Category: life

September. It seems that every time I’m outside, or even look outside, I see a leaf falling. A huge part of me is okay with that, but I also want a few more sweltering days of shorts, tank tops and popsicles. Summer can’t come to such an abrupt end. School starts for Maggie next week and this year I feel much more emotionally prepared for it. I was caught off guard last year with her difficulty of transitioning into it, even though we’d been preparing for it for a long time. This year I feel much more ready for the shift and I think she is as well. There’s this letter going around the Internets and I really do love it. My favorite part is this:

We send you to school to practice being brave and kind.

Kind people are brave people. Because brave is not a feeling that you should wait for. It is a decision. It is a decision that compassion is more important than fear, than fitting in, than following the crowd.

Trust me, baby, it is. It is more important.

Don’t try to be the best this year, honey.

Just be grateful and kind and brave. That’s all you ever need to be.

For a long time we’ve talked with Maggie about being brave and how that feels/looks and when I read this letter, it reminded me how important those conversations can be. Being brave really is a choice and it doesn’t really mean doing something wild like going down a huge slide or trying a gross food.  

Truth be told, the message of being grateful, kind and brave rings true in my life also. As a friend, wife, daughter, daughter-in-law, etc. My friend, Joey, makes fabulous signs and refurbishes furniture. A few weeks ago I’d asked her to make a sign for me that says “Always remember to be brave and wild at heart.” I haven’t had a chance to pick it up yet, but I’m excited to hang it up as a reminder….brave, wild at heart, kind, and grateful. Those are all great attributes. 

Setember. I’m ready. My heart’s ready. Bring it. 

 

 

We’ve been talking about getting rid of our front yard and replacing it with a parking area for quite some time because we never, ever used the yard since we were always in the back. It was painful to watch elderly people getting out of their cars on our slanted, horrible driveway. Unloading and loading our own car was annoying and really inconvenient. After many, many conversations about it, my dad and Izak came down and worked for a few weeks getting it done and improving our driveway and parking area into a convenient and beautiful parking area. I have a big, fat driveway post coming up, but thought I’d share these few of the girls ‘working’ on one of the evenings. It was the highlight of their summer, having Grampy and Uncle Izak here to ‘help’.

Our house is really small and I always tell Barry that I don’t really want a bigger house, but maybe a better designed home. Our kitchen can feel cramped and I really like baking, especially when the weather shifts. A close friend sent me a message the other day because her family had put an offer on a house that is roughly the same size that ours is. She wanted to know if I had any thoughts or advice on what it’s like to live in a small space. I didn’t really have much to say, only to remind her that a bigger space means more stuff and nobody really wants more stuff. Well, at least I don’t.

I also told my friend that I often think of my parents living in ‘the little house’ with  us three kids…while building a house. Talk about close proximity. But I love that growing up I knew how to be in a small space with my parents and brothers. Eventually we moved into the bigger house, but we went on plenty vacations where we shared small spaces (tents, cabins, condos…) and I’m glad for each one of those times. Because it taught me something that I hold dear to my core: the gift of experience is the very best gift ever. Time together is the best medicine. It’s how I was raised and it’s how I’d like my girls to be raised.  To know that being together, in life, is  good, healthy and where it’s really at. The good stuff. 

We do live in a small house. We don’t have a playroom, a great room, or even a dining room. Some days I think I want none of those and some days I think that I want all of those. But most days, I’m really glad that we’ve simply got what we’ve got and that we’re all squealing with happiness. The fact of the matter is this: if we’re home, we’re almost always in the same room together. It was true when Barry and I lived in the smallest house ever, and it’s true now with the girls. 

I hope my girlfriend and her family get the small house they put an offer on. Living small, in comparison to the rest of America (I’m well aware that many other pockets of the world is vastly different…), is a great thing. I find it hard to remember that. My friend has been wanting a little patch of green to sink her hands into and this little house might just be that place. This week another friend sent me this blog post and I really, really loved it.