capturing life

I’ve been horrible at capturing life lately here on the blog. But that doesn’t mean it’s not happening.  Life is happening, and I’m actually capturing it, just in different ways. 

I’m big into documenting life.  I’m driven to make the present stick inside of me.  Not sure if it’s the (very real) worry of forgetting that’s driving this or just that it’s been a part of my value system for so long.  But I do believe there is power in keeping records.  Records help us to create our narrative.  To tell ourselves a story about our lives.  To give what we’re doing meaning.  And there is something in the act of documentation that helps me to cherish and savor the present a little more.  In the recording I feel like I live more fully. 

So, since blogging is so darn hard to keep up with, here’s some things I’ve been doing to satiate my need to document:  I’m trying to write in Evernote before checking Instagram…just a little note about the day, what’s been happening, the cute thing Peter said etc.  I’m trying to post enough to Instagram so that my kids and grandparents will have a record of the everyday happenings around here.  I’ve signed up for Chatbooks (google it, it’s awesome) so we get a little printed out Instagram book every six weeks or so.  And, just since my birthday in August I’ve decided to make quick little 2 minute video of our lives month to month.

I’m loving this video thing.  I use two apps to make them: iMovie and Motion Stills.  It takes me about 3 min every couple days to add the newest live photos to the movie and then I grab a song (from our awesomely talented friend Ricky Valadez) to stick with it and boom, it’s done. 

It’s magical to see your life in short little seconds set to music.  All the yuck edited out. Life isn’t always so rosy as it looks through the lens, but I firmly believe that cameras can capture the tiniest bit of life's uncontainable beauty.

The little individual minutes and days and parts aren’t always so nice.  But the whole does glisten.

So, here are the nice bits of our August and September:

Some Favorite Things

I love having a little record of some of my favorite things during different seasons of my life.  And I love sharing things that I’ve found and loved.  Here are some things we’re loving around here lately.

• Easter Plan: my friend Heidi and I made up a plan to more fully celebrate Easter – an whole month of really focusing on Christ, his teaching, his miracles, his sacrifice, his resurrection.  We included lots of our favorite scriptures and videos, Heidi came up with some great questions to ask yourself or you family.  We compiled some ideas we had collected through the years from different sources to celebrate Passover and Good Friday and palm Sunday etc.   This is our third year loosely following the ideas in this plan and I’m so excited to do it again.  Not sure if I’ve ever posted the link here to our Google Doc.  But here it is.  We started yesterday. 

• Google Express.  Have you tried it?  Are they in your area?  They gave me three months free, and Jeff three months free and now I’m hooked.  Sure, I still have to go to Costco and the grocery store since they don’t deliver perishables (yet).  But it’s so nice to not have to lug all those bulk pantry items into my cart, out of my cart, into my cart, then into my car and then into my house.  Check it out.  It’s a life changer.
• My salvation army find bread machines.  I have two in the basement and it makes it so darn easy to make home made bread.  It seems like there’re always shelves of discarded almost new ones for about $7.  A steal.  Nothing like a house that smells like bread baking.  I just use them to make the dough.  Then I put the dough in pans and put them in the oven to rise.  I’ve figured out how to set my oven on delay bake so that it starts up on it’s own after 30 min of rising and then turns off after 30 min of baking.  This is essential for me.  If I have to keep remembering to do things I end up with over risen or burnt bread.
• Meditations for Kids:  For a while now Em has had a really hard time calming herself down.  On one particularly bad day she was in such a state that I couldn’t drop her off at school.  So we sat in the car and as she tried to work out some of her frustration (in the form of a massive fit) I frantically searched Spotify for a meditation for kids.  I think I’d thought of trying meditation with her a while back, but in this desperate moment I finally tried it and it worked wonders.  Now Em and Peter listen to one of these meditation podcasts lots of time before falling asleep.  And when I don’t have my phone on me or we want something different I make up meditations for them.  It has been a powerful discovery.  I’m going to blog more about it sometime, but here’s the link to the Spotify playlist that we use. 

