Leap Day Due Date

8 years ago today was my due date and the last day I worked before my pregnancy leave.. It would be 11 days of forced rest and relaxation before Holly was ready to join the world.. We talk a lot about today as part of her birth story.. She tells me she didn't want to be a February birthday that only came around every 4 years so she waited to come out.. 

Plus Mommy's belly was too cozy.. 

So here we are 8 years later and my life is so vastly different! But interestingly enough not as different as I thought it would be... Having worked in academia before having children I find my life as PTA Board President, Manager of After school enrichment classes and Special education advocate not that different..  

I still attend lots of meetings and am part of many committes and District work groups, trying how to figure out how to do more with less.. Budget and funding concerns and educational outcomes.. 

Just in a much more personal and meaningful way now.. I still work with faculty and I still train people on technology and I even still register students with an online system my husband created (how crazy is that... Rosterizer 8.0)

I still am full of information pointing people to the help and resources that they need.. And I still love my job.. Though I still have a work day that goes long into the night.. I guess the big difference is I am now paid in hugs, thank you's and the personal gratification that I've helped make my school and community a better place..

But I also get to spend long days playing barbies, climbing at the park, jumping on the trampoline, hosting play dates, pushing swings, splashing in the pool, napping occasionally with my 2 year old and driving all over town to see friends and attend play dates, classes, and other community events..

I'm also surprisingly a much more relaxed person.. In someways the stakes are much higher when you are raising kids but somehow most of the time I realize things will work out just as they were supposed to.. I occasionally even remember that the journey is half the fun so I should make time to smell the roses.. 

And though I'm much busier now, I get much less sleep, and hardly any time to myself (other then 2am) and even less alone time with my husband.. It's worth every second.. And really my children will only be almost 8 and just over 2 once.. And tomorrow they will be that much older.. So on this day of reflection I am reminding myself to appreciate every minute.. Because even though it will be 4 more years before today comes around again.. My god my girls will be almost 12 and just 6.. I will have a middle schooler and looking back on this letter to myself it will feel like only days past since I wrote it.. This day will be back and those 4 years will pass like a blink of an eye.. I wonder how much the same and different my life will look then...

Love Our Neighborhood Day

I haven't been posting on here for a long time it's hard to do with Lyra... And Facebook makes it so much easier when you can upload groups of 30 pictures and just make little comments on them all in one little Easy screen... But today I have more than 30 pictures so I thought I should do a full-fledged blog post.  Now that Lyra is 18 months I'm starting to have a little bit more time and so I'm hoping to post a little bit more regularly maybe not every day like I did with Holly but maybe at least two or three times a month

So A friend of mine recently asked me to reflect on turning 40 and what things I wanted for the new year... one of the things I said was to be more spontaneous.  So I saw this flyer at 2:30 this afternoon and even though the event ended at 4:00 I decided to take the girls and walk on over.

So this neighborhood event was happening, they closed San Pablo Ave. from Ashby all the way to Stanford and outside in the streets their were lots of vendors and stores with tables, it was full neighborhood people and little things to see and do.

This guy was playing Cello and his amp was being powered by bike

Here was a chalk drawing area

Lyra was enjoying the walk and Holly thought it was cool to be in the middle of the street 

She decided to draw some flowers 

Next we checked out some spray paint art

I liked this storm trooper

There was music everywhere. I'm not sure what the style is called but they had hand drums and these tall string bows they were strumming 

We saw a screen printing place, Holly recognized it as we recently had screen printing of t-shirts at MX

She wanted to give it a try

She made a cool poster that said live my neighborhood with a hand drawing

This is a close up of some street art I see driving all the time 

This one I never notice because the door is usually up

Holly liked this one because she was pink, I hadn't seen it before because it was tucked around this ledge

Maybe a camel?

Another music pop up with a close up of the bows 

Giant chess set

So we ran into lots of people, first Lila R at a Bike Booth, then Mo and Stella at this cool water area

There were materials to build little boats 

Lyra liked splashing

The boats were set at the top and then they floated down several ramps

The water recycled through a pump and was a closed system

There were plants and rocks and obstacles 

Holly made several boats with little animals but she kept loosing them her favorite had a little Orka

We could have stayed for hours but there was little time and a long way to go so we moved on

This giant tree was another mobile music player run on peddle power

This dog was super cute, Lyra kept pointing at him

So this is hard to see but there was a band playing in that little alley way and about 100 people squeezed in and moshing! It was cool

And then there was the duck!

We ran into Kaya walking too, so she joined us for a bit.

Here all the kids climbed up

It was a super cool car duck

At another booth called Ace Monster Toy they had this cool marble toy set up.. The booth was for a "hacker mom" type Wirk space for crafty people to work on projects.

#MobileStreetArt

This was cool, awesome octopus!

So the silk screen place was called "the greasy diner" but inside they have Art Classes and a little store.

There were all these beautiful art peices 

You would never have realized how neat it was inside from driving by 

Holly found this really cute knitted giraffe 

But it wasn't a good price.

Maybe I should go to Ace Monster Toy and Knit one... But they don't have Chikd Care like Hacker Moms

One the way back towards home Holly wanted to draw more 

She found this orange peice of chalk and would run about 1/2 a block ahead of me and draw smilie faces

She wanted to decorate all the streets from ashby to ward!

By this point Lyra was so tired she was falling asleep sitting up...

On the way back we saw this in a sign making store 

I spied this little penguin, the tree was black... I wasn't sure what it is.

This was a sweet little bench

Pretty flowers

This were huge! Bigger then my open hand

This cute yard had several ceramic creatures hanging out

This turtle was my favorite! It was a great afternoon!