not dirty, but not clean.

(photo via amazon.com)

i've come to a very important realization. at most times i'm capable of doing 2 things, and doing them fairly well. the problem these days is that there are three things that need doing...

1. kids clean, fed and happy (you'd think that those are 3 things, but given how connected they all are, i count them as 1.)

2. homework done, done reasonably well and done on time.

3. house clean and organized.

i could do 1 and 3 and let 2 slide, but that's a whole lot of money down the drain and the future (mine, my family's) on the line. i could do 2 and 3, but i'd get in all sorts of trouble from all sorts of people. and #1 is actually the one i enjoy the most.

so. 1 and 2 it is. i just have to accept that i cannot do all three. zane has been doing such an incredible job pitching in (with starting laundry every morning, loading dishes when i have my night class, gathering the toys and clothes strewn about) and i should do a better job thanking him!

it usually gets to a point (rainy days, weekends, etc) where the build-up of life's mess starts to irk both of us and we do our part to get things back in order. but it's a relief of sorts to let things go a bit and focus on work and happy kids. they're not going to remember the pile of halloween placemats that sat on a chair under a blue bin for 4 days. they'll remember being tickled by zane til they squealed tonight. and that's the way it should be. i need to keep reminding myself of that...

case of the tuesdays

tuesday SUCK around here! i'm assuming it's the combination of me having class on monday night and their nightly schedule thrown off a tiny bit and not having school. maybe it's something else entirely? all i know is that there's usually a lot of whining, tantrums, testing, and tears. i've decided that there would be no homework done on tuesdays, just girl time and house chores. today, i decided to prepare and focus on having fun. by golly, we had fun. there was still a lot of ugly behavior (nola just kicked a pair of scissors across the room and avery stole her balloon), but we managed to have fun in the meantime!

and now we're heading out for a nature walk to find leaves! i'll turn these tuesdays around gosh darnit.

goobers.

love these little munchkins and all their silly little ways. (don't so much like the fevers, throwing up and sore throats that have been hanging around for a day or two, but that'll pass).

days are too short!

there seems to be so much going on these days...funny things the girls say, fun outings we've gone on, good food we've made and eaten, sweet ways the girls are turning into true sisters. but at the end of the day (or 7:30 when the girls go to bed ;)) we all crash. i either need to take up coffee drinking in the afternoon or work harder during the day to get everything done that i need and want to get done.

i'm slowly falling into a routine around school work. mondays are great--the work for my online class is posted sunday night or monday, so when the girls are at school on monday morning, i can spend my time prepping and organizing for that class. right now, i'm in the middle of printing out a 3 week module that we're working through. during nap times and school time, i plan on working on my online class. it's about information organization, and my brain just doesn't easily understand this stuff. at night and on the weekends i plan on doing my young adult literature homework--mostly reading novels, writing journal entries, etc. a bit more my speed and fun :)

so, now that i got that boring bit out of the way, a few pictures and fun memories.

zane fired up the grill at 8am yesterday. yep. AM. he smoked beef brisket and made us burnt end sandwiches. they.were.amazing. we used the gates bbq sauce that we always have in stock and i've got to say they were every bit as amazing as the sandwich i had this summer in kc. well done, love. well done. add to that a homemade apple pie, and we went to bed happy and full.

the other morning i walked into the living room to find avery brushing nola's hair. very gentle. and then i noticed nola was feeding her baby. what good little mommy's we have :)

mema sent these sweaters for the girls last week. looking at them, i figured they'd wear them with some leggings. they looked too small to be dresses, but too big to be sweaters. i need to realize that the girls are no where near as little as i picture them in my head! they LOVED the sweaters, as evidenced by them not protesting when i wanted to take a picture...

good day, sunshine.

i like a lot of things about where we live. and i love even more about where we live. the sunsets never cease to catch my attention and awe. just about 10 miles outside of boston, you wouldn't think there would be much in the way of sunsets. but we've got them. and i try not to miss an opportunity to take a picture :)

these were taken in the last few weeks, and i'm pretty sure there was another one but i can't seem to find it. all looking out our front door. all beautiful. the girls have even started to notice the pink skies and the fiery look of the sun. truly magical.

5k!

I did it. I didn't really mean to, but I did it. I ran 3 miles and it was awesome! Before I left tonight, Zane told me that if I ran 2 1/2 miles he'd have a beer with me when I got back. When I hit about 2 miles I thought there was no way I'd get to the 2 1/2 mile mark, mostly because I was fairly close to home and wasn't planning on doing loops back where I had already run.

