Two Drifters: Lately

With school here, three weeks in now, we're past that huge event that was The Beginning of School and The End of Everything I Knew...that's how I was playing it in my mind, anyway (dramatic much)...more on that later, hopefully, school starting for Mila is going to be a wordier post and not something I scribble down while the girls are napping and I'm typing furiously, knowing they'll come toddling in all delicious like any second. Which is what this is, of course. Ha!

Maybe it's this sudden shift of lazy mornings with the day stretched out before us to this new concept of waking up to alarms and quick, sleepy breakfasts, school clothes laid out, scrambling to get everyone out the door by 8. With my time now more...incremental? limited? It's more limited with Mila at any rate...I can find myself becoming more intentional with our days. Planning things more. I thought we were pretty good about this before but lately I've been thinking a lot about the importance of familiarity, of routines, of traditions routed in those familiar routines. It all comes back to starting in the home. It might seem silly to some. It's huge to me. Daily family dinners but beyond family dinners. Devotionals at breakfast. Pizza night, sometimes homemade sometimes not depending on the craziness of the day. Taco Tuesday? Why not? And not just food! Of course there's bedtime traditions, most of these invented by our crazy mini crazies (walk backwards as you exit the room in exactly nine minutes and hop over the cradle! It hasn't gotten to this point with M but I figure it's only a matter of time. Some of their bedtime demands, man.) Raising your feet whenever you go over train tracks (that's my sister-in-law who does that, and now we do too. Thanks Robin!). Screaming the entire length of tunnels on car rides--Steve and I have been doing that for eons, Megan I know you remember this as you've witnessed Steve's whiny tunnel yelling! Pictures on the front step for the first day of school. Front step pictures for Halloween. For Mother's Day and Father's Day too. Sidenote I need to spruce up our front step. Potted flowers and plants! If I think about it this has all been brewing since the moment my first came into this world (and likely before, while I was pregnant with her, but honestly everything pre-Mila is a blur). Then this past summer we were lucky enough to spend quality time in the homes of some very amazing families--mine in Italy, of course, they're incredible. I'm talking about friends and family and friends-like-family whom we spent time with on our roadtrip too, though. It got me thinking. And planning. In Italy I sat down one afternoon while both girls napped (like yesterday. a unicorn kind of afternoon!) and mapped out September. Loosely of course--everyone knows that you can't overplan or overthink life, especially when you're in the thick of raising your family! And the best moments are the unplanned ones. I know this. I'm just talking about a gentle nudge. Carve out some time to finally go to that special place you know your kids would delight over? And why not another camping weekend since fall camping is the motherlode?! Why not make pasta every Sunday (sometimes even from scratch??! maybe?) since you know your kids go bonkers for pasta and it's pretty much a sure thing so to speak? Why not give them that reassuring constant before they start another week of being brave out there in the world? And so we begin putting up our little guideposts.

So here's a few pics of one such guidepost below, our first-ever Friday afternoon tea. Let's kick off the weekend right, yes? All girls (sorry Steve). Our best china teacups and saucers--which honestly are total thrifted/flea market finds, every last one. An amazing dessert: this week's was apple caramel cupcakes. Mila and Dani pretty much only ate the tops. I dig it. And somehow it made me feel less guilty that I was loading them up on sugar. We burned it off in the pool.

cream cheese frosting sandwiched somewhere in there. it was on point.

with her dinosaur crown on.

hey. hay!

banner making for grandparents day.

Last night (they woke up, fast forward!) Steve came home from work expecting to find everyone tucked in and instead he walked in to PAPA!!! shrieks, us sitting at the girls' little table in the thick of game night. It was Sleeping Queens, a card game a smidge too advanced yet for Wugs and one of her birthday presents. She was loving a simplified version though and by the time Steve walked in the game had taken on a silly tangent of "Kiss all the queens!" --Dani invented that part. The Lu was running around shrieking, oh there was hay on the floor, have I mentioned the hay? I bought a bale in the spirit of fall and it's already driving me crazy. Back to the chaos, though--this is the good stuff. The cream you skim off the top. I like these fattening times.

and speaking of fattening, Italy pictures hopefully soon!