Soccer Man

With multiple events always scheduled for the first weekend of October, this year we did the "divide and conquer" thing.  I took three of the kids to the annual cider press put on by our dentist, and Brian went to Noah's soccer tournament since he hasn't been able to make most of the games due to conflict with Awana.  It's always something it seems!

Anyway, Noah's team has had quite the winning season this year and the tournament was no different.  After tying the first game, they went on to win the next two, facing the first team again in the final and winning that one as well.

It's been fun to watch Noah gain confidence and really go after the ball.  Some of his teammates have a LOT more ball control, but he's getting there.  He definitely has the kick down, when he connects with the ball, now to work on aiming for a teammate!

Noah is playing up, to stay with his classmates, but since the national soccer league changed the rules to calendar year rather than school year he's actually still playing with a few boys that are behind him in school.  So I think it's a pretty good fit.  He's neither the smallest nor the biggest on the team and keeps up pretty well.

Number One Team!

Unfortunately he's been sick and home from school the last three days so he'll miss his game tonight.  But there's one more next Saturday to finish out the season.  No matter what, they've had a winning record.

The Exhaustion Cycle

Hey look, three more days before I post again.  Some days I'm not sure if this is a symptom of my busy life or if this just isn't a priority anymore.  This blog used to be about keeping a record of my life and I'm SO thankful that I can look back on when the kids were little.  But now that I have Instagram for so much of it and Facebook does the daily memories thing I get it in bits and pieces.  I do miss the depth though and those other platforms are just not as searchable.

Anyway, I caught a cold last week that I am just finally recovering from.  It's amazing how much you don't feel up to doing when you are even slightly run down.  I feel like I've been in the "slightly-run-down" phase for about 6 years now, ever since I was pregnant with the twins.  And now that I am totally out of the baby stage (Hallelujah!) it's different.  I can let them be unsupervised, but we have so many more activities to do now that I feel like I'm hardly ever home.  Which would be great if my house actually looked like we were never home... but it doesn't.

Then the cycle is, I stay up late because I crave alone time, I don't get enough sleep so I'm tired again, I don't get as much done without as much energy, and I stay up late again.  Even when I manage to break the cycle for a few days, I'm such a night owl that it creeps in on me again.  And don't even think about having motivation to exercise or eat healthier when you're tired because that requires more energy!

Something's going to have to give before I break though because we are getting up earlier and earlier (hello 7:10am strings practice!) and I have to be ready to go for the day when I take the girls to school.  I know some of you are going "boo hoo" because I have to leave my house at 8am, but this is not normal for me in the last 10 years, at least on a daily basis!

I'm slowly working on some changes.  We've started to shift our going to bed habits a little earlier.  I'm trying to gain some self control and not eat all.the.sugar whenever it's available.  It's crazy how much food, and especially treats, we have in our society.  I realized how much we revolve around food when we found Cory's gluten allergy.  Can you imagine a social gathering without some kind of food? It almost never happens!  I am seeing a slight shift in what's available now though, more fruits and at least not straight sugar usually.  (thanks church!)

Basically, I'm trying to learn to take care of me.  With all of my "free time" now that the girls are in school half days I've gotten an eye appointment

new glasses coming my way

And today I actually went to the doctor for myself.  I've been putting that off for awhile too, but after I got SO sick a year and a half ago and accidentally overdosed on Sudafed my heart likes to do this lovely slow beat thing.  So EKG's for everyone.

Little changes over time, hopefully they will add up to a healthier mom, with less stress, that makes for a happier and calmer family.  We'll see if we get calm though, my kids are wild.

On Writing Again

My friend Kristi is doing this write every day thing in October.  I think I did that once upon a time in November... something about NaBloPoMo*... oh look, there it is in 2008.  Wow, talk about a trip down memory lane!

And so, since I sometimes feel like all the thoughts get caught up in my head, and I'm also kind of sad that my blog has been SO neglected since I finally got on Instagram, I'm going to write again.

***

All yesterday I was thinking about what I might want to write and why.  Life is ever so busy and tiring and I didn't get around to it last night.  Feels like the story of my life, always a day late and a dollar short.

And then this morning when I woke up to the news from Las Vegas I thought, how appropriate, all the things I was thinking about were yesterday.

Loneliness.  Busyness.  Isolation.  Anger.  Division.  It seems this is the way the world works these days and it's not pretty.  I have lamented lately that I have no real friends.  It doesn't feel that people reach out to each other anymore.  Are we all expected to put ourselves out there and hope that someone will respond?  If they happen to see it on social media?  What if they don't?

What's gone wrong in our world that we all live in our little bubbles of isolation and feel like it's us against the world?  I can't be the only mom current or past, that ends up at home every afternoon with her kids napping or waiting for the bus.  I can't be the only mom that has a few evenings a week where she could go out, but no one willing to go out with her. 

I used to say that social media saved my life when I became a stay at home mom 11 years ago, but now I'm not so sure.  The actual community we had back then is gone, replaced with product placement and a race to be the most noticed and liked in the feed (you choose the medium).  When did we stop sharing our actual lives, all of it, and start to compete with each other on yet another playing field?

I don't have the answers to any of this.  I'm still tired, still trying to make healthy choices that will help me get out of this (5 years long) tired.  I'm hoping that writing will be another healthy outlet for me.  We'll see.

*National Blog Posting Month