Well, I’m outta here as of tomorrow morning to head over to Champoeg campground with just under 100 other Evergreeners for the weekend. If I could describe my excitement about being outside in lovely weather with my family and friends, knitting and reading and staring at the fire all weekend, I would. I am SO needing this!

What have I been up to this week? Mainly just maintaining life with work, kids, a marriage, so on. Had a knit night last night at Posies with the gals, which was nice, especially since I haven’t had my girl time this week with my running group (my neck was too sore to even think about jostling around like that!) In my spare time I have been reading about herbs and deciding on which avenue of learning I would like to take to learn more. I decided on the simple 1 hour recorded sessions of this lady out in Eugene after watching her free intro course online. She is inexpensive, entertaining, and a seasoned “wise woman” (an approach I really like). I’m so exciting about learning more.

Since learning to knit was last winter’s project, this one is for the upcoming season. As I’ve reflected on before, when I lived in Florida for 20 years I felt like I was burnt out. The number of sunny, warm climate days didn’t mix well with me and I constantly found myself out of sorts. I can’t blame that all on the weather, but I certainly felt a release of that particular feeling upon moving to the Pacific NW. The seasons are distinct and beautiful here, and I’ve come to appreciate them more each year. Many people, including myself, feel a sense of rest and hibernation that comes with the rain and shortened daylight. The kids sleep in longer, more tea is consumed, sweaters and good book follow you around the house. I have found that I scale back on social activities and extend myself a little less, spending more time on my own creativity, processing, and family life. I find that there is a little more time to learn something new, more downtime in between the busy life of a work-at-home-mom. Maybe its my own conscious choice to balance myself out after a jam packed, exhausting summer. Maybe its because its raining and cold so there’s only so much I can venture out to do outside the home without a CAR! lol Either way, I welcome it and call this next chapter of my year: RAIN AND HERBS.

Speaking of the next chapter of life, next week Ethan begins classes at Village Home. We ended up in different classes than we began in, which I think is awesome. He’ll actually be taking “Word World” and “Move and Groove”, along with two family classes for members: Knitting and Organic Gardening. The Word World class is with 5-8 year old’s who will learn early reading concepts through story times and picture games. The Move and Groove class is a physical education/dance category, where the young students are introduced to basic dance concepts and listen and move to jazz, ballet, tap, etc. I think he’ll enjoy the musical aspect of that and love to groove to the music as we so often to while we listen to the radio together!

He is doing super with words and reading lately, it is amazing to me. He could spend hours rearranging the letters on the fridge and trying to spell things out phonetically. He reads along in his early reader books already and can’t get enough of it. It’s like all he can think about, which is very cute. Today out of no where he said the word “sit” in a sentence and then like a light bulb went off he said, “HEY! MAMA! I can spell “sit” watch this: “ssihttt…. so that’s sss- ih – tt, which are the letters S, I, and T!” I love seeing him grasp concepts on his own and be genuinely excited about reading.

Stories and narrative are such an important part of our lives, (another post for another time), and to see him get excited about them gives me chills! Tonight for bed we began a child’s version of the classic “Alice in Wonderland”, something he was very curious about at the Enchanted Gardens. We plan to get through the book while camping (it’s rather long) and then have the classic Disney movie version on hold at the library when we get back.

In the meantime he’s been watching movies in the early morning when I simply can’t get up with him because I’ve been up late working (Chris might as well sleep in too because he’s often up folding laundry while I work ). I honestly love hearing his door open at like 6:30am and he hums and sings to himself from the moment he wakes up, heads to pee in the bathroom singing all the while, and then goes upstairs to get himself breakfast. He utilizes chairs and whatever he needs to fetch and toast a frozen waffle or piece of bread, grabs a piece of fruit, gets himself a plate, and heads down to the “playroom” we’ve carved out of the laundry room, where he eats while rocking in his rocking chair and viewing a little movie to keep him occupied while we’re asleep. Lately he’s been on a REAL “Milo & Otis” kick and can practically recite the dialogue, storyline and songs impeccably, lol. He also likes “Charlotte’s Web” like its never going outta style.

In still other news, I recently went back to work with Wiley on a very small scale basis to help out with a new social media initiative. The extra paycheck each month and the chance to work with “the ol’ team” again will be really nice! Chris is still working at networking and has a few events next week where he will go and talk with people and pass out his card. He also interviewed today for an internship in order to gain some skills with a small local (very local, like right down the road) company who is into social media as well. It was funny and reminded us how small Portland can be in some ways, because when he got there the two people interviewing realized they already knew him. One had seen us as Posies ALL. THE. TIME. and another was attending Evergreen at Ethan and Verity’s dedication a few weeks ago! Small world. We’re keeping our fingers crossed that the internship will be his, particularly for the training ground and networking potential. (Shoot, I just realized he might have wanted me to NOT blog about his job hunt so he had some material to post on his sloooooow moving blog at DadaNeedJava! Oops! Sorry, hun. I guess you can always post about how your counseling is going )

In still other news, or update rather, I’ve had a wonderful week eating a “nourishing” only diet. My meals have consisted mainly of a protein, fruit, veggie, nuts, etc. – primarily only “whole foods”. I’ve not had breads, sweets, crackers, nothing like that all week (except one zucchini muffin made by my temptress roommate Lacey today ). You could call it low-carb but the raw honey (for apitotherapy benefits) and fruit don’t put it under that category. Neither is it low-cal or purposefully glutein-free. What it is is SMART calories that give my body the most of what it needs. It’s working so well. My gut feels way less bloated, I’m having tons of BM’s (TMI? LOL), and my hunger is curbed with some nuts or piece of chicken or bowl of whole plain yogurt. I’ve even, get this, lost 2 pounds! lol, hey, it’s something!

Well, I better call this a night and get back to some work and my yummy tea. “See” you all when I get back Sunday or Monday!