I'm In The Mood

So tomorrow is our last day of summer vacation.  Ours has been pretty good, except for Janey having had a  cast on for almost its entirety.  And that meant no swimming while everyone else was swimming and pretty much no playing in the sand--and we live in sand.  Thank goodness this broken leg thing happened to Jane because she is definitely the only one of my kids who would have been ok with sitting under a tree or something day after day while everyone else was having fun.  I mean seriously.    The other day I asked the kids if I am a mean mommy or a nice mommy.   "Mean mommy," said Camp.  "Mean mommy," shouted Danin.  "Nice mommy, " declared Janey.  "Perfect daughter," thought I.   But anyway...
At the beginning of August, we got to enjoy visits from both Brooke and Addison and Merritt and April's family.  Oh, man.  I miss all of them so much.  It was so fun having them back.  The kids had a ball, Brian and I got to go out on a triple date with Merritt and April and Jim and Deena,  I was introduced to German pancakes and Pinterest (I'm just starting my boards) and Brooke and I got to spend a whole night talking about decorating.  I'm not sure she knows what she started--or restarted, rather.  But more on that, later.
Guess what else?  I ran my first trail run yesterday.  Yep.  After a week of absolutely no exercise (well, I may have run to the mailbox a time or two) I ran a 15K trail run with Brian down near Sunset Bay.  And we stayed together.  I told Brian he didn't have to stay with me, but he decided it would be fun to do so, since he does so many races nowadays.  And that's my type of romance.  Spare me the lighted candles and lingeree (yes, I spelled that wrong on purpose).   The only thing that could have made it better  would be for us to have been laughing and tellings jokes the whole way.  Remember, Laura?  Keep  mooooooving...  But anyway...That was our first time running a race together, and it was really, really fun.  I love to feel like Brian is proud of me--you know what I mean?  And I got a new tee shirt--my new favorite tee shirt, in fact.  It's blue with yellow writing and it fits just right.  It just might make it onto my favorites list this year.  Man, I gotta start writing those down....Anyway...
Things are going really well right now.  We've experienced some little miracles that have really helped relieve some of our stress and we've been more able to just relax a little.  The kids and I have tagged along on Erin's adventures all summer long; Camp has started a duct-tape wallet business (they're three bucks a pop, if you're interested); Jane has drawn and colored a million pictures and packed a back-pack full of little dishes and stuffed animals every time we've had an outing; Danin has come to love peaches (we've been devouring peaches from the local produce stands); and Skip has just learned to crawl....backwards.  Hmmmm...I wonder what that means--developmentally speaking.  Yikes.    And me?  Well, like I mentioned previously--Brooke rekindled my decorating fire.  Not that it ever went out.  I just wasn't in the position to do much of it for a while so I made a point to kinda stay away from decorating blogs and stuff, and just kept rearranging things.   So it was soooooo fun for me to get a little of this fabric and make me some faux roman shades for the kitchen.  I even found a super easy tutorial to help me do it with almost no sewing!  And did I tell you how I picked up some chairs at an estate sale recently?   They're not the parsons chairs I dream of having custom slip-covered around my table someday, but I really like them just the same.  They're definitely better than the ugly mission-style ones I had for so long.  Yuck.    The only problem was that the seat fabric was horrendous.  A little of this fabric, though, and they're looking much better.   Oh, and then I finally got around to putting together my other driftwood wreath.  Maddie gave me that idea, and I love it!  I know, I know.  I don't have the right things to sit atop the shelf with it quite yet, but maybe I'll ask for some pretty white apothecary jars or something for Christmas.  What do you think?   And lastly, I came across this tutorial  for making a slip cover for my wing back chair  out of a painter's drop cloth!  Perfect!  So that's what will be keeping me busy next.  Ahhhhh....nothing like a little decorating to lift a girl's spirits.  I'll let you know how it goes.

P.S. One last thing about Danin.  The other day, the kids and I were going around the block before dinner and Danin had gotten ahead of us.  Before long, though, she came pedaling back and said, "Skip the drama."  They're exactly like parrots, these kids of ours.