peelosophy

Many changes are on the Fall horizon for the Peel family….

• JJ will be in school all day- man I miss him.

• Henry will be going to preschool- JJ never went so preschool is all new to us.

• Emma will be joining George at Kids Day Out once a week.

• My sister Katie and her family moved back home- not only to STL but into our neighborhood!!! AND Tootie, my niece, will be going to Hudson with JJ.

• Kara, whom I have babysat 2 days a week since she was 9 weeks, is starting Kindergarten and won’t be a part of our Mondays and Fridays anymore. Totally bittersweet.

• I started watching my niece, Rosie and it is going so great! Her and Emma are BFFs..check out the picture.

Wow, I didn’t think it was a lot, but writing it out it is ALOT!  My current mental status is Monday -Friday I’m fine, it’s the transition to our weekends I have a hard time with lately.   Weekends we try to balance getting things done with relaxing and I’m not good at the latter.

What do you do on the weekends?  Do you find it hard to balance?

My friend Greta is doing a giveaway from her awesome ETSY Shop…check it out.   You have until this Wednesday the 26th….

Click here for more information!

We had an end-of-the-summer water gun fight in our backyard last week.  It was great fun – 11 boys, 100 degrees and everyone of them armed with some sort of water artillery.

We did a couple of games which just meant a slightly more organized chaos.  They were:

• Freeze tag – the person who was “it” tagged by shooting their water gun at the person.  And, subsequently, a player could unfreeze another player by shooting them again.
• Alka Seltzer Tag.  We strung Alka Seltzer tablets on a string that the boys wore around their neck and you had to shoot the other players Alka Seltzer tablets. The object of the game was to keep your Alka Seltzer from disintegrating.  We referred the Alka Seltzer to your “life” like on a video game…it seemed to make sense to the boys more.
• Target Practice.  We set up empty soda cans on the clubhouse deck and the boys shot their guns to see how many they could get down.
• And then we played “zombies”.  This was tag but when you got tagged, you turned into another it.

It’s really amazing how much big and small stuff I learn and re-learn and sometimes re-re-learn throughout my day.

Here are today’s random lessons….

• If I prep an “undesirable” food item differently, George will not only try it but may end up liking it.  This was demonstrated with the yellow pepper today at lunch, I chopped instead of sliced and he ate a whole pepper!
• Striving is not what life is all about.  I battle striving in one form or another frequently.  Today, it was in relation to material things and after examining my motives for purchase and our goals for our family, I learned again that I don’t need it.
• If Emma wears her red Polo tennis dress and is in her car seat (so you can’t tell its a dress) people will mistake her for a boy.
• After spending time with God, the things that were overwhelming or I had anxiety about are not bad at all.
• I was finishing eating an ice cream novelty tonight and really wanted another one…and realized I could have another one because I am an adult. Not sure why this was such a revelation.
• I love putting Emma in dresses but now that she is almost crawling, I was bummed thinking that I couldn’t anymore.  But then I did this and it works great…

Today was JJ’s first day of 1st grade!!! I always get undue stress about things like the first day of school.  I thought I had to have a lot of silly stuff ready or perfect… like this was the first day of the rest of our lives or something!

On the other hand JJ was the normal one, he usually is,  just calm,  cool and collected.  Although he did get upset because I was rushing him out the door and he still wanted to tell John about the dream he had last night…which explains the sad pictures.  Honestly, I didn’t have any compassion for his case,  but John did and decided that he would drive him so he could hear all about his dream- good dad.

New school year resolution #1…This year I will try my hardest not to be a stressed out Drill Sargent trying to get the kids to school in the morning…ahem

Here’s another post about what we have done to pass the time until dinner.  Like I said before, after 4pm over here is more often meltdown city, so I’ve been trying to come up with things to get through it.  It’s funny though the unplanned things (or acts of desperation) we do tend to do end up being the real winners as opposed to something “planned”.

For example, a couple of days ago, I put some cardboard, masking tape, crayons and paddle sticks in the middle of the table and ask, “What can you build with these?”.  An HOUR later JJ is done and here’s what he came up with…

He grabbed the Army and space guys when he was done and played with his camp set-up until dinner was ready.   He’s amazing.

Almost all through highschool and most of college I was the regular Saturday night babysitter for my Uncle Tom and Aunt Susan’s 3 girls. Let me reiterate,  Tom and Susan would go out either by themselves or with a couple of friends every Saturday night.  They had a designated time set aside to be together every week.  Back then, it that didn’t seem like a a big deal – just great money for me.  Now, with my own family, I think they were geniuses and I’m jealous.

