The days are long, but the years are short...

Alas, it has been another 6 months.

Wow. 6 months? Really? I wrote that and had to go back to a calendar and count…January definitely doesn’t seem that long ago. Something my grandma always used to say has been bouncing around in my head lately, “Oh Kristin, don’t wish time away. The days may seem long, but the years are too short.” How true, Grandma Laura, how true. 

So, I feel I need to validate, at least to myself, my extraordinarily long absence. Particularly after stating, in my very last entry, that I wanted to post twice each month. What could I have possibly been doing that prohibited me from posting even once?! 

Yeah, I don't know either. 

Our Lidie-loo

I think part of my excuse is that I felt I didn’t have anything “perfected enough” to post on. I wanted to post on yogurt, but I hadn’t gotten the recipe just right (I still haven’t but I’m going to post on it next anyway). Same thing with my chewy granola bars, lotion, diaper cream, candles, knitted diapers, cheese, graham crackers and cloth wipes/toilet paper. Even if I had the experiment to post on, like my olive and castor oil “face wash, “ I hadn’t done sufficient research behind why it works or why it’s important. So, in the first half of 2012, I was a super lazy perfectionist chicken.

Nora sporting 4 braids in honor of her age

But, a larger part of the delay was because I/we also took on a few major projects…why we decided to do these all at once, I’m not sure. Maybe I just like to cause Nick and myself significant amounts of stress. Or maybe I’m addicted to chaos. Or maybe I’m making up for the fact that I have now officially been living in the same physical place for the longest amount of time (a whopping 2 years) in the past 13 years. Whatever the reason, I thought I’d share a smattering of what we’ve been up to:

Big, big sister Nora

• We reorganized almost our entire house. It may not look it, but we went through all the toys, clothing, papers, books, etc. We got rid of several pieces of furniture and took at least an entire closet’s worth of clothing to Goodwill. It felt good…but we’re already filling up again (ahem, grandparents).

• We ripped out all 700 square feet of carpet in our upstairs and replaced it with laminate. With the help of a few amazingly awesome and dedicated friends, some 90s music on Pandora and delicious Thai carryout, we managed to complete almost all of it in about 4 full days of work. Hopefully our poor asthmatic and allergy stricken children will be feeling much better.

Meggie at Bear Countr

• I took on another quick consulting project – hopefully our third publication on the tobacco use habits of Somali refugees will be coming out in the fall. Thrilling reading. 

• We celebrated Nora’s 4^th birthday!

• Made deodorant for 6 friends and was encouraged to start selling it…I’m still considering the possibility…any takers? 

• Two weeks later, we added another person to our family! Lidia Kathleen was born mid April (a few short weeks after finishing our floor project).

• Three weeks later, Nick took his finals and finished up his second year of graduate school. Only five more to go!

Where Grandma Laura is buried

• We took a 2600 mile road trip with a 5 week old infant, an incredibly intense 20 month old with an ear infection and a rambunctious, non-stop-chattering 4 year old all wedged into the back of a Toyota Camry. Sheer insanity? We prefer to call it adventurous! It was chaotic, intense, exciting and fun, mildly stressful and not at all relaxing, but totally worth it. We got to visit family, old friends, drive through miles and miles of prairie and see Grandma Laura’s gravesite in Bison, SD (yeah, go ahead and google it) along with the homestead of my great-great-great grandparents.

Checking out the faces...

At any rate, now that my pregnancy hormones have exited my body, I feel a renewed sense of creativity (despite my mildly sleep deprived state). Over the past 6 months, I’ve also realized that I set a standard of information and thoroughness for myself that makes it nearly impossible to post with any regularity with my current life state. Thus, I’ve given myself permission to make my posts less than my ridiculous ideal so I can have a creative outlet without the self-imposed pressure. After all, they’re experiments, right? So I’m REALLY hoping to do more blogging this summer. But no promises…

Outside of the Chance cemetery (aka Middle of Nowhere South Dakota)