MY BOGGY BLOG: find your way through the murk

Fifteen Years!

DH and I celebrated our 15th wedding anniversary on Thursday, May 27. It just boggles my mind that 15 years have passed since that gorgeous spring day, so full of sunshine and greenness and magic, our special day to say our vows in front of friends and family, and celebrate with them. We were 24 and 26 then, and I try to remember what it was like to be that age, young, beginning, a newbie on the relationship road.

Now here we are, ages 39 and 41, with three growing kids and much more experience. Someday, this day will seem like "youth and inexperience" in its own way. It is hard to imagine that, too! So many ups and downs. I'm so glad for the love and the friendship that runs through it all.

DH gave me a beautiful bouquet of flowers that morning, ones he picked out at the florist because they were the most fragrant-- rose, bright pink lilies, freesia, peony and others. After work, we took our kids over to The College of St. Catherine, where we were married. We stood in the chapel-- their chapel is a Renaissance-type stone chapel with very high ceilings-- splendid. We walked out by the pon with hills and a bridge to the tiny island, all this lush greenness around us, and ducks, geese and a heron. The kids thought it was all so cool and want to come back for a picnic.

Then after our visit, we bought burgers for the kids and dropped them at home (ah, old enough to not need a babysitter!) and went out to eat together at a favorite romantic restaurant. There I gave DH my gift, which was a bag full of 15 little gifts which all had some meaning to our relationship and history. Coffee beans because of our love of drinking coffee and going to cafes, a golf ball to remind him of playing mini-golf in our wedding finery, which is what we did between our service and the reception. It was very fun, and a good way to share some of the memories.

And now, a rainy Memorial Day weekend. A barbecue at my sister's house, going out to see Shrek 2 with the kids last night. DH and I sorting through a mountainous pile of papers that has built up in our kitchen. Such is our fun!

The Blogger Who Didn't Blog

What can I say? I've honestly been forgetting to pop in here and write. It would help if I could work on my website from my main computer in my writing nook, but I can only do it on another computer. But enough excuses already. I'm back, again, and I'll be in to post more often.

We are here at the end of May already, staring Memorial Day right in the face, with only 8, count 'em 8, days of school left for my kids. This can send shockwaves of feelings through moms like me, who will be home with kids all summer-- terror, trepidation, giddiness (no getting up early everymorning to make lunches!), yearning, relief, stress... I have plans, sketchy plans right now, to try to give a bit more structure to our usually unstructured summer. I don't sign up the kids for camps and classes. It gets hard to arrange with 3 kids and we can't afford it right now. But I do want us to have our own excursions and activities, with some plans to do some "think outside the box" learning. Very modified homeschooling or unschooling. I dunno. I'm thinking about it. I don't want this summer to slip away into my kids sitting in front of their 'puters all day and me being driven crazy by their squabbling. Oh, and i want to get some writing done, too. (No laughing, now! They say I'm a dreamer...)

I did get a fabulous week away a few weeks ago. I spent Monday through Friday staying at Clare's Well, a retreat center in Annandale, which is actually a small farm run by three Franciscan nuns, very liberal-chakra-stone-energy-healing nuns. I had a little hermitage cabin to myself, they fed me meals and I walked through the small woods, took soaks in the hot tub, got a massage, read a lot, wrote a lot and napped and thought. It was so great! I had a lot of awareness about myself, and was able to start to fill in some big plot holes in my novel. I know I'm lucky to have an opportunity like this, and I do so appreciate it!

Well, 'nuff for today. The sun is shining at last (rainy week here). And a full to-do list for me!