I love falling asleep at night with my slider open breathing in the mixed smells of rain and fresh cut mint. I am absolutely in love with driving home after a long day of work and seeing field after field of hay and corn waiting to be cut, and spur of the moment drives to the coast to witness sunsets like this:
I know that someday I will eventually move away from this little hole in the world, but for now we're dealing with little changes. One step at a time baby.
With school starting this week Mei and I were able to sneak away for some "Mommy/Mei time" as she calls it. We took off to the mall for some rockin' new school shoes and found these super cute gems on sale with coupons (of course, cause you just know I'm totally loving this crazy coupon lady gig!):
A pretty good deal for $60 bucks! And what's a trip to the mall without ice cream?? OK, so we settled for frozen yogurt with toppings, but Mei didn't need to know that minor detail. We even managed to get in for an appointment with one of our favorite stylists, Becky, and someone finally got those "stripes" she's been talking about for months.
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| Please, please, please ignore my disgusting floor! |
Our first day of school looked something like this:
Sister totally rocked those silver Chuck Taylors! Loralai already has a pair that have bright pink shiny stars on them, now all we need to do is get Seraphina a pair. Ha ha.
We also managed to sneak out last week for breakfast. We don't get to do super fun things too often, so when we get the chance I like to take the girl to this little place we have in town. It's a super small little restaurant in downtown Indy, but the place has some killer food (not too bad on the wallet either!). I would love to say that we had an amazing breakfast and that I can't wait to do it again, but believe me when I say that breakfast with two toddlers is not something I plan to try again anytime soon. I'm not sure who I felt worse for: the waiter, the cook, or the girls (especially Mei since she loves these morning breakfast escapades). It all started out good until i opened their sippee cups to find that Mei had tried to be helpful, but had filled them with whipping cream instead of milk and I had no where to dump them out.... then came the fight over the syrup.... followed all too quickly by the glass of ice water in my lap. Next time we're doing waffles at home.....
This valley has a ton of well hidden little secrets that only the locals really know. Andy's Cafe is one of them, another is Gillespies Meat Shoppe in Salem. It's not exactly a tourist attraction, the floors aren't always spotless and sometimes the people are on the strange side, but the butchery is awesome and the produce is always fresh and local. I try to make it in every so often to see what they have on the shelf. I usually make it in every 2 or 3 months to do our usual $200 for 50 pounds of beef thing but I don't make it in as often as I 'd like to. I think I'm going to start trying a little harder. Change, it's not always a bad or scary thing.
It's hard to believe how fast things change. "Don't blink, 'cause just like that you're six years old and you take a nap and you wake up and you're twenty-five and your high school sweetheart becomes your wife. Trust me friend a hundred years goes faster than you think, so don't blink." Ugh, so true. Totally became apparent this week when it came time to move some rooms around. Loralai busted her toddler bed so we decided it was time to put her in a big girl bed. No problem, right? So wrong. With the dresser, a toddler bed, a twin bed, and a rocking chair crammed in one tiny little room it became apparent that something needed to go. So this happened:
To those of you that have never been in this position, this looks like it should be no big deal. Trust me, it's a big deal. I think i spent about 1/2 an hour staring at this stupid chair in this d*$n closet trying to fight back the flood of emotion that I could feel building. I finally gave in and sat down on the new twin bed and cried my heart out for 45 minutes. They're growing up, and there is absolutely nothing I can do about it. All I can do is keep them safe. Coddle them, love them, provide for them. I need to earn their respect, and teach them how to earn respect for themselves. I can keep them home, I can keep them inside, I can do everything in my power to keep them safe; but I can't keep them in my arms forever. I think that's going to be my most difficult challenge and biggest change, learning to let go of my littles when there are no longer little. They'll always be my littles, even when they are too big to fit in my lap.
Well. I'm off to enjoy some fun mommy time with some dear friends that I am also fortunate enough to call family. Enjoy the weekend everyone, try not to work too hard :)
