It's been too long...

It's been a long time since I've sat down, or stood up as the case may be, to write.  I initially took the summer off to just enjoy creating memories and the freedom of summer.  I had the best of intentions of recording some of our summer adventures once school started.  What I didn't foresee was our family's late summer decision that I too would go back to school.  Life changes and so do our priorities.

School has been wonderful and difficult all at once.  My creaky 13 years out of school brain, has taken some reconditioning to get back to thinking academically.  I will share that, there's hope.  After a couple of months I'm now able to read academic journal articles in a much shorter time period and even more importantly, I'm understanding them!

Jeff and the kids have been wonderfully supportive of this process.  They've had lots of Papa outings, dishes are primarily no longer done by me, and we have changed bedtime routines without greatly sacrificing the quality time shared snuggling before sleep.

Priorities have shifted many of these changes have been positive, a feel leave us feeling sad.  One great thing is that much of my studying occurs after 8:00 pm and we now watch far less TV (Jeff catches up on some fun reading he missed out on while he was in school).  We've had to say no to some things or take a backseat.  Even this, in may ways, has been positive allowing others to come into greater roles of leadership and self reliance.  Creativity has not suffered greatly.  This week we've make popcorn balls, created a family of large stuffed fleece owls, and Nate's been creating a newspaper using some of his newly acquired kindergarten writing skills.

This Fall has not been easy, but it has been immensely rewarding.  I hope to share updates, but just not quite as regularly as last Spring.  I do love writing and creating a record of memories of our wanderings,so I hope to not lose this entirely to my academic pursuits.