May by iphone

Yesterday I was playing around with Photoshop and realized I have not taken a single picture with the *real* camera since May 4th. This is most definitely not like me. It is just so easy to rely on the iPhone now that the camera is so good. Seriously, it's hard to understand why anyone would buy a point and shoot camera anymore when phones are multi-taskers with such high resolution cameras.

I know the month is not over, but since I've been both a photo and blog slacker, here's an overview of life as captured imperfectly and in the moment.

May is walk/bike to school month. We did one of each in the first week but nothing since. It's just far too easy having the school bus pick up 20 yards from our door.

My parents sent chocolate covered strawberries for Mother's Day. I did a good job of sharing, but probably just because the insert card said they should be eaten within 48 hours and I thought I'd get a stomachache doing that alone.

I ran the Hippie Chick again - only this year I did the quarter rather than the half marathon. In truth I felt like a slacker since all these amazing ladies are so. much. faster. than I am and totally rocked it. Then I saw this picture and noticed how much weight I've gained since last year and wanted to cry. Oh, well. It was a really fun time.

Squirt made a Mother's Day gift at school and hid it in her room. Amazingly, it stayed alive and well! I almost cried when she gave it to me. She was so very happy about it and it's pretty much the cutest thing you ever did see.

Jim made chocolate souffle's of awesomeness. One bite and your eyes will roll back in your head from awesomeness. Seriously, we eat really well. Like, really, really well. It's no surprise since our entire courtship (like 2 weeks) before we decided to get married revolved almost entirely around food or conversations about food.

Aeryn's newish bike endured it's first major wipeout. Of course, that means Aeryn did too. It was in the middle of the bike lane on Alder and I just counted my lucky stars there wasn't much traffic at the time. She was a little freaked out by this one, and it made for the third pair of pants to get gaping holes ripped in the knees in the same week.

Squirt had track and field day for school. She was so very excited about it. She really is enjoying running and track events, even though she takes after me and doesn't have an excess of natural talent in the area. I love her continuous excitement just to try things and that she doesn't get discouraged by other's successes.

Some friends are gone for an internship this summer and loaned us their laminate flooring. I installed it one night (or was it two nights?) while Jim was gone and it was seriously a PITA. If we had somewhere to move our furniture it would have been much easier, instead I would move things from one side of the room to the other laying a small section of floor and then shifting the furniture so I could fit a few more boards. It was a lot of work for 2.5 months of non-crappy flooring (but I LOVE IT anyway).

Jim's cousin Jordan got married so we (Aeryn & I since Jimmer was in L.A.) headed to Portland to offer support. Aeryn and the cousins had so much fun running amok around the temple grounds. I love this picture. They were so goofy and really make me laugh. Tyler looks like a total hipster with his hair and glasses - it's pretty much my favorite thing ever.

I love the Portland Temple. The contrast between the marble and the evergreens is just stunning.

This is actually the only picture I took of the wedding-folk and it was mostly so I could text it to Jim and prove that the deed was done. It was a delightful day and both families seemed very pleased with the union. I wish them all the best life has to offer.

After the wedding we headed to the coast to spend the weekend in the Lenz family's beach house. It was really charming, but seems small compared to the new one that is in the works.

This house will be about as close to the water as possible. It was a chilly day at the beach, or rather a normal Oregon one, but of course the kids did not mind one way or another.

Our youngest niece spent a decent amount of time like this at the beach. She was squeezing the sand between her fingers repeatedly and I don't really have any idea what she was trying to do but it made me laugh.

May has been good. For June, I plan to return to my normal camera-happy self. I've missed it. 

Car Wash

This morning I read an article about how parents inadvertently make their children more fragile by protecting them from boredom/pain/small failures and so on. One of the points the article made was that children need to be allowed to make mistakes, to be expected to work, and to let them be bored once in a while (yes, I realize that there was more than one point there). If you are curious, I found the article here: http://www.psychologytoday.com/articles/200411/nation-wimps).

I've been thinking about how I parent and I feel I do really well in some areas and not so well in others, but the law of averages seems to be working in my favor as my kids are reasonably well-adjusted, capable, and happy. However, I sometimes make silly mistakes. Like today, when I didn't take Squirt to school for the 4th/5th grade fund raising car wash.

I couldn't find info in the school newsletters and there wasn't any clear information sent home or on the website so I figured it was just 5th grade and we didn't go. Instead, Aeryn got to play outside with her friends, make her own lunch, sweep the kitchen and vacuum under the table as a result of the mess from cooking her own lunch, sit in time out for a small mistake, and get bored. When she got bored, she chose to do this:

Yep, she chose this on her own.

Which is when I realized that I may be imperfect in many ways and I could easily over analyze my parenting on so many different levels, but I truly think she's going to grow up and be ok.