every day life

Winter refuses to let go and a nice Easter

/ Lisa R. Howeler / 8 Comments

We had a nice Easter, just in time for a snowstorm to hit our area. Yes! You read right. A snowstorm in mid-April. I can’t even believe it at this point. It’s like winter will never end.

Hopefully, most of that snow will be gone by tomorrow morning, but in the meantime, my husband pulled out the kids’ winter boots that he had already put in the closet and his snowblower. Much of the area was out of power this morning, including my parents, but we somehow managed to only lose it for about three hours in the night at our house.

We did actually have snow very much like this on the same date two years ago but it’s still surreal for me to see snow this late in the year. Maybe such things happened when I was a child too and I simply don’t remember it. I’m not sure since I seemed to live my life in the clouds back then and sometimes still do.

Even though I am sick of winter, I do enjoy huddling under a blanket with a good book or while working on a blog post so I am handling this unexpected storm a little better than I otherwise might have.

For the second week in a row, we missed Little Miss’s gymnastics class due to unforeseen circumstances. Last week her nose was all messy from a little bug we had and this week the snow started just as we were getting ready to leave.

Luckily her gymnastics studio allows her to make up classes later in the week.

On Easter Sunday we held a short egg hunt for the kids, even though Little Miss was more excited than her brother, who simply picked up the obvious eggs she missed — like those sitting out in the open that she ran past.

The Boy was suffering from the virus that Little Miss and I had had the week before. No, not the Dreaded Virus. Thank God.

We are having a short spring break part of this week from schoolwork and then it is back to the grindstone to finish out April and May.

As for the weather, it is supposed to warm up by this weekend and hopefully, we will soon have some nice days when we can play outside and open the windows in the house.

I hope the weather is a little nicer where you are, but if it isn’t, I am sure it will be soon.

Bi-polar weather and other goings ons

/ Lisa R. Howeler / 3 Comments

The weather has been mainly nice, yet cold, for the last two weeks here. Then the snow came yesterday. Luckily it disappeared almost as soon as it arrived. I am not a fan of spring snow. This is the second year we’ve experienced it so late in the year. Last year we had been in our new house a couple of weeks when snow blanketed the trees and bushes that had been trying to bloom. (We celebrated a full year of living here last week). I did not take any photos of the snow that fell. I’m completely over snow. It did look rather pretty on the blooming forsenthye bush, however.

We’ve been enjoying playing outside in the backyard on the warmer days, even if there is a chilly breeze.

We are looking forward to warmer weather, though not too warm because we all enjoy cuddling under the covers at night with a good book or a good show.

I’m not a fan of hot weather but weather where we don’t have to wear a coat is nice. Once that weather hits, I hope to take the kids to a local state park to explore the lake and hiking trails.

In between enjoying some nice weather we have been continuing our homeschooling lessons. I have finally learned to chill out if my plans for the day get changed. If we have to push activities off for a day or two because we get interrupted by sunshine or a visitor or whatever, I don’t get all balled up inside with anxiety like I used to. We will get done what we need to get done one way or another.

I also remind myself that learning isn’t something we do only when the school books are open. Every day offers an opportunity to learn, even if it isn’t “traditional” or organized.

We hope to be finished with our homeschooling year the last week in May.

In addition to homeschooling, Little Miss and I are enjoying going out into the yard each day and discovering new trees or flowers that are blooming.

I’m sure we will have plenty more to admire this upcoming week and the weeks after that.

And I’m sure Little Miss will have more time to make her “yard salads.”

Grumpy posts and a busy weekend

/ Lisa R. Howeler / 7 Comments

Last week I wrote a grumpy post that was supposed to be an encouraging post. I started it encouraging, read it again yesterday and realized I shouldn’t have been writing a blog post when I was tired and depressed. Instead of sounding okay with the fact that sometimes people move out of our lives for a variety of reasons, I sounded like I was whining and complaining. Whoops!

My family does get depressed about those who abruptly moved out of our lives, for whatever reason, and the last year or so have been rough on that front, but I truly meant the post to sound more positive than it did. I deleted it and will try to write to explain again another time – maybe when I’m less groggy (if that day ever comes since I seem to be dealing with a lot of chronic fatigue lately).

I am recovering this week after a long weekend of watching children who were not my own and traveling to visit relatives. On Saturday we watched a couple very active young boys. My 12-year old son was a huge help since they love following him around and digging through his old Transformer toys. In the afternoon we took them to a free church fair and while I usually take more photographs at events like that, I was too busy trying to keep track of two extra children to take very many photographs.

On Sunday we traveled to Guilford, N.Y. to visit my aunt and cousin. I took some photographs for my cousin for her yoga studio and, honestly, I was pretty nervous because I don’t take photographs professionally very often these days. Oddly, my cousin, who is usually calm and collected, was dealing with butterflies during the session, which involved a few of her students joining us part of the time.

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Her studio, Black Horse Yoga Studio, is in a gorgeous location in Guilford, N.Y. If you’re near there, I’d highly recommend her. She also holds aerial Yoga classes. I bet you’d never guess how old she is by looking at these photos – I know it completely floored me when I found out.

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After we visited her we visited my 86-year old aunt. I left a copy of my book with my aunt for one of her nurses to read to her, (She doesn’t see or hear well anymore) at her request.  As I started to leave it I felt awkward because the book is a little bit of a romance. I don’t know what my issue was since I know my aunt knows all about romance. She was the focus of a lot of male attention when she was growing up, according to my dad, her brother. Plus she has three children so there must have been some romance mixed in that life of hers somewhere. In fact, I know there was since I asked her how she met her husband, my late uncle. I won’t divulge that story here, at least until I share it with my cousins because I’d bet they would find it a little bit funny how their parents met (if they don’t know it all already).

How about all of you? How was your weekend? Do anything exciting? Not exciting? Or maybe you have “exciting” plans for your weekend. Let me know in the comments or share a link with me about your weekend.