• Joy School – I’m doing Joy School for the last time this year with Peter. We only get to do it one day a week since he’s in pre-school for the other days, and we both look forward to those days so much. I know I’m pretty biased since my parents and grandma did invent the concept, but really, it’s such a great program and has been totally revamped this year.  I just love the idea of helping kids develop emotional intelligence skills before going to kindergarten.  All the concepts that Joy School aims to teach are totally natural to kids but putting them into a framework where they’re discussed and explored with moms gives kids words to describe the joys they are already experiencing.  It’s got to be pretty validating for kids to have moms put words and value on some of the things that are so natural to them.   Every time I go through a year of Joy School I feel like I’m re-learning the joys and the kids are just finding a language to describe them.  I could go on and on.  Check it out here or here.

• Alexander’s Amazing Adventures:  I know, another plug for one of my parents programs, but these cd’s/mp3 tracks are part of the fabric of our family.  Hazel is just now starting to feel not really love listening to them, but for years everyone would be kept happy for hours in the car listening to these value teaching adventures.  They're made by the same people who did Scripture Scouts (which we love, and I listened to as a kid).  Also a great bed-time story to leave on as your kids wind down to sleep.  They’re on sale right now at values parenting, I think until March 15th. 
• Home made Yogurt:  I used to think people who made their own yogurt were a little extreme.  But I started doing it about a year ago and can’t go back.  It’s seriously so easy and so yummy.  Here’s what you do:
  1. find some plain yogurt with lots of live cultures that you like the tang of,
  2. heat up milk to 180 degrees (I use a meat thermometer with a buzzer to warn me when its close, otherwise hot milk mess all over my stove),  You can use any kind of milk.  I use whole milk.
  3. let it cool to 95 degrees (this takes a while, sometimes I forget it’s there and it cools off too much, I just quickly heat it up a bit.  You can also speed this part up if you drag around an icepack in the milk.
  4. whisk in about 1/3 cup yogurt to 4 cups milk.  If you have some powdered milk you can put in about a tsp to make the yogurt a little thicker.
  5. pour into mason jars (or just put a lid on your pot). 
  6. Now you have to keep it at about 90-100 degrees for 8-10 hours.  I do this by just placing a work lamp with a 100 watt bulb in it over the pot or jars.  You can also do it by putting it in the oven with the light turned on (though this is a little cooler method, have to leave it there longer….and then I forget about it), or in an unplugged crock pot with a towel wrapped around it. 

that’s it!  Just cool the yogurt for a few hours and it’s ready to eat.  My kids like to stir in a little jam or honey or frozen blueberries to make it sweeter.  I like to eat it with frozen raspberries, cottage cheese, grape nuts and pecans.  Yum!  It’s also super yummy if you strain it into Greek yogurt or yogurt cheese (can do this with just a cheep reusable coffee filter, the longer you let it sit the thicker and more cheese like it will be.)  We use this yogurt in place of sour cream all the time and also in place of mayo in salad dressings. 

• 40 Acts – do Lent Generously: I know I’m not catholic, but I’ve been participating in this online Lent challenge.  We’re halfway through and it has been really powerful.  I highly recommend joining in.  You get a short little thought and a challenge each day of let to help you be more outwardly focused and giving.  I’ve had some pretty amazing experiences so far.
• Ancestor Stories –we’ve been trying to read ancestor stories during dinner at least one night a week.  I’m amazed by how into it my kids get (after the initial push back).  It gives us perspective, makes us feel strong and connected and keeps the potty talk at the table to a minimum. 
• Sunday night back rubs – I’ve been trying to give my kids back rubs complete with massage oil on Sunday nights.  Boy do they ever open up as they melt into a puddle of relaxation. 

• Not buying stuff – for all of January I challenged myself not to buy anything besides food.  I had such an empty feeling after all that Christmas consuming and our budget was out of whack.  I’d sit at the computer and my first instinct was to go to Amazon.  Ug.  So I didn’t buy anything for a month.  And boy did that feel good.  I broke my consuming habit enough to not buy much in February.  I retrained myself to really ask if I needed something before obsessing about it, and to find ways to make do with what I had.  I really do like the challenge of making do.   I’m coming up with a personal/family consumption plan for us.  Because of my kind of obsessive personality I feel like I have to be very careful about the stuff we let into our lives, it clutters up our space, and also my brain and schedule.  And if you want a really great SNL sketch to help start a conversation about not buying stuff click here.  Love it.

