Life: Stuff That’s Happened

Posted on by Karissa

This is really just a post to throw a bunch of photos and anecdotes out there. Here’s some stuff that’s happened in the last few weeks:

  • The girls turned our living room into a blanket fort. Saw a mom friend share on Instagram that her daughters had turned their living room into a blanket fort as well. Remembered that 2 of our kids are in the same class and that week they had…made blanket forts in class. We let them keep it up for the weekend and dismantled it Sunday night. It made the dog anxious.
  • Lots of rain lately but also some sunshine. Robins are reappearing, daffodils are blooming. It will be spring soon.
  • The world is crazy and scary right now. But this is apparently a real photo captured. And, I gotta tell you, we see a lot of both of these birds around us, but I only warn my kids about one of them.
  • We had an earthquake! A few weeks ago now and there was zero damage but still a big deal! Only my third earthquake experience ever and definitely the biggest. I think in the end it was a 4.7. I was at work and my coworker and I huddled in a doorway and not a single book fell off a shelf. Peter and the girls were at school. I was super impressed with the school’s handling of it and quick communication with families. The girls are used to earthquake drills so it wasn’t a super huge deal to them.
  • Peter was away for two nights at the end of February, which doesn’t happen often for us. I switched my work schedule a bit and it ended up being a fairly relaxed week for me. Definitely much easier to handle now than when the kids were tinier. My new trick: assigning a dinner to each child. They had to plan and execute it (with my help). They were excited and it meant we were eating things they liked. Pearl made California Sushi Bites out of a cookbook she has and Rose made Kraft Dinner with cut veggies.
  • This text in a friend group chat while Peter was away!
  • Spotify keeps making me these playlists and the names make me feel kind of judged but then the song choices are consistently right on.
  • And just a couple of happy moments because life can feel pretty intense sometimes but there is also a lot of beauty.
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Published by Karissa

7 thoughts on “Life: Stuff That’s Happened”

  1. Thank you for sharing these glimpses into your lives.
    I had to laugh when you said the blanket forts made your dog anxious. We always had to put the lounge room back to rights for television news time, a rigid six o’clock at night.

    1. It can be good to have a firm end time! Peter and I like to read or watch something together in the evening and the dog knows that’s when she can go on the couch. So when the couch was part of a blanket fort, she didn’t know what to do!

  3. I totally relate to Winnie the Dog about getting anxious when my space is not in it’s normal way!

    You mentioned several times that things are hard. Do you mean specifically for your family or all the political stuff? Just remember the 24-hour news cycle is incompatible with our brains, and you can turn it off. Curate your content on your phone very carefully. If there is something you can or need to do to help, you will know.

    1. It was a little bit Winnie and a little bit Peter and I also being thrown off!

      The news is very stressful right now and I am definitely making effort to turn it off. It creeps into so much of life though! Added to that, Peter and I are facing some longterm decisions that we need to make and I think I’m also just hitting that last bit of winter melancholy and a few days of sunshine will make all the difference in my outlook.

    2. Nick and I got 100 watt high efficiency bulbs for our house, and it makes a huge difference. It’s like the sun is on inside. As for the long-term decisions, I hope they go well, and if you want to tell me more, I’m eager to hear about it.

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