Something old, something new...

Ok, so the plan was to post at least weekly and here I am three months later entering my second post...wow.  In my life, the last three months have been about endings and new beginnings...If I am honest, which I am realizing is a challenge for me, I have redeemed some time and wasted some.  I have watched an amazing  friend pass away, I have watched my first class of freshmen graduate from high school, and I have left behind the working world to watch my babies grow. 

I have gone to the pool, the zoo, the circus, the garden in my front yard, the park, and the grocery store, all in the past two weeks, which is a Richardson Record of "fun having" by Lily, Joanna and myself.  I am not a "fun" mom by nature.  I am a "get everything done in the shortest amount of time with the least amount of interruptions" mom by nature.  The little egg timer in my mind is constantly reminding me that I only have thirty minutes to...do a load of laundry, empty the trash, clean out the dishwasher, take a shower, before...the baby wakes up, the movie ends, the kids decide they want to go outside, the quiet time ends.  In my first post I pledged to worry about the small stuff less and I will admit, it is harder than I imagined it would be. I am learning that redeeming the time means letting go of what may be natural to me in an effort serve someone else.  Tougher than I thought....I need one of those, "Caution...Road Work Ahead" signs for my parenting skills.      

 There is something special about beginnings...especially the beginning of school.  When summer ends...and fall begins...I love it, the excitement, the energy, the purpose. I have taught for seven years now and I have spent seven summers looking ahead to new school years, new classes of kids I haven't met yet, new possibilities.   I usually spend summer without much "purpose" in mind.  My brain is conditioned to spend the summer months finding ways to enjoy my girls, because I have a limited amount of weeks, days, hours to soak up as much time with them as I can.    Even though I love the beginning of a new school year, I loathe (9th grade vocabulary word) leaving behind the days spent being lazy with my little ladies.  It is a strange feeling to be both energized by a new beginning and desperately trying to hang onto the ending that must come to make the new beginning possible.  This is the first summer I will not spend the month of August counting down the days, in both excitement and sadness, to  the first day of school, desperately enjoying each last drop of sunshine with my girls, while looking ahead to the new possibilities that the school year brings.  It is both awesome and unnerving to look at the year ahead knowing I don't know what to expect, knowing that life will be different than it has ever been for me.  Knowing there is sweetness and sadness in new beginnings...