(Half) A Year in the Life

So. I missed this here little ol' blog, and I came over a few days ago to dust it off and get caught up, and there were gross horrible rapey comments waiting for moderation, and it momentarily upended how I felt about the internet, because amongst all the loveliness and wonderful human connection, there is apparently horrible barf-inducing assholery as well, and even though that's a thing you think you know, you don't know it til it's aimed at your own children.

So, I did what any normal person would do and I locked this sh!t down. Hello from this newly guard-railed space which can't be googled and no longer has links posted in any public profile, where people only find me if I share on a platform that's now private, because all my platforms are now private. Which means people only find me if I share myself where they can.

Hi! You found me! I shared myself to you!

Y'all, it hasn't been our best season/s in these parts. The honest but not-gritty recap:

NOVEMBER

I turned 35, Another Nathan flew in on my birthday and Mark and I had a lovely visit with him, and I felt very loved and very middle-aged.

Mark and I took a grownups-only trip to Mexico, and my dad came and stayed in our house for a week and managed everything (everything!) at home, because he is amazing. Mexico was also amazing. Mark was amazing. It was such a happy trip.

Mark turned 35. We had cake and a date and took this family picture. Yay family!

I started a new job.

!!!!!!!

I mentioned this in my year-end recap post; it's the same job I did before, but with a different company. The whole going-back-to-work thing was really fraught and stressful, half because I'm suddenly 35 and don't know what to do with my life, and half because Mark's work is so batsh!t insane that it's really difficult to piece any kind of work schedule together and balance it with also picking up the slack at home, plus all the normal stuff I do (I was already busy). And, so, things kind of came to a head around this time about the balance in our marriage and house and life, and there were ugly feelings and patterns surrounding some of that and, well, yeah.

Speaking of ugly, this laptop bag I got from my company is kind of the worst, yes?

(I got a new one to tide me over until I find The Bag, don't worry.) (Suggestions welcome, if you love your laptop bag, by the way.)

DECEMBER

It was not our best holiday season. It's kind of a blur now. But here, look at a sweet Christmas picture of the babies.

JANUARY

We got a new car! I forced Mark (forced!) to feel his feelings about his old Mazda, the first car we ever bought together, and we sold it and are now back to being an Accord family. It'll be mine when the van dies, and whatever Big Car we get to replace it will be mostly Mark's to drive around daily. SEDAN ME, YO.

Since we didn't get our traditional New Year's Eve all together, I flew to Minnesota for Another Nathan's birthday. It was -36 with the wind chill (yes that says NEGATIVE THIRTY SIX OH EM GEE) when I went to church that Sunday morning. I secretly felt like a badass and I secretly love the snow, but only because it's in a place with plows and such. Was a delightful visit and left feeling... spirit-filled. Friendship-filled. Etc.

We lost power for a night in an ice storm and the kids and I camped out by the (gas) fireplace and read books out loud. It was surprisingly sweet, in a Laura Ingalls (cussy) kind of way.

Also, Charlotte helped me with work, and it sort of delighted me, on the days it didn't exhaust me.

I'M RIGHT ON TOP OF THAT, ROSE!

And that is legit the most exciting thing to report in all of January.

FEBRUARY

Anneliese burned her hand badly on the stove while helping me make sloppy joes.

She also read Amelia Bedelia and sent funny texts about it.

And wore this great outfit.

Hmmm I'm grasping at straws. February mostly sucked.

MARCH

I went to Pawley's Island to see my friend Amy for the weekend, and play with her kids at the beach. It was cold so we didn't put the kids in swimsuits, but they got in anyway, and who couldn't have seen that coming?

Our grocery store stopped selling my favorite bread that I love for toast, so I started making my own. Because I love toast. I eat it every day. With coffee. Toast is a meal for me. Anyway.

I played with recipes until I figured out how to do it exactly how I like it, and it's a barely-changed version of Arwen's "the bread" and hey it turns out I'm not scared of yeast anymore, and it makes me feel all Laura Ingalls (the good way) to do this for myself every week.