 

• Evernote – I’m sure there are lots of good apps out there for journaling and documenting life.  I grabbed Evernote at the beginning of the year and have loved having an easily accessible place to jot down my thoughts.  I have always LOVED journaling, but with this shift over to the digital world I have felt a little lost.  I’ve found it harder and harder to write things down by hand and because of that I’ve just stopped writing as much.  Having Evernote on my phone and my laptop and desktop means I can write little tid bits of our lives and my feelings anytime.  I try to write a few things, or put in a picture everyday before I look through instagram.  And it’s working!  I feel like I once again have a record of the inner workings of our lives and my heart. 

• VidAngel – Guys. This one is awesome.  I might be a little late to the party, but have you tried out VidAngel?  It’s a service that enables you to stream edited movies for just $1.  And you can choose what you want bleeped out.  It can just be the end credits if you want to see and hear everything else.  Or you can get rid of all the junk you don’t want to see.  And it’s so inexpensive.  I’m quitting Netflix.  Please check them out.  You’ll love it.  I just want them to thrive so that I can keep using this service forever.

• Chatbooks – another great journaling app.  They send you a cute little bound book ($8 including shipping) of all your instagram posts each time you hit 60 posts.  And if you don’t want to bombard your instagram feed with all the things you want for your family journal you can just put the photos directly into the app.  We have the cutest little stack of about 15 photo books that I didn’t have to think about for more than 3 seconds.  Such a great little surprise in the mail every few months.  If you want your first book free use this code:

  F3QTKVKL

Would love to know some of your favorite things lately!

5 stressed out hours in Prague

(trying to plow through these summer adventure posts so that I can move onto the present day Shumway life, which is passing me by way too quickly and totally undocumented.  I have to say, I am really enjoying reliving this adventure through photographs, life has been so busy since I took these pictures that I downloaded them and haven’t even had time to look at them ever.  I’m so thankful for cameras that leave out all the craziness of the moment and leave us with such beautiful visual reminders of things we have experienced.)

Because we did this trip totally low budget, we ended up going through Prague in route to Vienna where we were going to stay with Jeff’s sister and family.  I know that sounds funny, but it ended up being much cheaper to fly to Prague and take the train than it was to fly directly into Vienna.  It did mean an epic day alone traveling with the kids, navigating them through lots of logistical hurdles, but I thought it would probably be worth it. Give us all another city to feel a little connected with, enable us to see some old beautiful stuff.

When I booked this trip back in March this day was the one I was most worried about, so I woke up a little stressed.  I had to load up all the kids by 5am in Amy’s car to head to the airport.  They were awesome and we made good time, but that Stanstead airport was crazy.  I was thinking I was taking my kids into a small, quiet airport, but instead it was 6am madness.  People everywhere, pushing to get into security lines like cattle pushing through a gate.  It took us way longer than expected to get through that craziness and then they stopped me for the contact solution that I had forgotten to pour out of my lens case!  We were flying super low budget Ryan Air who claim to close their boarding gate 30 min before the flight takes off.  The nice lady who was bomb testing my contact lens case looked up my flight and told me that it was in “final call” mode.  So, pushing Peter in the stroller and towing 3 kids with rolly bags behind me I rushed through what felt like the biggest mess of duty free shops I’ve ever encountered.  I winding road that felt like it was a mile long lined with cigarettes and perfume.  Those kids running behind me were so incredibly gritty, running despite the fact that they were parched and stressed and gasping for breath.  I ran yelling “Make way! We’re missing our flight!”  Luckily we made it, the last ones on the flight.  But I think I pretty much scared my kids for life with that little episode.  The brain holds on to those things and even though we have before and since made it very calmly and successfully to probably a hundred flights, this is the one they are going to remember.  Ug.  I was so full of love for them as they followed me onto the plane.  Especially for little Em whose cheeks were bright pink and face was tangled in knots of worry.  

It took us most of the flight to come down from that stressed out place.  I kept reassuring the kids that it wouldn’t have been the end of the world had we missed that flight….just some extra money and some waiting around (which actually kind of did feel like the end of the world to me at the time since we were feeling pretty constrained on both time and money). 

With that kind of start to do the day we navigated our way through the city of Prague with a little more stress than we might have otherwise.  Everyone was just kind of tightly wound.

But that city was worth the hassle.  It is a magical place and somehow we lucked out with a pretty magical day.  The light was so incredible with storm clouds and rain bursts passing through as we walked through the town square and over the bridges. 

