I’m going to stop using the word “busy”.  (For real, you guys can help me.  Call me out.  But, you know, can you say it with gentle words when you do?)

Instead I am going to use the word “full”.  My life is full.  And, like all lives, it is full of beautiful and beastly moments.  Of good things I like doing and mediocre things I have to do and rotten things I must endure.

This week we picked strawberries.  I love picking our food from the ground or the tree or the whatever.  (I mean, it’s fine to pick it from the grocery store shelf too and I do that mostly, but it’s just so satisfying and connected feeling to pick food from its source.  Except chickens – and beef.  Well, all meat really.  I don’t want to pick that from its source.  But I want someone else to.)

London made a delicious chicken pot pie and I have officially decided that I like food and eating it better than I like fitting in my clothes correctly.  Whatever.  I’m fine with it all.  Wrinkles and everything else.  I mean, who can blame me when my fourteen year old can make a perfectly flaky crust that puts any I’ve ever attempted to shame?

Bergen made a dessert from the unofficial Harry Potter Cookbook called Knickerbocker Glory and it was ridiculous.  Basically it was three desserts in one – ice cream, custard and jello.  Yikes!

We enjoyed their dinner and dessert on the porch Saturday night and then, since the weather was just dreamy, we spontaneously played a game of soccer in our yard as the sun was setting around us and I was reminded that there are moments of perfect simplicity in my life and I don’t want to miss them.

Let’s talk about books.  I like to read before I fall asleep most nights.  I started The Boy in the Striped Pajamas.  I watched the movie eight hundred years ago but I have no memory from that so it’s like I have never heard of this.  I like it so far.  I finished The Light Between the Oceans in two days and already loaned it to Myra and she’ll probably stop being my friend now.  It was wonderful and horrible and compelling and a lot of other things.  I’m also reading Nothing to Prove which I bought (or someone gave to me, sad little memory of mine) before Christmas I think but it finally made its way into the rotation this week.  Which is precisely when I needed to read it I think because I believe God cares about timing.  And the timing is perfect for this book.  I’m maybe one fourth of the way through and it is exactly what I need to read – to remind myself that God knows that I am not enough and He does not expect me to be … the perfect mother or the best writer or the consummate business owner or the most efficient housekeeper.  And letting that go feels like freedom.  The kind I’ve been running myself ragged to find.  (Bonus points for this book too because it’s written by the sister of my friend Brooke at Lost Valley Ranch!)

Also bonus points because some of this reading took place outside in a hammock at Jones Gap and that place can make any day a happy day.

Of course, if we are actually tallying bonus points, I’d have to lose some again because half of my kids don’t love being outside as much as I do and it feels like some sort of bribery is routinely being enacted to convince the less tolerant among us to give it a go.

This weekend Maddox spent the night.  We ran our traditional Swamp Rabbit 5K, a little local race we’ve been running for years with our friends.  (Otto and Piper used to be the ones in the stroller and this time London pushed Maddox in the stroller.)   We also taught Maddox the fine art of cardboard hill sledding and he taught us how exciting seeing cows in a field can be.

I try to rotate through all of the kids periodically with one on one dates and little outings – not always something spectacular – just a little special time.  Last week it was London’s turn and we ended up taking our milkshakes to a little outdoor park area.  Where London found it hilarious to offer her milkshake to the statue and to pose silly photos.

And that pretty much wraps up the ramble – oh, and an actual photo of my tattoo.  (Which my dad did not even notice on his last visit.)

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