The Lazy Dayz of Summer....

It's summertime. I will not be "guilted" in to thinking I have to fill every moment of every day with a task of some sort.

Last summer my children and I spent every waking moment making sure our house was clean so that we would be ready to show it at the drop of a hat. We never got to sleep in. We didn't do anything fun. We were slaves to this house and the thought that we were going to be moving at ANY time.

This summer we are taking a break. We sleep late when at all possible. We play games..together...or alone. We watch movies sometimes. Mostly...we're just hangin'.

Don't get me wrong. We're still busy. I am trying to get adjusted to a new job and a new schedule. Kirsten has a new job at Starbuck's with more hours and a tighter routine. Kaitlyn and Keaton have more responsibility around the house. We laid sod. I dug up and separated a few hundred iris bulbs. Jeff is keeping up with the yard. We've moved our rooms around...and when it gets a little cooler we will be painting ALL of them. The kids all had physicals and I DID finally post a chore list to keep us all a bit more organized.

Last week we had family visit. We went to Garden of of the Gods, spent a day on the South Platte, the kids went swimming,climbed the rock(Castle Rock that is), had a weenie roast and played games with their friends and cousin Frank.....ALL IN ONE DAY. We went to Rocky Mountain National Park on Friday. The kids spent Sat on at the Colorado Ren Fest ate pizza at Pizza Hut, hung out at sonic and played a game with the fam. We saw TWO movies...and in our spare time...we played more games and talked. A WHOLE summer packed into six days!!!

In my opinion....everyone just needs to chill.

Summers used to be spent sleeping late,riding bikes, swimming at the pool, playing in the sprinkler, going to the beach or river, reading tons of books, digging in the dirt,eating tons of watermelon, and playing games with your friends on the street until after dark... and camping....lots and lots of camping.

Our need to fill our children's every waking hour with sports, music lessons, expensive vacations which have to be "one upped" every year, computers,cell phones, cable TV and what seems to be the need to have an ADVENTURE every weekend....has robbed us of what summertime is all about. Rest...fun...family.

Guess what??...School starts in a little over three weeks!!!

We might get a weekend camping trip in...plant some bulbs in the garden....read a few dozen more book. But mostly we're gonna be lazy until the very last minute of the very last day.

Randoms thoughts about working in the library....

After many years of volunteering at the kids school libraries I have now graduated to working at the PUBLIC library...for MONEY!

Yeah...don't laugh...working in the library is not only a lot more complicated than you might think it is....it is also a bit more exciting than you think it might be.

Anyway...Here are just a few random thoughts about my first two and a half weeks.

1. It is hard for an avid reader to work in the library because all they want to do is look at all of the books they have never heard of and might want to read.

2. People REALLY need to teach their children how to act in the library!

3. The computer bank...as wonderful a public service as it is...needs to be moved into a room with doors that close. You know how it is when you and your friends sit around a computer watching "Charlie Bit My Finger"...or better yet those old guys MIMICKING "Charlie Bit My Finger"...and you're all laughing and saying "watch, watch!". Yeah...not so conducive to a quiet library atmosphere.

4. There are slackers EVERYWHERE you work. Shelving books is hard, involving a lot of bending, crouching and restraint...cause you don't want to hit those parents how haven't taught their kids how to act in the library. So, if you want to slack...find a job somewhere else.

5. Shelf reading sucks. This is where you go along and make sure EVERY item is in it's place. Not so much fun when everyone you work with is obviously as OCD as you are. Next time I'll try to make sure I pick an area where the slacker has been working.

6. The library is the busiest place in Castle Rock...except for Wal-Mart.

7. It is really a stupid idea to have a mini-coffee shop in the lobby of a library...a place into which you are not allowed to bring food NOR coffee.

8. We have the most AWESOME automatic conveyor which not only moves your books from the drop slots...but also SORTS them into the correct bins, after reading a chip placed inside the back cover of each book with it's "eye", so that we can then shelve them. It is AMAZING...and I think it should have a name. No one else in the back seems to be as excited as I am about the robotic qualities of this wonderful machine though!!

9. Batgirl was a librarian.

10.Our library gets an average of a dozen BIG bins of books and at least 10 crates of books couriered in EVERY morning from other libraries. WHICH MEANS...if your library doesn't have the book you want you put it on hold and get it from any other library in your library district...AND...if NONE of your district libraries have it...they might be able to BORROW it from another county...OR...they might put in a request to BUY that book for your library. Which begs the question..."Why do we as Americans BUY so many books?" Unless we are in a book club and need MANY copies of a book...OR...we want them for our book collection. Why not just check a book out from the library. OH...I know...because we are LAZY...and it is easier to buy a book when we are at the store or order it on line than it is to go to the library and look for it!!! BTW...the library will take your old books when you are done with them.