This big beautiful clock was so fun to watch, so aesthetically pleasing and old and interesting.  The town square was full of people and music and life.  Every one running for cover each time a spurt of rain came.  We wondered and found some little trinkets and some delicious cinnamon bread that they roll around a stick and cook over coals.  We were a little obsessed with that cultural food.  Wish I had a picture of it.   We went in search of the best pastry we could find.  I learned from my brother-in-law Rob that the best thing to do in a new big old city with tired and a wound up kids is to conduct a search for the very best chocolate croissant.  I think we found it.  The bridges were packed with tourist and puppeteers and magical light and views of turrets and steeples and castles.  This place had such and old feel.^^Love this sort of real life picture.  The day was far from perfect.  But still so worth it.The kids were a little stressed about getting back to the train station after such a close call that morning so this is as close as we got to Prague castle.  I had to fight against my natural instincts and remind myself that more than seeing the castle these kids needed to feel some security about what was happening next, so we made our way back.  One day I guess. Sorry about all these photos, but I couldn’t stop trying to capture that light and those buildings and those faces. Here’s poor Peter falling apart again.    Except, look at that tired mom face.  That’s the face of a mom trying to push through, to use her grit to make things all add up, make it worth the hassle, make the memory something positive.

Wish I had more pictures of the train station and where we left our bags and the place we sat for a few hours waiting for our train, decompressing.  It took my stomach the full four hour train ride to untangle itself from all the knots tied up by the craziness of the day.  I think I cried when I tumbled off the train with all those kids and stuff and found my sister in law Mary Ann right there waiting for me. 

Boy, that was a crazy day.  But really, I’m so glad we made that happen.  I think it’s a memory that my kids won’t ever forget.  Sure, it was stressful, but I think they’re going to log it in their bank of life experiences where they persevered, where they pushed through and did something hard and were rewarded by getting to connect with one of the worlds most amazing old cities.  And eat lots of  pastries. 

Up North.

When we lived in England back in 2012 we tried over and over to plan a trip up north with the Schwartz's.  Rob lived up in Cheshire when he was a teenager and Ames had told me so much about the beauty and magic of that place.  But it never happened.  So, Ames and Rob made it happen for us. And it was every bit as magical as they had professed. 

It took us the better part of a day to get up there, but that was mostly due to unlucky traffic and potty/snack breaks.  The first thing we did after arriving and meeting Amy’s good friends who so graciously let us stay with them was to go to Teggs Nose to take a country walk.  It was FREEZING, uncommonly so for June.  While my bones were screaming with cold my eyes were feasting on all that lush green, the vistas, the craggy hills, the wildflower paths, the rock walls.  It was all pretty magical.   My stellar niece Elle was spending the summer in London for her pre-senior year summer internship so we kidnapped her to come up north with us.  My kids were so delighted to spend some quality time with her and I was too.  It’s so fun to have a little more one on one time with her since I usually only see her when she is one of the 27 grandkids.  She pretty much rocks.  I loved watching these kids scamper through this countryside.  Makes me wish they could interact with the natural world like this all the time.  The world wakes us up.  Especially children.  Em’s relationship with Lambie hasn’t really changed in the past 3 years, but they both look a little older and more worn.  (see here for more Lambie adventures in the countryside)Here’s the best group shot we could manage.  Calling all those kids down from their wanderings was an impossible task.  I loved this family that we got to know (and stay with).  They were so gracious and funny and good and took us to see incredible things. I’m gonna let these pictures mostly tell this story.  My words can’t do it justice.  I guess the pictures can’t really either.  I wish you could smell and hear and feel the thrill of an experience more than you can through pictures.  Exploring and climbing on old machinery was another, different thrill for those kids.  Peter always with a stick.  Usually the stick is a sword.  And he’s slaying dragons.  I love these shots of these two friends.  One of my favorite things about this trail was the little library someone had built there, perched on top of the hill, surrounding the countryside.  What a beautiful thing. This kid was cracking me up with his modeling poses.  These girls?  Stunning.  I love this Peter boy.  And I hope one day he’ll marry this Elsa girl.Picking wildflowers, making daisy chains.  This are the crystal moments of childhood. 

Oh England.  I love you.  Your crags and moors and flowers and your green.  Everything in you makes me feel green and lush and alive.