I use to have grand dreams of a giant house with 15 bedrooms, 8 bathrooms, a swimming pool, my own balcony, and at least 2 full-time on call chefs. Seriously. I figured if I had all these things I would be happy. Not just ho-hum happy, like life couldn’t possibly be better cause I had it all kinda happy. It’s funny how we take all the little things and turn them into something we don’t like just because we aren’t happy with where we are. A few years ago I spent like 3 days going through our front yard with a fine tooth comb because I was tired of stepping on these little pine cones every time I went outside to get the mail. Granted, I could have avoided the entire thing if I would have taken 2 seconds to throw on some flip-flops before walking out to get the mail, but that was beside the point. I wanted the mail, I wanted it now, and I wanted it without shoes or cursing 5 times before I even got to the mail box.
Now I have a very hard time begrudging these little guys their destiny. It’s not their fault someone planted that horrible tree in the front yard so many years ago. And admittedly, I don’t mind not having to deal with leaves every fall. Plus my kids sure love these little buggers.
We had a nice day yesterday, a little warm but not bad. Sunday though was gorgeous! High 80’s and a little breeze that just begged to blow little grains of sidewalk chalk around. The girls beg to get outside every chance they get, and nice enough days are a rarity around here this summer. Every time we open a door to take the garbage out or let the air in, there are two little blonde heads with blue eyes peering through the windows, and both have big pouting faces when we close the door without letting them outside. So we humored the breeze and headed outside with our buckets of chalk.
I won’t compare how much ended up on the sidewalk to how much Seraphina “eated” but I will say that her diapers have had a very odd hue to them as of late. I can’t remember the last time I just laid in the grass of the front lawn and drew silly shapes on a sidewalk while the sun shone down on my super white Oregon legs. I know that my the backs of my legs are paying dearly for the time they spent basking in the UV’s. I’ll take a sunburn any day so long as I can hear those giggles though.
 | |||||||
   | |||||||
It would appear that somewhere along the way these three little Oregonian girls have developed a Florida complex. Now if only their fair skin would get the hint….
There are so many little things about summer that I don’t think I’ll ever get enough of, but the best one by far is the simplicity of it all. BBQ dinners with paper plates, no ridiculously structured routine, no specific time to wake up. I love simplicity. I’m not big on making things complicated, and there are so many times when I’d be fine getting rid of half of our stuff just so I don’t have to deal with it. I’d be content to spend the rest of my days hanging out in the front yard coloring on the sidewalk with the most amazing girls I’ve ever met.
“Plane! Plane Mommy! Plane! Bye Bye plane!!!!”
The city also decided that this weekend was a good time to mow the alleyway again. Lora was absolutely in love with the Bobcat, yet she was scared to death of it at the same time. Every time it would turn around and come back towards us she would scream like a maniac and come running back to me, but every time it went the other way she couldn’t help but try to get a little closer for a peek.
In lying in the grass the other day among the pine cones and the sidewalk chalk I realized something I think I’ve been needing to realize for a while: I’ve yet to really decide what I want to be when I grow up. I’ve changed my major quite a few times and I consistently bounce back and forth between what I want to do. I don’t think it’s because I’m flaky or unsure of myself, I think it’s because I don’t want to grow up. I want to bask in the sun on some far off island, I want to soak in a bathtub in a huge house that overlooks the French Alp, I want to stand in the crashing waves off the shore of Italy. I want to do all of these things with 6 little feet standing beside me and 3 beautiful little girls soaking in the wonders of this world. I don’t know what I want to be when I grow up, because I don’t want to grow up. If you had told me ten years ago that I’d want to be 16 again I would have looked at you as if you were completely insane; but the truth of it all is that I don’t want to work a 40 hour week and come home at the end of the night exhausted. I simply want simplicity: a life full of love, laughter, and joy. I think it’s what we all really want. For now though, I will be content to spend every ounce of energy and love that I have with 3 amazing little girls that don’t know the difference between the rain that falls in the Amazon and the sprinkles from a summer sprinkler; and I will love every complicated endeavor that come across. I hope you all had a great weekend and enjoyed every second of today. For now I’m off to sleep. Second star to the right and straight on till morning.
