Calendars flip so fast

Oli's Happy Walrus

On the road, if I didn't capture the memories right THEN we would have moved on and the place would have been in our rear view mirror holding all it's memories until we landed in the next place and the mirror would fill with another. I had to write it as all of that was a once in a life time situation...we would never be floating on Flathead Lake with our 6 and 7 year old again. But here, at home, things are still happening so fast, but I can pretend they aren't. I can think of these kiddos as still my little ones that I get to enjoy for years to come, but when our 6 year old is the average size of a 9.5 year old and is only 10 inches shorter than me, it hits that these littles are not so little. Though they are young, the years too will pass and the less they will occupy my lap, calling for my attention at every moment to watch, watch, WATCH what they are doing, and I will be left with only wondering how their time is being filled. And so, let's recap. Just for myself, when I am sitting here with an empty house, not fighting to find a quiet hour when I can, and I can point my screen to this little blog and remember the fun this time has been.

On a bike ride in Longmont

It is May. The end of May. That means we got home seven months ago, and yet we are still transitioning. We moved into my parents house in October. We moved to Gunbarrel in November. We spent Jan-Feb in Florida. We moved back to my parents house in April, and now we move home tomorrow, the first week in June. Since we have been home we have taken two trips to Arizona, one to California, and I've gone to Florida twice. We have visited friends, watched the Rockies train, sat in the ocean, and relaxed around pools. We have lost one of our dearest friends in the form of a big black dog. We still miss his "kissing spot" between his eyes and miss his smell, always of a puppy. Through all of this, we have had school. Each day that passes I am more in love with our decision to keep homeschooling, even last week, our last week of 1st and 2nd grade as the final lessons draaaggggeeeeed on for all of us because we'd much rather be doing something, ANYTHING than spelling words using these last "vowel teams" because in May, nobody cares if AW sounds like "aw" or "ow" and we certainly don't care if "aw" or "au" can be used at the end of a word.

Drop off at school

Living at my parents house is a little like living in the middle of a party. With my dad and Chris working from home and the boys and I schooling from home, the house rarely empties. There is always some kind of action going on in the kitchen or people coming up with ideas of what we should be doing. From backyard fires, to nerf gun fights, baseball games, bike rides, or just lots of chatter amongst ourselves, I am sure that moving out will feel a bit quiet, if not for us, certainly for my parents. Living a mile from our old house has given us plenty of time to catch up with our old neighbors which has been nice as it affirms our reasons for moving back into the house. The neighborhood is so small that the kids will now have the run of the place and there are plenty of friends to run into at the park for a game of soccer or a bike ride on the paths. Thinking of moving back in has the same sort of feel as landing after being swirled in a tornado. It is a safe landing pad that feels comfortable and stable after all of the moving we've been doing, and at the same time it feels like the end of an adventure.

Capture the Flag Pros

Through all of this, I have been continually amazed by the flexibility and adaptability of our boys! Some nights we have not known where they would be sleeping and by the time bedtime rolls around and we've found where they will be resting their heads, they are just as happy and able to sleep as if that was the norm. Through the trip Oliver would let us know "Well, this was a good day, but I still want to go home." That was about the extent of any unhappiness. Austin would choose to continue to live on the road and is always talking about the "next" time we do this road trip or different countries we think we need to explore.

My happy Oli

We started school in Montana, with Flathead lake as our backdrop. We took our back to school pictures around a picnic table as we cracked the books open and started doing work. Back then the boys were reading books such as Little Critter, concentrating on each letter as it formed with the next. Last night Austin was in the home stretch of finishing "Little House in the Big Woods". To witness this kind of growth, to see your kiddo self motivate and push themselves through lessons that they would rather not be doing, but come out the other side with greater abilities has been extraordinary. I can remember when the kids were babies and I would think about homeschooling. Or when the babies were nothing but fragments of my imagination and I would wonder about homeschooling. Or about when we were about to start down this road and I was nervous about homeschooling, and I wonder how that could be. How could I have thought about this NOT being a part of our lives? It feels so natural and fits in with who we are completely.

Enjoying Mt Falcon

This past weekend we drove to Morrison for a hike. We drove right to the area where I used to take the kiddos so often, Tiny Town. I started thinking about how often I used to drive those roads, the hour long commute, the picnic we would have at Bear Lake after, just the boys and I. I would see their sleeping heads buckled in their carseats as we headed home in the afternoons and how that was so "us" and as my heart seized up I wondered when did that not become our routine? One summer I probably just thought that the boys were too old to enjoy it and stopped going, and then they were out of carseats and booster seats and now the bike rack is always in our rear view mirror as we head out for the trails or parks and my heart loosened as realized I lost the routine with the babies, but we have kept "our" routine. These boys and I, we are still doing our thing through all of this adventuring and exploring and that feels right.

Favorite hiking buddy!

And so, it's off to the next adventure. As we ready ourselves for our next move, we are getting ready for our next routine. One of summer and pools and camping. Of friends and hikes and bikes. But we are also in the middle of supporting Chris, who is bringing our family on the next adventure of self employment. A dream he's had for years is now falling into place, if somewhat erratically due to Gary's health and the state of the properties. He has a challenge in front of him that will require us to support and help him along the way, but I know our team of four is good at adventures and support and challenges, so instead of it being "Chris' work" it feels a bit more like a family adventure. One that will have us saying, "where has the time gone?" in a year from now as our routine has once again shifted.