But I did it, and I did it under 30 minutes. (28 something to be "exact")

Yay. Bring on the cooler weather, cause my body really doesn't seem to appreciate heat or humidity ;)

Ps, you can thank my professor this semester for me all of a sudden using capitals. He called me out on it on one of my posts (a response on my introduction post, rather informal I had thought) and since we're talking about cataloging and information organization in his class, capitals mean a great deal. I didn't realize I was capitalizing until halfway through this post. I don't expect it to stick around ;)

busy-ness

we had a busy, fun, exhausting, fast weekend. here's a small part of it--

i'm in my online class full-swing, and tonight i have my first in-person class on campus. things seem to be kind of insane around here and in an email i wrote to zane this morning, i almost asked "are things really not going to slow down until christmas?" but then i erased it because it was too overwhelming and the last thing he needs to read on his first monday back to work is that things are nuts at home too!

i started week 6 of c25k this morning after i dropped the girls at school and before i came home to do homework. it went okay. i covered more ground in less time today than during my longer runs, so that must count for something. but it wasn't easy. or pretty. especially when nola has been waking up multiple times a night for a week (or more?) now. so now while they nap, i should too. i haven't had to be coherent from 6-9pm since last spring, but tonight it starts again....

c25k update.

tonight i finished week 5. the last workout of this week is a 20 minute jog/run. i was definitely jogging. after a few weeks of thinking "ah, who needs this program? i can go out and just run what i want, when i want and i'll do fine!" i realized that i could run about a 9 minute mile, but couldn't sustain that longer than...one mile ;)

so, i slowed it down, went back to week 5 and have LOVED running again. i'll have time to work on my distance later. right now it's about getting the endurance and the lungs compatible. i'm on my way, and loving the cooler weather for running!

so, tonight's run. was awful. painful. hard. but not because of my legs or lungs or body telling me that it didn't want to run for 20 minutes. nope.

stitches. the most horrific, painful and unending stitched from one side of my rib cage to the other. i downed too much water, too soon before i ran. i ate a banana and pb toast too soon before i ran. the good side is that i probably was focusing so much on the pain and trying everything i could to make it go away that i didn't notice the running time ticking away. it seemed fast and easy. i had king with me because it was after 8pm and dark...he was awesome running with me and i had no worries about being out late (i do want to get some reflective gear at some point).

we'll see how saturday goes, i'll either repeat week 5, day 3 or move onto week 6 (which is more interval training). what i won't do is stuff my face before leaving the house ;)

first day!

i'm so stinking proud of them. they were ALL smiles going to school today! they were both sitting in the bathroom door watching some of the other kids when we got there, but it only took .4 seconds for them to jump up and run for the toys. no tears (from any of us!) this morning, just excitement about the start of a new year.

i can't wait to take this picture again in june to see how much they've grown. actually, scratch that. i can wait. things are going way too fast as is :)

edited to add:

k, i lied when i said no tears. i just found this from almost exactly a year ago. she's such a baby! i don't even feel like nola is as "babyish" as this now, and she's younger than avery was when she started. i miss my babies!

early morning surprise.

the other morning, zane's alarm went off at 5:30 sharp. he got up, gathered his work clothes and opened the door. he stopped for a few seconds and came back into the room.

"nola's light is on. she isn't in her bed."

i jumped up, we scanned the upstairs and noticed the baby gate opened. walked downstairs in the dark to find her sitting in the recliner with her blanket, a book and the light on. she smiled and greeted us good morning.

HOW (and WHEN) did she manage to get up, turn on the light, gather her favorites, open the baby gate, walk downstairs, step OVER the dogs (and the dog beds) laying at the foot of the stairs in the pitch black, and make her way to the chair to settle in and turn the light on?

it's a mystery. she hasn't done it again, and i'm thankful. it was a bit too startling to wake up that way ;)

more photos!

put up a few more photo albums tonight. hopefully by the end of the week i'll have finished our kc trip and put up more of the summer. can't believe how much i've let this go! i guess it was a sign we were having a good time these last few months?!

picasa it is.

the girls are napping! and since i don't want to admit that it's september and i already have school work calling my name, i've been trying to figure out the best way to put albums on here. and i hope i've found it. at the top of the blog you'll now see "home" and "photo albums" and maybe more tabs in the future. for now, i'm going to try and get bunches and bunches of albums loaded on here. but it will be a ridiculously slow process, because at some point i decided that it was silly to download pictures straight to our desktop and sent them straight to kodak. so now i have to download all pictures from kodak (which they cleverly make near impossible to do) and upload them to picasa.

but! i will do it. because i'm done with kodak. though they have insanely fast upload speeds they also have unviewable albums and a whole lot of headaches for this silly blog. so. i'll try and post each time i have some new album(s) up, or you can just check in whenever you stop by.