Jumping Daisy

I wanted to capture the awesome view that we have in our backyard in the “country.”  The fireflies out here are unreal.  It is like a light show every night!

This is the best that I could do with what I have, for both ability and equipment.

I am finally starting to come down from my mommy flip out.  The perfect cap to the pre-long weekend week that I have had.  I can’t even bring myself to recreate the scene for you.  But it ended a little bit like the time that I had to hold Leila down in her car seat while she screamed and frothed at the mouth out of sheer rage, only this time I was the fit thrower, and I didn’t really froth, though I did cry.  And scream. And Yell. After dragging Leila to the car after snatching her out of the hot tub at the Coralville indoor pool, literally dragging her, I settled into my seat and I begged Leila to tell me WHY WHY WHY SHE DOESN’T LISTEN TO ME!  She ignored me, didn’t even look my direction.

This evening she told me that soon I am going to go to heaven and then I won’t be her mom anymore.  I am trying to decide if that was a threat, or a wish. In any case, we both calmed down a bit after we made it home and I asked her again, a bit more calmly why she doesn’t listen to me.  Her response was, “Because Mommy, I don’t want to be the kid, I want to be the grown up.”  I told her that there are a lot of not fun things about being grown up.  But she assured me that she was ready.  I told her that I thought she should concentrate on enjoying kid things, and let me take care of the grown up stuff.  She told me that she didn’t need me.

I took her to bed, covered her up and I said, “Leila, I really hope you know how much I love you.”  She responded with, “Yep, but I don’t love you because you made me get out of the hot tub and took away my air mattress.”

I don’t think she realizes how much I wish I didn’t always have to be the grown up.

All of the plants in my garden seem to be dead. They are still there, giving me a tiny bit of hope.  If I look closely though, I can see that they have lost the deep green color of plant life, and the bugs seem to be working away at what leaves they have remaining.  I think it is time to cut my gardening losses.  I lost interest long ago, but like so many things in my life, it isn’t easy for me to give up, even without the satisfaction of growth.

It truly is the summer of my discontent.

Father’s day was spent in Elkader this year.  A sign of how much I love my husband, considering my father was in a boat in Coralville and I still agreed to go! 🙂

In all fairness though, the Howard family gets the majority of our time and attention, and this trip to Elkader was a very special one.  It started out with Uncle Eric bringing his family on a cross-country vacation from Montana.  It just happened to be the same weekend of Uncle Evan’s annual golf outing.  We thought we were going to be doing pretty good hitting 4 out of 5 Coobs kids (When you toss the locals, Cory and Donna into the mix), but imagine our surprise when Uncle Earl, a truck driver, happened to find his way to Iowa on a trip back to Montana from Ohio.

My favorite was hearing all of the stories, though they weren’t all happy and funny, some of them were…I did appreciate hearing them all.   And seeing my girls warm up to their Uncles and their cousins was also a treat. Maybe the best moment of all was this one:

Ed with all of his Children, for the very first time ever.  Yep, you read that right…the very first time that all of them were in the same place at the same time.  Crazy.  Monumental.  An all around great day.

Has netted me some pretty cool ideas lately. If you don’t know what Pinterest is, you are missing out on a jackpot of ideas. One of which is now hanging in my living room.

I started with this…

Added a little of this…

End ended up with this, for about 30 dollars.

One of those days.  I bit off all of my fingernails while sitting at my desk at work today, wishing I was somewhere else.  My thoughts were screaming so loudly in my head that I hardly heard the drill sergeant style instructor in the next room during my Pilates class.

Yesterday Cory and I had some time together. We had taken the day off and the girls went to daycare for part of the day so we could hang out together.  As we sat across from each other at lunch Cory asked me a dreaded question.  “Where do you see yourself in ten years?” Ugh. I hate speculating, and I told him so.  The subject shifted slightly, to the idea of a bucket list.  A list that even an avid list maker like myself, has never attempted.  It is the project manager in me I guess…I don’t want to create success criteria for the project of life when I have no control over the schedule and very little foresight into the budget. Couple that with the fact that I hate to fail, and it just seems like a big waste of effort to me.  Through our discussion, I decided that maybe I do have a bucket list:

1. Cherish time spent with family for as long as they are available to be cherished. Tell them I love them.

2. Have children with the man that I love, love and care for them.  Teach them for as long as they will learn.

3. Give my kids a network, so when the big project sponsor in the sky says its time for project close out, they have who and what they need to go on.

4. Love everyone that I possibly can, as much as  I possibly can.

I think that I have met my criteria for now, though it is all an act of continuous improvement.  The rest is just gold plating.  Which I hope to do a whole lot of.

Cory and I took the girls to North Liberty Fun Days this past Sunday and they had a BLAST.  Cory and I were both so happy watching our little girls play together.  It is funny to me, because Thea is so brave, and Leila is such a caregiver.  They went on every ride together, and Thea was the brave one, who needed her sister’s help to get along, and Leila was a bit more timid about the new adventures, but she put on her brave face so she could help Thea through.  It was really amazing to watch, and I tried to capture it here in their walk through the fun maze.

And a few others from our adventure.  It was so fun to watch them!

These were so easy, and yet, so cute!

They are only slightly different.  Thea’s has a tie for each shoulder, Leila’s ties only on her right side.

One of my co-workers likes to quilt.  I noticed a quilt she had hanging at work that used this tattered style of applique and I decided that these pillowcases dresses were the perfect reason to try it out!  The more the dresses are washed, the more frayed they will be.