11. When library employees go on break...they read...books they have checked out from the library!!!

and now for my final random thought about the library....

12. Your public library is an AMAZING place with SO MANY MORE RESOURCES than you can ever imagine! There are not just books, books on CD and now books on MP3...there are DVDs and magazines and story time for the kiddos and private rooms you can reserve if you need a quite place to study or need to hold a meeting and old maps you can look at and history about your area and graphic novels and comic books and music CD's...which btw, I am pretty sure people are checking out and ripping. Why else would you check out 10 or 20 CDs at a time?!?!

BUT...even if there were only books...there are books written about EVERY subject you could EVER imagine!!! It has TOTALLY opened up a whole new world of thought for me as to what I might want to read!

Seriously...I swear I shelved about book last night about knitting a sweater for your hyperactive lab while cooking it a meal in 30 minutes or less!

(I wanted to make a couple of corrections to this blog now that I have been at the library awhile. 1)You CAN bring food and drink into the library now. And 2) The slacker isn't so much a slacker...they just have their own way of doing things.)

Highs and lows for the past two months.....

Well...so much has happened since last I wrote that I don't even know where to start.

SOOOO....I think I will just give you my highs and lows for May AND June..... since I missed May.... and then see if I can ease back into things.

Highs.....

Kirsten's graduation
Graduation parties.
My parents week long visit.
Chris and Grey's surpise visit for K's grad.
End of school.
Noah and Kate's wedding.
Seeing Mamma Mia with the girls.
Jesse and Kate's wedding...different Kate. ;)
Sleeping late.
New job at the library.
Jeff quitting second job.
Picnic at river with friends.

My heart...He is as constant as the Rocky Mountains and my true love. I do not know what I would ever do without him....and if you are reading this God....I never want to find out!

Lows.....

Parents went home.
Grammy's ill health.
Inability to deal with lack of connection with my friends and family.
Continued lack of financial stability.

So there ya have it! These few words can not even begin to describe the joy I had at watching our oldest child graduate....or seeing some of our favorite people united in marriage. So I'm not going to try. There have been so many pictures, mentions in blogs and postings on facebook, I am SURE enough has already been said. Like anyone is even reading this anyway.

Beatrix Potter would love it here....

I love to think of nature as an unlimited broadcasting station, through which God speaks to us every hour, if we will only tune in. ~George Washington Carver Look deep into nature, and then you will understand everything better. ~Albert Einstein

Although our home is just two minutes off of the freeway we are situated at the mouth of a small canyon. This creates a situation which feels like we are way out in the country when we are not.

One of the great things about this is that we tend to get an unusual amount of wildlife "traffic" right in our own backyard.

We are entertained on occasion by the wacky antics of the neighborhood squirrels. We have looked out the back door while eating dinner and seen deer right on the other side of the fence. We hear coyotes at night. Jeff caught a HUGE bull snake on our front sidewalk a few years ago. I have had to dodge more than one baby rattler while walking and we even had a bear running through the neighborhood several years ago.

But on a DAILY basis...we have bunnies and birds. Birds and bunnies....we have PLENTY of.

A couple of Sunday's ago I returned from a wedding shower to find a visitor. A bunny which Jeff and Keaton had caught. We don't usually catch wild animals so I was a bit surprised that Jeff had allowed this until he explained to me where he found this teeny tiny bunny.

It was under the lawnmower. More accurately....he ran OVER it with the lawnmower....WHILE he was mowing the grass. This bunny was so very tiny that Jeff was able to pass over it and the blades missed it!

We of course let it go. Jeff thought that maybe I would like to keep it since I had just recently fallen in love with a bunny at the pet shop. Then I reminded him that our dog Benji is a ratter...and has been known to wipe out nests of baby squirrels and even entire families of endangered mice.

TODAY....I went out to get the mail and as I walk back up the front steps to find that a bird has built it's nest right on the porchlight!!

I am fairly sure that this nest belongs to a family of finches that returns to our yard every Spring. We always know that the flowers will be blooming soon when our little red headed leader brings his harem of ladies to nest in our yard. Last year they built a nest in Cousin It right next to our front gate.(Cousin it is what we call our bush. When we moved here nine years ago it was about the size of a small child and looked just like cousin it from the Aadams Family.)

We also have a family of Chickadees that nest in our Spruce every year...but they are not quite as social as the finches...and a blue jay that sits in the apple tree right out our back window and sings all of the time. Yesterday I watched as a couple of Stellar Jays tried to chase an annoying Magpie off of our phone lines out front.

I don't know....these things may seem commonplace to you....but I am constantly amazed at the personality with which these little creations are endowed.