John and I have always tried to do an intentional date night on the 14th of every month.  We would get a sitter and go do something that usually involved dinner and a movie.  This worked – but there were some drawbacks. First, it got expensive, especially when we had to pay a sitter.  Second, our planning was lacking and we almost always went to dinner and a movie – which I love to do, but it wasn’t a good fit for really connecting.  Third, once a month was not frequent enough.

We switched to doing weekly date nights about 6 months ago inspired by Simply Modern Mom and her Project 52 Date nights series.  You can check out her parameters here. Ours go something like this:

• Friday Nights from 8:30-10:00…although we are usually never really done before 11pm.  But with the intention of an hour and a half blocked time, makes it seem more doable.
• We usually do something at home unless we have a party or something, then we make sure to grab dinner together beforehand.
• Right now, I do most of the planning, John is still apprehensive to the planning part or we would be alternating the planning. He is warming up to the idea of planning, but I have fun with it so I really don’t mind.
• Like SMM, we try and keep it simple .
• Movies are not an option.

So, what do we DO right?!?!  Here some of our past dates…

• We’ve dusted off several games (not the Hi Ho Cherry-O variety) that usually only get played once a year.  One of favorites is Phase 10 – we are addicted!  Another night we played Skip Bo Deluxe, which we have never played, it was still in it’s wrapper – but it was really fun.
• A couple of weeks ago, we got slurpees and played Wii Sports.
• One night I surprised John with a Spa Night all for him and let it be known he LOVED it.  Complete with a pedicure, facial and massage.  BTW, I’m the best wife ever.  FYI, Walgreens has single use face masks for $1, so I didn’t have to spend $8 on something I would never use again.
• Last Friday, we made root beer floats and I got a bunch of travel guides from the library about Nova Scotia.  A little nerdy, but we’d love to plan a trip there for our 10 year and I just thought it would be fun – and it was.

In summary, Friday nights have become such a sweet intentional time for John and I.  It solved the drawbacks about how we used to do date nights and it’s been really fun getting creative about what we are going to do.

For more ideas, check out Project:52 Date Nights at Simply Modern Mom and be sure to check out the post comments too.

I’m still being treated for strep from last weekend, but now I have a secondary respiratory infection with the cough, runny nose, etc.  Lovely.

I constantly have a cup of hot tea with honey in my hand and today I realized I had all the ingredients for chicken noodle soup – score.

I got this recipe from Penzeys years and years ago.  I think they actually called it Turkey Noodle Soup because it was in the issue after Thanksgiving.  So use chicken or turkey, regardless, it’s my favorite on a cold day or on a super hot day in the middle of the summer when you have a cold.

The boys love it too.  It’s funny because JJ likes just the broth and Henry likes no broth but all the noodles and veges.  Kinda like Jack Sprat, they end up “licking the platter clean”.

Read more…

We would have had a fun weekend planned with parties to go to and birthdays to celebrate – all missed.   It was the sick ward here this weekend – AGAIN with Henry and I being the patients.  I’ve said it before, I don’t do sick well.  I am just needy and mean.  Thanks to antibiotics, LOTS of hot tea with honey and some moments of rest I am on the mend.

Emma had the most fun though, she got to go to a Ladybug Luncheon with Grandma at her friend Kathryn’s house.  Grandma bought all the granddaughters sweet little ladybug dresses just for the event.  So fun! Here are a couple pics…

Sitting on Grandmas lap….is that not the cutest ladybug you’ve ever seen??!?!

The only thing cuter is Emma with her BFF, her cousin Rosie…don’t you want to know what they are thinking???

My thoughts are all over the place today.  I have more than the usual amount of free time today which always makes my head spin.  Here is a sampling of things going through my head throughout the day…

- Why did we sign JJ up for soccer camp in the middle of July from 5-6:30pm?

- Is it just a coincidence that Aunt Ann sent us a “really good” deal on a house in West County and I have been reading through Jonah?

- My house has been unusually clean for more than 24 hours – what am I doing or not doing?

- I love JJ but I really don’t want to sit in the heat tonight.

- For a second, considered parallels between West County and Nineveh.

- Thinking my clean house is a result of JJ helping out more and us being out of the house more lately.

- Considering for a minute that a NachoMama’s Drive-Thru margarita can be on the way to soccer tonight.

- Realizing and admitting to myself that I am a huge zip code snob.

- Summing up…..I’m praising God for a clean house today, vowing NOT to sign up the kids for any evening camps in the heat of summer next year and letting God in on the fact that it’s going to take a whale for us to consider West County.