Presently–according to my iPhone

I’m getting a little sick of documenting England.  Life is going on in the present.  As much as I want to get all that down for our permanent record, (I especially want to write something about what we’re taking away from that crazy adventure) I’m going to take a little break.  The present, normal day is to precious. and boy is it whizzing by.  The kids are growing up.  Life is going on.  That big clock is ticking.

We’ve had a really great summer.  It’s been a big transition to settle back into our everyday life, but we’re doing it step by step.  I think the kids are loving being back, feeling so comfy and familiar.  I’m missing the drama and excitement of my dreamy British adventure, but I’m looking for the beauty in my every day here, and it’s not too hard to spot.  We have a pretty good life!

We’ve got a lot to catch up on, Bear Lake was fabulous and crazy (as usual), we had a Shumway family reunion in the Berkshires, the kids started school, Peter is getting huge.  I’m having a bazillion thoughts and feelings I’d like to send out to the world and add to our family history.  But, for now I’m just going to post a few ‘normal day’ shots.  Pictures from my phone, blurry but still beautiful because they tell little real snippets of our life.  I’m betting one day these low quality images will be my most treasured pictures, they measure the perfectly imperfect rhythms of our lives.  The little pieces that I want to bottle up and keep close.

I flew back from Bear Lake without Jeff.  The kids were little angels.  They even all watched the Muppets for about 45 min and I was able to read!  Seriously cool. Hazel has been her usual busy little self, making us all little cards, helping everyone be happy, throwing a lot of drama into the mix and creating beautiful little things, like this dessert plate.  We were so happy to be back to Boston to reunite with our dear friends and neighbors.  We especially were happy to be with Joyce (above) and Heidi (below) again.  Our life is so rich with those two girls.  And with all the Kruckenkids of course. We got to go to a friends birthday party at a dairy farm.  I wish I could write a whole blog post about it, it was seriously interesting.  All these nursing moms on a tour learning about milk cows.  There were a lot of things that really hit close to home…..weird and cool.we nearly adopted this stray cat that kept winding up on our front porch until we figured out that it was our neighbors cat, George.  Poor little Emmeline is terrified of cats and now that she knows that this cat is on the loose in our neighborhood she spends all of her outside time making a shoo shoo shoo sound to try to protect herself.  I guess at one point I told her that cats would go away if she shooed them like that, and she took it to mean that that sound would create a sort of cat repelling force field around her.  Poor girl, that’s got to get tiring.For my birthday Jeff gave me a glorious 24 hours alone in this hotel room.  Oh, I love that man.  I got so much done and felt so relaxed and gathered.And then the next day we floated little cupcakes in our cemetery pond.  Oh, how I love that birthday tradition of mine.I think Peter liked the tradition too.I’ve got lots to say about our Shumway family reunion out at Tanglewood.  We got to see Aunt Clarissa sing.  The kids were taken by the whole thing, as was I.Peter got attacked by some kind of bug in our friends backyard.  He looked like this (above) the morning after and then by afternoon his eye was swollen shut.  It was pretty comical when we weren't worried or feeling bad for the poor little guy.Hazel got a new email account and has been busy trying to learn to type so that she can email me and her grandparents and her aunt Chi Chi.  She’s very vigilant about checking her email.we tried some fancy hairdos, which is a huge leap for me.  Hazel was tickled, feeling so glamorous, but especially liked how it all looked the next day taken out, wavy and tousled.  The kids started school!  I have real back to school pictures I’ll post this week.  They’re loving it so far.  I’m missing them and not really loving being back on that crazy school year clock of rush rush rush, but we’re getting by.Peter is OBSESSED with motorcycles, and helmets and things that go.  Obsessed.  More about him later.  We are loving that kid!Hazel is loving having time to read again.  She just finished Clementine and swears that I would LOVE it  Oh for the time to read the books she reads!Hazel took this picture of me getting my hair cut in a girls kitchen.  This is my favorite type of hair cut….in someone's kitchen.  I felt so relaxed and able to describe what I wanted.   I always feel like I’m kind of faking something when I go to a saloon.  Weird, I know.We spent Labor Day weekend up at the Krucks lake house (more about this later).  I took this picture when Peter woke me up at 5:30am.  The beauty of the dawn was enough to make me forget how mad I was that I had to wake up that early!Jeff and Mike drove their motorcycles up to the lake.  They had the time of their lives.   I’m just happy Jeff’s motorcycle doesn’t go over 50mph.  I like that guy.

I guess we shouldn’t wonder why Peter feels totally compelled to mount any bicycle he sees.  He wants to be just like his dad.  We were at a friends house and we looked over to find Peter had gotten himself all ready to ride on this bike without any help.  Our garden this year is a joke.  Basically a bunch of weeds choking out some perennial herbs and berries, but those berries are fighters.  For the past two weeks we’ve gotten a bowl like this every day.  I love it how the kids play out back and just pick their own snacks….even Peter, who I’m sure has eaten his share of over and under ripe berries out there.We’ve been pretty into green smoothies.  I love the shocking green color and it makes me feel good to know our bodies are getting filled with kale once a day.  I’m hoping the vitamins in Kale will somehow cancel out all that sugar and ice cream we’ve been eating!Emmeline is often hard at work at something.  Coloring, playdou, stamps.  Lately it’s her cardboard lap top.  She takes that thing very seriously.  Hmm.  Wonder where she got that idea?I went to back to school night and found this poem on Charlie's locker.  Love that kid.We’ve been walking over to the park next to our house almost every afternoon.  The kids ride their bikes and Peter takes some kind of vehicle.  Lately it’s been the pink stroller.  I think he feels very manly driving that thing around with his ski helmet on.  He takes it very seriously.

Oh.  That feels good to get some of our life out there.  Documented.  There’s so much going on, so fast.  I just want to reach out and snatch it up, get it down.  But mostly, I want to live it.  Be there, in those glorious ordinary moments.