light bulbs going off. But having a baby that everyone adores and loves, having a three year old that is sassy and hilarious, having a five year old that is ambitious and determined, having a six year old that is helpful and learning at a crazy speed (and all of them are all of those things, just the stages are so particular) makes the whole. 

We operate together. We feel like a united family. 

I love it. 

Don't get me wrong--we still have plenty of days that are bad. But it doesn't have the same feeling of overwhelm as I've had in years past. Maybe I've learned to cope with medical school. I'd like to feel like I've learned something over the past few years. Maybe it's because I only have one baby now instead of three. But, like my sister said, you can't quite put your finger on it. It just gets easier.

And luckily, we've enjoyed evenings with Sterling a lot in the last few weeks (so sad to start surgery!) and that feels so nice. The kids laugh with him and joke with him. We easily move from kids, to clean up, and to all the other adult tasks in life, and even though we still struggle with stress sometimes, we're mostly a lot more solid than before.

I've been thinking back to my favorite examples of families and couples that I have met in my life and they have very little. Or nothing. And have big trials. And zero husband time. And somehow manage to do it with grace and love and smiles.
Also humor. I'm learning how important humor is to the core of a family unit, to a personal well-being, and to the kind of life you want to have.

I guess maybe this year I learned not to be selfish (for a time, I think that's a constant work in progress) and to just enjoy my life. Don't get me wrong, I enjoyed all our previous years of marriage and parenthood. I have SOOOOO many happy memories--I don't want this to seem like this is our ONLY happy year. It's just been an extra good one. And I want to bottle it up and keep it that way forever. I want to keep my kids squished next to me on the couch reading books at night for the rest of our lives! 

And I gotta tell ya, I am going to MISS these Florida winters walking to the elementary school every day. We have another year of it, and I still feel like it's not enough--like I can't enjoy it enough. It's just so much perfection.