Portrait of today

We grew those beauties in the garden this summer. They are sweet meat squash, a type of hubbard. Two plants only produced those three squash but they are big. I'm roasting one right now and it took my a while to cut it up and scrape it out. I'm really looking forward to squash soup though, it's one of my favorite fall dinners. 

It's the season of curling up with cookbooks and trying to figure out which sock pattern to knit. It's the season of spelling lists in the morning and math problems at night. It's putting on sweaters in the foggy morning and t-shirts in the sunny afternoons. 

I've been realizing that our family has firmly moved into the elementary school stage of life. It's confusing because Brixton is still in preschool. But we really are pretty much done with the preschool stage of potty training and learning to hold a pencil, and have moved into the carpool shuffling to activities stage, which is so fun and fulfilling for parents. I mean, I am glad and grateful that they have passions to pursue, that we have the means to support them in that. I am. 

It's just the constant driving around that starts to get to me. 

I'm trying to find a balance with our calendar, that leaves room for family time and down time and also has space for all four of us to pursue at least one thing that's important to us. For Unity, it's gymnastics. For Brixton, it's drums. For Chris, it's his volunteer work for the local radio station. For me, it's my exercise classes at the Y, and my committee work at our Quaker Meeting. Sometimes it seems insane to think that we can all do our individual projects and still have time to be together. And some weeks are better than others, but we really try to say no to some things to create those pockets of down time. And we are still able to eat dinner together nearly every night, which is a priority to me. 

And I want to leave room in our lives for big picture stuff. For remembering and making room for things outside our privileged busy family. Whether it's bringing a meal to a family who just adopted a child, or going to a community meeting, or donating to an organization doing good work. At the end of the day, it all matters. The big stuff and the little stuff, the routines and the unusual. The pages in my planner that add up to our week, our season right now, the shape of our lives in the world.