When it seems like day after day goes by and nothing seems any different, it's good to take stock of what exactly I'm accomplishing. So here's a little of the practical day-to-day stuff I've been working on.
1. 12 beautiful jars of salsa, made from tomatoes I grew in my very own garden! I hope I canned them properly, but I won't know until I open one up in a couple of months and see if there is mold growing.
2. Devouring one book after another. I found myself the other day on my bed with no less than 8 new books (library) and leafing through a couple pages of one, then another, then another, then back to the first, and so forth. I'm not sure where I'm actually finding the time in the day, or perhaps it is just that my speed of reading has increased. Whatever the reason, I'm just ripping through books. Hopefully I don't sound like a library when people talk with me.
3. Working on my website. It's been a fun, exciting and sometimes frustrating experience. Kind of like the days before "autosave" in Microsoft Word, I've run into a few times when the web builder freezes and I've lost hours of work. Luckily I haven't felt angry over it. I just pick up and start over. This project has been a great outlet for creativity. The site started with wanting to write down the fantastic Family Home Evening series we did with our boys, but I couldn't stop there. I've since created 2 more series, and I've still got others swirling around up in my mind.
4. Getting into my new calling at church. Well, new here in Orangeville, but one I've filled many times before. I'm in charge of music: selecting Sunday hymns, organizing musical numbers, and leading a choir. Leading the choir is the one I'm really excited for. I love leafing through music listening to it in my mind and then hearing it come to life. Because finding a rehearsal time has been difficult, I'm trying a new format, new to both the choir members and myself. Here's hoping it pans out well!
5. I was also asked last week to reprise my role as director of a Nativity Pageant for the city of Brampton again this year. It was a whirlwind of a project last year, being the first year to resurrect the play since we stopped doing it 15 years ago. Hopefully this year will be a little more organized.
6. Orangeville Community Band started up again this fall. I had a hard time deciding to attend band or switch back to volleyball, but in the end it was the friendships I developed with my fellow flutists that brought me back. I'm also hoping to have a little more devoted practice time on the flute this year, trying to improve my skill.
7. With Colin in school every day, I'm trying to come up with three days of activities for Caleb and I, sort of a loosey-goosey pre-school program. I have decided that following one pre-designed program just isn't for me or for the boys. Instead, I have one program and two books from which I plan to pull ideas from and combine into my own curriculum. The basis of the program will be letters, where each week or two we learn a new letter. But I only plan on focusing on the letter on one day. Day two will be a craft and day three will be an activity from the book "365 ways to a smarter preschooler" (activities teaching skills like imagining, exploring, reflecting, observing, expressing, moving, etc). My plan is that every Sunday night I will pull open my books and create a loose idea of what three things I will do on those three days. I'm hoping that this direction will help me do something constructive with Caleb in the mornings so that come June I don't feel like I've spent all my mornings folding laundry or having 5 days of random play.
8. And somewhere in all this I have two major projects to tackle: the basement and the garage. Both could be deemed disaster zones. The tough part here is that it requires me to have a couple of hours in a row sans children to devote to clearing it out and organizing it again. The good thing is that there isn't a lot of junk just sitting around; most of that has been taken care of. It's just that, for some reason, after 6 months of use my nice, neat basement and garage seem to toss their contents everywhere and make a huge mess.
Well, that's me. I feel much better now, seeing all these things written down. It may feel that my life is one crazy moment to the next, but there is some order in all the chaos!
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