The Leaves Are A-Changin'!

The weather has been up and down, clear and rainy, calm and windy, and mild and cold over the past two weeks... which means, it is fall! Even though we had a very cold, wet summer, it seemed to redeem itself in the end and cling on a bit longer than usual, so fall was pushed back a bit. I was starting to think winter was going to force fall to abdicate and muscle in early because it seemed to be getting colder but the colors in the trees weren't changing.

However, I have noticed as I've been driving around this past week that there IS some beautiful color happening in our trees right now. Here is proof from my own back yard!

I love the evening sunlight in the fall and winter, too. It gets that gorgeous lemony color that I don't recall seeing in the spring and summer. I happened to run in and grab my camera just in time to capture this leaf aglow from the setting sun. Within two clicks of my camera, the sun had already dropped just enough that the light had changed and the moment was gone.

It reminded me that life itself is full of fleeting moments, and when you have one happen to you, you had better enjoy it fully because if you blink a couple times, you might miss it. As fall is rapidly giving way to the rush of the holidays that heralds the beginning of winter, I am making a vow to myself to make sure I stop blinking sometimes and open my eyes fully to those moments so that I don't miss them. Maybe I'll even have my camera handy, and I can share some of them with you!

My Brain Is Going in Too Many Directions

This week has been so busy! Of course, there are a lot of weeks I say that now that I have three kids in school. Which reminds me that I wish the "Now" me could go back and tell the "Then" me that it was true what parents of older children warned me about life being busier once kids start school. Seriously, I thought having the kids in school would free up all this extra time for me to have to myself (and in some ways it has) BUT it also means that the time outside of that is FULL OF STUFF. Appointments, field trips, parent/teacher conferences, not to mention the other stuff I'm involved in - which I try to keep to a minimum, but it seems that this year in particular, things are just getting out of hand AND MY KIDS AREN'T EVEN IN SPORTS YET. I just don't know how other moms do it! Of course, I've been assured that those other moms are saying the exact same thing about all other moms too.

Mostly, I just feel that there are all these things I want to do, that even when I have some free time to do something, I don't even know which thing to do first, and I get overwhelmed and end up doing nothing - just waste time playing a game on facebook or reading an actual book. Or a book on my Kindle, which is a real book, but not an ACTUAL book. All you avid readers out there will know what I mean.

[side note: I love my Kindle. I was afraid it would detract from my enjoyment of holding and reading an actual book, but it hasn't. I still read actual books - now I just have the chance to read MORE books because I can buy the actual books that I really want, and I can ALSO get cheaper e-books to sample new authors or genres. Since I have a hard time allowing books to leave my shelves (even ones I didn't love all that much) this has also helped the space issues we have in our house. I mean, a person can only physically store so many books in her home before her children start asking for their closet space back...]

All this to say - I wish I had more time to devote to my many interests and passions. One of which is photography and photo-enhancement/alteration. I play around and I love it, but I lose all confidence when I see the spectacular work that is out there. Trolling etsy, looking at photography, I alternate between "wow, that person is SO talented, I'd be wasting my time listing my stuff" and "wow, my stuff is definitely better than that, I should list it!" Which sounds extremely rude and pretentious now that I've typed it out, ha.

So, before I bore you to death, here is my Red Dahlia.

No Etsy Seller of the Week this Week

Why, you ask?

Well, I forgot. Ha!

Our baby has been waking up in the middle of the night the last few nights and it takes about 2 hours to get her back to sleep again. I am pretty wiped out and as a result, my brain is foggy.

I'll be more ahead of the game next week, I hope!

So, instead, I'll share a story about my family life - lucky you!


I usually manage to luck out during the week and have at least one grandma available to watch at least one of the kiddos. But not Wednesday last week. My mom was working or busy all week and my mother-in-law had watched the boys the day before so I could get some orders made and mailed.

So, I hauled all of us into town to both the post office (where I had to stand in line because I had international packages to mail) and the shop where I sell, to restock. First of all, hauling three little ones under age five ANYWHERE is not pleasant and takes about 1/2 your day just to get them all ready and loaded in the van. Then, my 4-month old is apt to cry when we are still 15 minutes from anywhere. Which then makes the almost-five year old start yelling and crying. And that sets off the three-year-old, who doesn't cry when the baby does, but will start yelling when his older brother does.

So usually by the time I've got them all dressed, fed, in the car, and then listened to all three of them lose their minds for the last 15 minutes - you can see that I am not really in the mood to haul them all out of the car and actually be seen in public. Which is why I never go anywhere.

I keep telling myself that in a couple years or so, this won't be nearly as much of an issue. Then I think "what if it is?" and get a mental image of driving around with a crying 12-, 15-, and 17-year old in the car; which makes me laugh and I can somehow make it through that moment without selling any of them.

So, we get to the co-op where I sell. I madly put out the measly few things I've managed to make above and beyond orders that week and pay my rent. Meanwhile, I've got the baby strapped to my chest, and my head is on constant swivel to make sure my boys aren't destroying anything (the 3-year-old managed to "redistribute" about fifty business cards from other tables the last time I took him with me.) But we get in and out without any damage and not even any screaming! I am thrilled.

On to the post office! If you've stuck with me this long - well, I am impressed! :) Thankfully the line isn't very long. My younger son immediately starts walking laps around the island divider thing that separates the line from the counter. Then my oldest decides to follow him, which quickly erupts into a game of chase. I put a stop to that immediately and praise God they listened to me and kept it to a walk after that.

The highlight of the trip was when my three-year-old stopped in front of the waste bin, pointed to the "W" in "Waste" and said, "W!"

I don't even know if my almost-five-year old could point out a W! I have tried working with him, but he is way more interested in drawing trains. He knows the alphabet, and the letters in his name and that is about all he cares to know right now. I figure he still has a year of pre-school and kindergarten to learn these things, so no pressure!

After the post office, I had to sit in the van in the parking lot and nurse the baby. No way was she going to make it the 20-plus minute drive home and no way was I going to listen to the kids screaming that whole way!

Well, there was a little slice of my life. I made it back home in one piece, and so did the kids. Although if you had told me 10 years ago that going to the post office and dropping in on a shop would take me three hours from the moment I put on my shoes to the moment I took them off back home again, I would have laughed you out the door!

Might I just add one thing? I love my kids to bits! As much as they can drive me crazy, being crazy is the best thing that has ever happened to me! :)