Five Things on a Friday

Happy Friday! Spring has finally, finally come to Minnesota. It was a long winter. Our heat’s been running for almost 6 months, and I can’t remember the last time we had our windows open. But today, I dust off my flip flops. (Yay.) Hope you’re preparing for a fabulous weekend full of sunshine and people you love.

Thing 1

I mentioned this on Facebook a week or so ago, but after three years in our house, I think I’m ready to consider painting the downstairs.

We have oak trim (which I like), so it’s a bit tricky. Right now I’m leaning toward a green grey; anyone have any favorites?

Our great room:

Great Room

Great Room View 2Thing 2

I had to leave work yesterday to collect Harry at daycare, because he’d come down with a (I hope) random fever. It was a lovely (FINALLY) spring day, so we sat outside and watched neighbor kids get dropped off by school buses and we “colored” with sidewalk chalk. I love this little dude.

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Thing 3

I never dipped into the world of woven wraps when Harry was a babe and always regretted it. I was a little overwhelmed by it all, so I knew with our second baby that I wanted to get some wovens. I had a custom ring sling made out of a woven wrap, and I am in love with it. If you’re thinking about getting a RS, I really recommend a wrap conversation. They’re a whole new level of comfortable.

Wrap Conversion Ring Sling

I also have a long wrap and a mid-size wrap. I’m on the fence about the mid-size one, but I think if I can get the hang of back carries, I’ll really like having this size. (IF.)

Thing 4

I’m working on our Summer of Fun list, and it goes a little something like this—-beach, pool, vacation, beach, beach, beach, zoo, camping, beach.

Thing 5

I shared our story on She Reads Truth on Tuesday. I love that it was shared during National Infertility Awareness Week. So grateful for the opportunity to write it out. Let us tell of the great things God has done!

Happy Friday!

 

Sometimes I Stink at Being an Adult

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Y’all, why is it so hard to be a grown up?

Sometimes I feel like my life is one big to-do list that will never be completed, and if you’re a list-maker like me, you know that when you aren’t able to cross items off, you can start to feel defeated.

And lately I have been feeling defeated. Like I’m never going to get ahead. Do you ever feel that way?

Part of it is the neverending winter malaise. Part of it is that I’m still trying to find my feet as a working mom of two. And part of it is just my nature. I’ve never been all that put together or disciplined. But I used to be (much) better at faking it.

I’m embarrassed to tell you how many nights lately I’ve gone to bed without washing my face. And I know that when I don’t wash my face, I pay the breakout price. And yet … .

So I knew I needed to do something. I needed to enact some order in my home, so I decided to go the Being an Adult for Dummies route and made an actual list of the simple things I need to do on the daily.

At the top?

Make the bed.

I’ve found it is the simplest way to make our home feel more orderly, and it helps me feel like I’ve started my day off on the right note. This morning, as I was rushing about getting ready I thought, “Oh I don’t have time!” But then I stopped, remembered my checklist, and did it anyway. I timed myself and it took 3 minutes. Three. Three minutes.

And only second to making the bed is cleaning the kitchen. Waking up to a dirty kitchen is the pits; when I come downstairs in the morning to a chaotic kitchen, it just makes me feel blah. And on the days Aaron doesn’t get a chance to clean it after the kids and I leave, and I come home to a dirty kitchen? The worst.

Now that the sun stays up later, we get streams of light in our back windows in the evening. Beautiful end-of-day bright sunshine that highlights thousands of little golden Bulldog hairs littered all over our hardwood floors. Oh, it feels Sisyphean to clean them up every day, but if I don’t, we would surely be overtaken. So Swiffering had to make the list as well.

The other tasks—daily Bible reading and making sure I get a decent amount of fruit and veggies—nourish my soul and my body. My entire day is lifted when I read the Word. It recalibrates my spirit and my mind. I feel more purposeful about my work, and more in tune with my life. And what reading the Bible does for my heart, eating well and drinking enough water does for my body and energy.

I shouldn’t have to write these things down and look at them every day. I’m not that far from 40; shouldn’t I be able to order my life and stay on top of simple daily tasks? Maybe. But maybe the people who seem to have it all together have little cheats like this too. (And if you don’t, don’t tell me!)

It’s helping. It’s even helped in our marriage too, because who can argue about cleaning the kitchen before bed when it’s written right over there?

How do you bring order to your life when it feels unordered? How do you fake it at being a grown up?

(And yes, we had to put giving Posey her reflux meds on there, because we often forget. Which makes me think she is starting to outgrow it, because she doesn’t seem any worse when we miss a dose.)

And in other grown-up tasks, I finally set up a Blog Lovin account since Google Reader has gone the way of the Dodo. If you’ve made the switch too, you can follow These Prices here >>> Follow my blog with Bloglovin

 

Oh, it’s April you say?

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Because Minnesota didn’t get the memo.

It snowed and snowed and snowed last night. Big fat flakes of heavy, wet snow, and when I woke up this morning I checked Twitter and the news and the general consensus on the roads was no, just no. So I emailed my boss and asked if I could swap my normal Friday off for today, and I stayed home with the kids.

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We colored and played with stickers and Harry pushed his toy John Deere around the hardwoods. And we had a heavy dose of Mater’s Tall Tales.

But oh how my heart longs for spring. For a defrosting; a thaw.

All the snow had finally melted; there were only random patches of ice where there had once been enormous plow piles. And all it took was one night to reset the waiting game—-zoom back at the start.

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I feel like I’m trying to shed my wintry skin; to slough it off. But I’m struggling to get out from underneath the weight of winter.

Are you?

Are you longing for the sun’s warmth on your face as much as I am? Getting a pedicure and painting my fingernails bright pink and cutting a  few inches off my hair have helped, but nothing can replace the sun and flip flops.

So come one Minnesota, help a mama out, won’t you?

 

Project Life Week 12

Well, we’re a quarter of the way into 2013, and I’m keeping on top of my Project Life album. (Yay.)

Using my new system of only printing what I know I’m going to use and sticking pretty close to only the kit elements is serving me well. I’m able to do a week’s worth of photos standing at my kitchen island in less than half an hour.

Week 12 was a big week for the Prices. We finalized Posey’s adoption + celebrated Easter, so I included an insert. (A cut-in-half Design A page protector.)

The date card + the pennant card were free printables I found through Pinterest. (I try to repin items I find, but sadly I didn’t with these cards, and now I can’t find them. So even though I’m a failed pinner, you can still follow my Project Life pin board if you’d like.)

That Friday my friend Karla and I took the kids to their first movie to see The Croods. I created this print in Photoshop and purposely left space for the ticket stubs.

This is the back of the insert. The top photo is the view out the window of the courthouse in Minneapolis. I took these pictures of Posey outside the courtroom while we waited to go in for our hearing. She is the precious-est.

The card on the top right is the program from church. The two 4x3s are free printables. These are all also the only pictures I took of the kids on Easter. My camera phone was too full (had to use Aaron’s) and my dSLR battery died after only a few clicks. Whoops.

And that’s a week 12 wrap.

I know some of you have recently started Project Life albums. How’s it going?

 

Workmanship

I have blogger’s block bad. I’m in that season where I give as much as I can to my kids, as much as I can to my job, and all of that equals out to giving not much of anything to everything else.

But every day the snow recedes; there is just a small patch now in the back, underneath the pines.

The sun stays up longer, and the baby sleeps deeper and I know eventually I’ll find my footing again.

I get myself in trouble when I forget that I’m already equipped. I can do this, because I can do anything when I allow God to lead me.

You can too.