Bowden's kidneys started to lose functioning. Our sweet girl is getting old.

March wasn't really my favorite either.

APRIL

Things started to feel a little less sucky in these parts, for a moment.

We got a new nephew! Meet baby Charlie! This is Ali's little brother. Anneliese of course always loves a new baby to hold.

We celebrated Easter, but sadly not with a beach drive, since Bumgarner Beach Week is moved to August this year. The kids looked cute though.

We went camping as a family. It was pretty, the kids loved it, it was fine. No one sleeps well when camping, right? But campfire food is always delicious.

I went to Las Vegas for the Blathering, and it turns out Vegas is nothing like I was picturing, in all the best ways. It was clean and fun and lively and beautiful, and I tell you what, people in Vegas know how to commit to a theme. It's just all very... well done.

This is my favorite picture with Sarah that we have ever taken.
Every time I look at it I feel happy.
I legit keep it in an album on my phone of things to look at on crappy days.
I love her.

And it was wonderful to be with amazing ladies who are good for my heart and make me laugh til I cry, and love me even in hard seasons, and do not hate my life even when I hate it, and to hug Another Nathan on the way home via MSP.

Basically re-entry sucked, after a happy laughy weekend away from real life. Suuuuuucked. On many levels, but not the least of which was Charlotte getting terribly sick with a chest infection (shocker) (asthma baby) and that bled into a vom bug, and it was generally  miserable.

MAY

Anneliese got a grade-level responsibility award at school, and we about burst with pride.

She also sang an adorable solo in her chorus concert at school.

Everything's coming up Anneliese!

We all (well, except Charlotte, but she was there, listening) sang/played together in a music festival at church. A seriously lovely family moment after lots of hard months.

Nathan got big kid teeth! And had several teeth pulled in preparation for braces, sometime... sometime. Who knows exactly when. Braces! They are coming!

He also played delightfully in his orchestra concert and is vying for a spot in the advanced group next fall. (Is maybe a long shot? I can't tell.)

My work got completely insane and busy, and I needed to do it full time, which we had expected for spring, but we didn't know what that would feel like on the home front til I was doing it. Working full time from home with only a few hours of childcare a day is NO JOKE, especially when May is too much anyway. Just... too much. People of the world: May is too much. Please spread the schedule around a bit. COME ON.

I laughed-to-keep-from-crying by singing into my phone headset like Britney, basically every day. (I cried too, because obviously.) (Mark's job continued/continues to be also insane.) (SOMETHING HAS TO GIVE.)

Charlotte finished her last day of preschool, ever. Here she is starting 2's in 2013, and finishing 4's this spring.

Lest you think she is always this beautiful, you should know she smiled like this on the first attempt:

I don't even know.

At some point in May, Mark went to Seattle for a week and kicked off a long several weeks/months of us like ships passing in the night. Trips backing up to each other, and work schedules, and yeah.

We needed the space but then also missed each other, which is a really nice feeling when you think about it.

JUNE

I started the month with a Memorial Day road trip with Another Nathan, from Minnesota down to North Carolina, kinda reversed from what we did when we moved him up there two summers ago. Turns out, we're still great at road trips.

Then I spent two weeks and change at Montreat, where he had asked me to be the office manager for the first several weeks of youth conference, which he DIRECTED this year, and did amazingly well.

Montreat was wonderful and spirit-filling as always. My heart has a whole blog post stirring about just this, but not today.

Oh and also I broke my foot there. *cringe face emoji*

After the conference, we had a few days of all of us at home for a moment, and Another Nathan and Mr David visiting. and we celebrated our 13th anniversary and the success of the youth conference and David's new book (!!) and all was well.

Mark went on ASP and I missed him, again. Re-entry sucked, again.

At some point we went on a date and I ordered this drink with a flower in it and we took this picture together and it makes me smile to look at it, so I am posting it here.

Marriage is hard work but sometimes you look cute, so.

