thursday thoughts

A stream of consciousness for today:

• I love the spring. I love the greenness, the vibrant colors, the torrential rains. It's so alive.
• We're in the middle of softball season, which began as a season of angst and drama. My Girl is not good at becoming one with a group (wonder where she gets that from?!?). But we jumped a hurdle last week...she finally, finally, finally got to play in the pitcher position (her most coveted), and she got 3 outs in that game (which, for this mini mite league, is a lot). Since then she has been much happier, more confident. It's nice to see her smile. And she still does ballerina twirls in the dirt!
• My Boy has been clinging to me more lately. I think this past very busy semester took its toll on us all. There were some days I would hardly see the kiddoes. We survived fine, but we missed each other. I'm glad it's done.
• But now the summer semester begins. Ugh. It shouldn't be as bad as the spring, but I'm still tired. Probably because I have a cold. I'll feel better about it tomorrow.
• I love my new ice cream maker (Mother's Day present). I love that I can come home from work, and 30 minutes later I'll have wonderful, fresh ice cream ready. This does nothing for my half-hearted attempt to reduce the amount of sugar I eat (lots of diabetes in my family), but right now I just don't care! I'm less tempted to eat a huge bowl of the real stuff, anyway. A little of the wonderful richness is highly satisfying.
• We're ready for school to be done. The kids' school, that is. Particularly The Girl's. Academically, this has been a good year for her. Personally, it's been very hard. We're ready for a break.
• Both kids are obsessed with Transformers right now. I blame The Man. And the library...for carrying the old cartoons on DVD. I cannot for the life of me transform the big Transformers! Those are seriously difficult suckers to work. The Boy doesn't even ask me anymore. "I'll ask Daddy" gets said a lot.
• Now that the main piano season is done and the recital is over, The Girl plays the piano All.The.Time! When I wanted her to practice, it was an ordeal. Now that she doesn't have to, that's all she does. Sometimes I think she has a Drive.Mommy.Crazy setting, and it's almost always on.
• We're reading Charlie and the Great Glass Elevator (sequel to the Chocolate Factory) out loud with The Girl right now. I had to skip large parts of one of the chapters because of the cultural insensitivity. *sigh* I don't remember these things.
• The Man went to a great children's and youth ministry conference last week. It's good to see him passionate and excited. And it's fun to begin working on a new project with him. More on that another time.
• The Man brought home from the conference a Jesus Storybook Bible to read with the kiddoes. The Boy was skeptical...it disrupted his usual story routine at bedtime. But now that's his most favorite book! He doesn't want me to stop reading it, and he won't let me take it out of his room so we can read it with The Girl, too. It's kinda sweet. And a reminder to me not to overlook the spirituality of little kids, and the power of story.
• I started to think about trying the Couch to 5K program again. I'll get over it tomorrow.

That's all for now!