I like my salad plate.

Welp, it sure seems like my posts have certainly been few and far between lately. I apologize for this - to you, and to me. I love to write and feel like it's somewhat theraputic for me, I know I've said that before, but it really is. It's funny, however, that when life gets stressful we put the things that we need the most on hold until all the crazy stuff settles down. That date night, or taking time to journal or write - I hate journaling by the way - or even spending much needed time with the Lord (I don't hate that!). If I could somehow remind myself that those things would HELP calm the craziness down it would sure be helpful!

Life has been quite the ride for me lately. There are some things that we're needing to iron out around here - and I sometimes have to stop myself from just throwing the iron through the wall. ha. Don't worry, it's not my marriage or my kids... we're having some issues with our students, but for confidentiality purposes I won't talk about it here. I will say that I am starting to realize the importance of doing a life survey every once in a while. Just to check up on how things are going. You know? Ask yourself some questions, see what you can do to make things better or ease the load. I have to admit, I am not a person with a large plate that can hold many things at once. Some people have GIANT plates and seem like they can take on the world. Me.....not so much. My plate is more like a salad plate, and I can't say that I don't like it like that. I like my salad plate.

I was driving today and thought to myself, "huh...haven't seen many eagles or deer lately." Now, for those of you who do not live where I live, these two beautiful creatures are a daily treat to view in my town. I kinda thought it was too bad that they all went away - seeing them usually brightens my day in a lovely way. They point my thoughts to their Creator and I like Him a lot. And thinking about Him is good. I drove home and didn't see any. Then I was out driving again and a thought popped into my mind, perhaps I haven't seen any deer because I haven't been slowing down (to the speed limit I admit) to spot any. Perhaps I haven't seen any eagles because I haven't been looking up. I guess I have had my head in the sand quite a bit lately. Something that is really great about living on Vancouver Island is that the pace of life really can be slower if you allow it to be. You can just drive the plain old speed limit and people just coast along behind you and enjoy the ride. You can slow down and enjoy the drive along the ocean and watch the eagles and seals...and the road of course... I haven't been doing this lately.

I've gotten caught up in just getting tasks done and not enjoying life as it is; enjoying the pleasant moments that are quietly offered for my taking but I avoid as to not 'waste' time. Today, I am thankful for the friendly reminder to slow down and enjoy the view. I did look up. And guess what? The sea food shop along the ocean was feeding the eagles. What a sight!! There must have been 40 bald eagles all feasting and flying through the air. It was so beautiful and such a treat. I slowed down, and so did everyone around me and we all just enjoyed it.

As I write this I am learning a lesson on slowing down and just enjoying a quiet moment. I received a promotion thingy that gave me a free download to a movie (don't worry, I'm not pirating, in no way to I support downloading illegally.) and my 'high speed' internet is currently downloading a 908MB movie at........wait for it....wait for it.....a whopping 120 KB per second. So, I have 2 hours before my movie will be ready for viewing. Instead I'm sipping 'Sleepy Time' tea and happily waiting for it to finish downloading, and I'll watch it another time.

Jackson had his first birthday yesterday. What a turkey. I love him so much. He's into yelling right now. Not bad, yucky yelling, it's actually really funny yelling. It's kind of like he's a car reving the engine. He's so delighted in himself when he does it. We had a fun day. It snowed, so randomly, on his birthday. I had planned a fun walk around the air strip but we ended up walking around Superstore instead. It was still fun though. Today the boys had great naps because they were so wiped out from yesterday. Jackson woke up crying in the monitor. Let me just say that when you can smell it down the hall and down the stairs, you know it's gonna be a major clean up operation. Needless to say, it WAS. You see, he's also into this whole filling-your-diaper-during-your-nap-time thing. He wouldn't even stand up when I came into the room. He just sat there, still, like he was sitting in a mine field - of poop - and one tiny move could cause an explosion. Bless his heart for not moving. Enough said about that. Well, ok...when I plunked him onto the change table he had such a sneaky pleased look on his face, like he had just really proven his diaper filling capabilities. If he can study one day like he.....nevermind. I said enough about that.

[sigh] My tea is kicking in, I'm starting to get sleepy. My movie is 56% downloaded and it's been at it for an hour...so I think I'll just go to bed now. Tonight is the time change, Spring forward this time. For all you parent out there, this is the AWESOME one where your kid sleep in an extra hour cause they don't know you changed the clocks and you trick your mind into not thinking there was a time change at all. Don't worry, I've finally figure this out. When Linden was a baby and it was the 'fall backwards' time change I prepped him all week long leading up to the time change by putting him to bed and hour early. When the time change came and I realized that now he was going to bed at 5PM in the afternoon it wasn't fun. I did it the wrong way. Ha. After that awesome move I worked really hard to understand the time changes so I'd never do that again. Poor kid.

Ramble ramble. Good night friends. Have a deep sleep.
Laura
P.S - Linden was singing the national anthem tonight and it went something like this, "Yo Canada, we stand on Arc." That was it. And that was enough to make it the best national anthem ever. Although he doesn't call it the national anthem. He just calls it the hockey song.