Not the Outer Banks

Well, our long-planned trip to the outer banks this weekend for ferry riding and camping and lighthouse climbing and shipwreck museums IS OFF. Sad face. It's pouring rain everywhere -- like, everywhere, across the whole state -- all weekend.

It's a rare weekend when Mark is off work though, so we didn't want it to be for naught. We tried to find some fun things we could do with the kids, and still maybe balance it with some lazy at-home time, and the best idea we landed on was pitching the tent (yes ha ha ha) in the bonus room and letting them "camp" in there.

So we did. Who knows how this will go.

We also made s'mores on the stovetop. Believe it or not, this method actually works better on an electric stove than a gas burner, but we made it work!

It's fine. It's sweet. It's not the family time we have been dreaming of, but it's fine.

(I am bummed.) (Wine me.)

Summer Bucket Did-it List

It was an easy first week of the school year with the girls here at home, since they aren't staring back til this week, and verrrrry graaaaadually. (Well, I say "easy" without accounting for the bickering, which I am about sick to death of, and also the fact that Anneliese has been stuck in The Grandparent Hangover That Will Never End, alternating between delightful and then suddenly sobbing, pushing my nerves to the outer limits of human understanding. And without accounting for the heavy job stuff still hanging around like a wet blanket over our ability to feel relaxed, or Nathan side-stepping a little to find his place, and yeah, suddenly now writing this it doesn't sound like an easy week at all.)

*record scratch*

Okay, well it was a slow week together with the girls, at least. I just couldn't make myself do much besides hang out here at home. After we get through our variety of first days this week and the mmo/preschool schedule officially kicks in, it will bring an era of one-on-one time with each of them, which is yay! for me but maybe not as super for them? So I just wanted us to be home and be together for a few more days. Normally I cherish and protect my afternoon quiet during their naps, but these days I have been pushing errands and appointments for that time instead of dragging the girls along in the morning, and reserving mornings for relaxing and playing.

I just want to BE.

Anyway.

(Mark and Another Nathan have been laughing at me for how often I say anyway. It seems it's not just a written tic in emails/blogs, but an out-loud voicemail disease I can't cure myself of.) (Leaving voicemails in the first place is apparently another one.)

ANYWAY.

What am I blogging about again? I don't know. The end of summer? Yes, okay. That.

It was a good summer, y'all! I wanted it to be, I was ready for it, and I was also prepared to feel over it -- but aside from a few frustrating days, I really haven't. Basically this summer taught me that I want all summers home with my kids, and whatever work I go back to (someday) will maybe need to allow that. Like, the content of the work matters of of course, but the "career potential" might matter less than the schedule. (I have to put that in quotes. It seems so laughable. I don't know what I want to be when I grow up! Still! "Career potential." Ha.) So yeah. Our super summer means that kind of thing has been stewing in my head a bit.

So! Super summer! We did (almost) everything on our bucket list:

1.) Eat hot dogs in the back of a pickup truck. DONE.

2.) Throw water balloons onto the side of the guest house. Oops? Totally forgot about this.

3.) Make surprise crayons. DONE, with side effects.

4.) Go to that place where everyone gets to choose their own restaurant. The mall food court, hell slash paradise. DONE.

5.) Take swim lessons. DONE.

6.) Take dance lessons. DONE. (I will post more about this. Soon.)

7.) Go on lunch dates. DONE.

8.) Go to the beach for the day. DONE.

9.) Read 99 books. DONE. Look at sweet Nathan with his complete and stapled list!!

10.) Make a cake that looks like dirt with worms on it. DONE.

11.) Go downtown and go up in that big tower again. DONE.

12.) Camp in the backyard with Daddy. DONE.

13.) Go to lego camp. Oh y'all. This was a heartbreak of the summer. We found out at 5pm on Friday before his camp started (Monday morning) that it had been canceled due to not enough kids having signed up, which, first of all, what. Not enough kids interested in legos? I don't understand. Also, a little more notice would have been great, considering it was the last week of summer and they gave us no time to make alternate plans and oh my heaven he would have been crushed, so good thing we had added Montreat in and were fresh off the heels of that. Boooo lego camp. This one is definitely happening next summer. (Also if y'all want to see Mark's rage face, which doesn't come out very often, cancel his kid's lego camp at the last minute. Rage face!)

