Month: August 2013

Summer Fun

This summer has been a good one. Different, but good. Most years, we have gone camping but with buying a house this year and Jon and I needing “sanity time”….camping just wasn’t in the cards this year.

Having a “backyard” has been so incredible. The stress of living in a townhouse (while having 5 active children and an incredibly grouchy Strata Council) was more than I could bear and this place has been an absolute blessing in SO MANY WAYS!

Probably the highlight of the summer – aside from our amazing trip to Mexico – has been just hanging out with my sisters and nephews and nieces. A couple of weeks ago we headed out to Ambleside Beach in West Vancouver. It might seem crazy to drive from Langley to West Vancouver when we could go to White Rock, but honestly, it’s so much easier to get our enormous brood and all our crap from home to beach if we go to Ambleside. And………because it’s all highway driving, it takes the same amount of time – 45 mins from door to water.

I think the biggest production was getting our gear from the vehicles to the sand. With 3 mom’s and 11 kids (but only 10 were on this particular trip – Jer was at a nerd convention – ie. Minecraft meet up), there is a colossal amount of “stuff”.

We managed it all in one trip…..cause we are amazing like that.

Once we found “the perfect spot” we set up the shade tent, parked the babies underneath it and started slathering kids with sunscreen. I have no idea how he did it, but the instant I got Judah slimed up – he managed to cover himself with sand…..which, while I think is nasty, I’ll admit it does offer an additional level of sun protection.

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It’s so fun having kids that are around the same age. The big girls all play together so well….although as teenagers – there is a lot more laying around and a lot less playing.

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Jack, Zac and Judah are all 3 years old and they alternate between playing incredibly and fighting like baboons. Which I’m sure will carry on throughout their lives….and it’s so fun to see them growing up together. This particular day, they were all playing so well together. It’s so neat hearing them chattering at each other at a 3 year old level with their lisps and mispronunciations. It’s absolutely darling.

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As happens wen you are at the beach, there was a lot of sand EVERYWHERE and a lot of really gritty food. YUCK! Nothing says yummy quite like gritty watermelon, carrots, and sandwiches….

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The girls went exploring up and down the beach and found a red jelly fish. It was pretty exciting until Xani got stung….then it was slightly less fun…..but still super cool to have found the giant slimy creature.

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I might be totally biased, but I think I have the cutest nephews ever.

Gio

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A.J.

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Zac

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We went crab hunting and taught the little boys how to hold them by pinching them from behind. We found some crabs that were smaller than dimes and those ones were less scary to hold than the bigger ones. But this dead one was the least scary of all.

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I love it when I find interesting things to snap a quick photo of and Ambleside didn’t disappoint. I’m sure that this orange rock was covered in some toxic sludge in order to make it this amazing color, but regardless of the reason….it was still beautiful surrounded by all the green seaweed.

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I’m so thankful for my sisters and all the love and support they give. I love that our kids are growing up together. I’m thrilled that we get to spend time together making amazing memories.

Do you have special memories of summers spent with family? Has this summer been a good one for you? What fun things have you done? I’d love to hear about it, if you’re willing to share.

If you’d like to see some more pics from our beach day, click here.

Letting Go

Sitting at the kitchen table, plopped down in the middle of a mess.

Staring at a blank screen…..

Smelling the herbs just picked from the garden and hung to dry……..

This has been a very different summer. Different than any we’ve ever had before. I’ve not written a lot. I gave myself the summer off. Well, if I’m honest, it’s been a long time since I’ve posted regularly. Stress is a funny thing, and by funny……. I guess I mean horrific.

Stress is a killer…..a killer of energy, a killer of focus, a killer of creativity…..

Even now, I have so many words floating through my brain and I’m not sure which ones to grab onto and which ones to banish and which ones to allow to continue to float around in there.

I’m doing a lot better than I was…….at least I think so. And yet, I’m not sure where I’m going.

Angelica came back from Camp Goodtimes (The camp put on by the Canadian Cancer Society) and was quite emotional as she shared with me how she was realizing that she could never “go back” to normal. There is no “going back”. There is no “picking up where we left off” or “getting back to where we were or the people we used to be”.

This is such a tough concept to grasp. There is so much grieving and letting go to do and it just keeps going on and on and on……so much so that this feels like the new normal and yet……I don’t like this. I don’t like this new me. I don’t like the me who is exhausted all the time. I don’t like the me who can’t organize and plan and arrange things instantly. I don’t like the me who forgets things and lets balls drop. I don’t like the me who can’t accomplish very much in a day.

I feel like I used to be SO. MUCH. BETTER. at everything. And recognizing that I’m no longer that person is a tough thing. I want to be that person. I want to be able to do more and organize more and think more and handle more and yet what I’m stuck with is SO. MUCH. LESS!!!!!

Less organizing, less tidy, less capable, less focused, less disciplined, less stable, less energy, less…….just SO. MUCH. LESS!

And I hate it!

And yet, what I feel that I need to do, is to recognize that the “Old Me” is “no longer……she was buried under a mountain of stress and cancer and grief and loneliness and exhaustion and……

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This…..the me sitting here right now with her scattered thoughts and messy table and even messier kitchen, with no clear schedule or plans or meal plan (that one really gets me – and yet everytime I sit down with my paper and pen….the blank sheet mocks me with my inability to “make it happen” and I put it all away and allow myself to get distracted by something else that doesn’t require so much thought or energy)…..the woman who prided herself on the healthy foods she fed her kids has been replaced by one who allows her kids to forage for cookies and tortilla chips or dry sugar cereal and calls that breakfast. This person is who I am now….this is what I have to work with…..and I find that so difficult.

I’m trying to accept her. To love her for all her faults. To recognize that for all the things she can no longer do or be…….that there are still things that make her incredible. I’m trying to love the fact that she is more compassionate than she has ever been, that she is more understanding and accepting of people, that she is less judgmental, less controlling. I’m trying to believe that there is good that has come from all of the bad and that even though there has been so much loss…..that there is still “gain” and yet its hard…..

When I see all I could do and to try to stack it up against what I can do now…….I fall so short.

It’s a tough concept….to let go of who you were and to accept who you are…..much more difficult than you’d think.

I’d like to think I’m getting there, but I’m still not sure I like this new me…..and yet, I can’t go back. I’m not even sure I’d want to.