The year that almost wasn't....or was it?

This year has been jam packed w/living life and all sorts of big things happening!  I used to write a ton of words about everything...I still do - only lately they've been trapped in my head.  I think in the past writing here was my therapy.  When I was feeling super blue (like a 5!) my crazy spilled out all over.  These past few months haven't been all sunshine and rainbows, admittedly, but I'll take a 1 over a 5 any day!!  (I call the worst of days 'defcon 5', so a 1 sustained for a number of months is stinking fantabulous!)  Anyway - I started feeling like a flake for not writing more here - I miss it, mostly b/c it was the way I chronicled our days, our big events and such, even when they were not always happy ones.  There were so many happy ones this year!  I aim to slowly start writing about the stuff I've backlogged in my mind....
For now?  I'm stealing an idea from someone else, with my own twist.  Have you heard of setting Do Read Learn Be goals?  I'm going to just write about what we are currently doing, reading, learning and how we are being...if that makes sense...
Doing
Dave is back to school!  Today was the 1st teacher inservice day.  So far the 3 of us have played superhero memory and Trouble.  It's raining otherwise we probably would have gone for a nice hike.  We are also working on some chores, organizing the camper, and trying to decide what to eat for dinner.  Moses is back to gymnastics team practices and Colleen successfully completed her first family bike ride w/no training wheels last night!  I'm catching up on messages and appointment reminders and laundry - starting to remember some of my responsibilities...
Reading
Well, for Mo it's everything!!!  Colleen is starting to read stuff, like the pizza box, too!  The word local threw her for a loop the other day.  She kept reading loca and I had to stress the final L.  But I loved that the bilingual education is getting in her brain!!  I have been reading about concrete thinkers lately and how to help them build flexible thinking skills.  Learning another language is one of the best things so that made me feel pretty good.  As a family, we are reading The Indian in the Cupboard - I remember my 5th grade teacher reading it to us during snack time =)  The story is set in England so we've been learning some new words.  One funny part is when the boy says that in his class, when someone is lying they shout "Beard!"  and if they really don't believe you, it's "Itchy beard!!"  Now we shout that out when we don't quite believe someone...it makes us laugh if you can do it w/a British accent too!
Learning
Just the other day we discussed the periodic table of elements.  Density, basic elements and their scientific symbols were some of the key topics.  Like I said earlier, Colleen is learning to ride w/only 2 wheels.  Mo is always learning a new song by ear on the piano...I want to re-learn music chords.  I might go through some of our books to do that this fall.  I'm also learning what my flower beds look like after 3 weeks of no one tending to them!  WEEDY.  There are some great Bible verse we are going to be learning for back to school soon.
Being
I can't say that we are being patient or calm w/each other lately.  We've all been tired so there's a lot of responses yelled back to people...it stinks.  But if I had to pick a positive one, I'd say we are all being present and there for each other.  I think our family bonds are stronger and I know that is for sure evident between Colleen and I.  Since Dave left for school early today I was the one giving her meds and wow - I don't know that it's ever gone that well!  Not going to crow about it too much - don't want to fall flat on my face tomorrow!  I'm just saying that it was a nice feeling =)  I hope to work w/the kids about being more intentional in our actions this week.  We'll see how fast this week flies...
Our county fair is this weekend and I know we are all looking forward to it!  It's always an awesome way to cap off the summer and we need a good dose of home =)  That and I haven't had any sweet corn yet - so summer cannot be over yet!!  I don't know how people in other states do w/o that...all over Idaho we saw fields and fields of anything but corn.  There were sweet potatoes, sunflowers, wheat/hay, probably soy, but no corn.  I'm hoping to get some from the farm market and freeze it for burritos like we did that one year - we had summer in a tortilla all winter long!
Look for some fun stories in the next few posts...I can't let the year go by w/o talking about some pretty big things that have happened this year =)  I'll probably have to write in shifts until school starts...it will be slow going, but I like to share the memories we are making here so we can look back on them!