14.) Go to the zoo and ask Charlotte what her favorite animal is. DONE. Her favorite is a dutt! (She calls all birds dutts.) (And dinosaur statues too, apparently.)

what is this, Daddy? this is not a dutt.

15.) Have a dinosaur pool party. DONE, and with gusto.

16.) Dance in the car. DONE.

17.) Have sleepovers in Mommy's room. DONE.

18.) Do a picnic at the airport. Ummm we forgot about this too. I went to the airport, more times than I would have preferred, for less glamorous reasons than I preferred (lots of picking up and dropping off and not enough of me going anywhere myself) but we did not picnic or watch planes and we should have!

19.) List item added by Grandpa: go visit Grandpa! (And other various grandparents and relatives.) So all the kids got to visit grandparents at some point this summer, but Anneliese really knocked this one out of the ballpark with a marathon ten-day trip to three different houses. Which was fun for her, and logistically/driving smart, but too achy for me. Will share more pics of that at some point too. You should see the outfits she (my mom?) picked for some of her outings. Internet gold.

Not on the bucket list but also completed: catch the kitchen on fire, have many Starbucks dates, play in the pool a ton, kill a snake with a shovel, have an incredible trips to Chicago and Montreat, watch the trailer for this upcoming dinosaur movie three hundred thousand times (that youtube link has 371 thousand views, and 300 thousand are from Nathan), eat a lot of post-gym dunkin donuts in our sweaty clothes, and drive ourselves nuts trying to solve The Mystery of the Sticker Mail.

That'll do, summer 2013. That'll do.

Backyard Camping

So, Mark and the big kids camped in the backyard last night.

It's of those summer bucket list things they have been clamoring to do for months, we scheduled it and rescheduled it (rain and work and things kept getting in the way) but had no idea how it would go or even if they would survive all night or if this was going to be the most annoying night of our summer.

But... it was awesome.

(Disclaimer: my experience of backyard camping does not involve actually sleeping in the tent with them. So take my "awesome" with that in mind.)

After dinner last night, we busted out the tent for the first time in years and put it up out behind the pool deck.

We blew up air mattresses and brought them out there. We built a fire pit to have a campfire. (Note: everywhere I just said we you should replace it with Mark but you knew that already, right?)

The kids had never seen a tent before, I don't think. (We have only been camping once since Nathan was born, and we definitely didn't take him.) They were enamored. Once the tent was up, I don't think they stopped grinning til they were asleep.

Since we had no illusions of getting them to go to bed in a tent when it was still light out, we killed some time watching Daniel Tiger (the one where they camp in the backyard, of course, which is where our darling children got the idea in the first place) and then when Charlotte was tucked in, Nathan and Anneliese got to go night swimming and you would think they were swimming with the moon itself in the pool, they were so excited. Exclaiming over everything.

"Mommy said we could stay up SO late, like 8:50 or 9!"

"That campfire smells so good like deeelicious!"

"This is the best day of summer! Swimming twice and book club and camping and OOOOOHHHHH LOOK MOMMY THE POOL IS GLOWING!"

Ha. Yes, sweet children, we do have a pool light. Which apparently you have never been privy to before.

And then when it was dark we made s'mores. Which I don't think Anneliese really liked but she sure tried to like them. (What you can't see in the picture below is that her "special camping" PJs are a pair of Lightning McQueen boys briefs and a hand-me-down Yale shirt.)

And then I retreated to bask in the air conditioning and keep an ear out for Charlotte while Mark and the kids climbed into the tent on one of the hottest muggiest nights in months, and (kind of) slept. I don't think they slept well, and they definitely all collapsed on the couch when they came inside in the morning, but it was enough of a success that we will brave "real" camping in the mountains in a few weeks.

So. Backyard camping. It makes you high on summer and high on your family. RECOMMEND.