around here: week 18 2021

 {April 25th-May 1st}

{Jack pitching}

{Carly and Liesel :: by Carly Cunningham}

{Logan & Jack in Culinary at school}

Going... to the twins' baseball game and getting to see my sister, niece and nephew as well.  

Joining... my counselor via DoctoronDemand and feeling so grateful for her. (I can't remember if I have talked about it before, but DoctoronDemand works with my insurance, and I only end up paying $18.60 for each session with her. It's amazing, and we meet on the website -not in person- so I can meet with her wherever I am! Even on my phone!)

Attending... my first Parent/Teacher conference of the year with Logan & Jack's collective six (or is it seven?) teachers.  The twins go Mondays & Tuesdays this quarter in person, and the other three days they are still online. I wish they had been able to go back full time, but this is a step in the right direction.  (Wyatt started back full time last week, five days a week, and we are both thrilled about it. For him, it's best if I am just "mom" and not "mom" and "teacher".)

Watching... Wyatt's baseball game this week and cheering so hard for him. Carly has made friends with some of the kids who are also at baseball games during the week, and it makes me so happy to see her little social butterfly heart filled.

Reading... The Four Winds by Kristin Hannah which is about the dust bowl in Texas and the Great Depression. It has some parts that move really fast (like, that are underdeveloped) but I am invested in the characters, so we'll see how it goes. 

Sending... Carly over to my besties house for a few hours on Monday to play with Selah, who is the sweetest, most fun little mommy's helper. Carly adores her, and I adore having some time to myself (ha!) so it's win/win!

Loving... my book stacks all over the house.  I have so many books I want to read and that I'm looking forward to reading and planning on reading... they have kind of taken over the house.

Praying... so hard for Indy Llew, a little girl with cancer whose family I follow on Instagram.  @terahbelle 

Laughing... at Wyatt as he continues to blow my mind building things with Legos.  This week he made some English cars- I only know that the blue one is called a P-O-P 50, and he is so tickled with himself. I love his creativity. 

Feeling... so proud of Jack as he continues to improve his pitching.  He's so grown up on the mound, stopping to take a deep breath and bring his shoulders down before he throws. I could cry, I am so proud of how brave he is, and how he always keeps trying.

Playing... a new game called WaterSort Puzzle, and loving it. It's challenging, but at the same time mindless (how is that possible?) and I really enjoy it. 

Planting... all my dahlia tubers finally and feeling ridiculous. I am SO invested in how they grow and do this year.  Every day we are checking to see if they have popped through the dirt yet and I can't wait to harvest flowers from them throughout the summer.

Taking... Wyatt & Carly to the eye doctor this week to get their yearly exam and new glasses.  Carly chose purple frames, and she is delighted.  

Reading... old journals from junior high and laughing at myself.  (Well, and cringing. Hah!) I came across some old photos (including the one I posted here of me and a friend Nick) and they made me smile.  I really liked school and I had good friends. I was very lucky.
In some ways the journals were hard to read, though, as they were about when I was really involved at church, and it makes me sad how awful and sinful I thought I was. I was SUCH a good kid, a kind friend, and a loving daughter, but because of the messages I received from the church, I believed that I needed to continually be working on myself and improving.  Lots of good conversations with my younger self stemmed from reading those journals. 

Accepting... that our school days (Wednesday, Thursday & Friday) SUCK. None of us want to be doing this anymore, and we all just wish the twins had been able to go back full time.  I am tempted to start counting down, but the reality is, we have six weeks left.  Wahhhh!

Attempting... to go kayaking with Josh on Friday night for date night.  We loaded the kayaks, got the kids settled to watch a show together while we were gone, and then headed to the lake.  We got there and thought it looked a little choppy, but we decided to brave it anyway.  I hadn't even got past the boat launch when I had to turn around and tell Josh it was a no-go.  The waves were SO choppy, they were getting me wet, and if my kayak started to go to the side, I was afraid it would capsize. So we have yet to kayak this year. 

Grateful... that wearing my CPAP (a mask I wear hooked up to a machine that helps me breathe better at night) for sleep apnea is going well.  I don't know that I feel more rested yet, but the mask doesn't bother me or keep me awake, so that's good.  Hopefully in time, the good sleep will start to add up and I'll feel awesome. 

***

20 Year Anniversary

{pc: my grandpa jerry}

Josh and I celebrated our twenty year dating anniversary last weekend.

Twenty years. It feels unreal.

Can it really be that it was two decades ago that he would hold my hand and walk me to my car (a cherry red 1970 Volvo station wagon) in the Mountain View parking lot after school? When he worked at Papa Murphey's making pizza on Friday and Saturday nights while I baby-sat the Pirkl kids.

It feels impossible that I will be 38 this year. That we have four kids. That two of them are middle schoolers.  That we're done having babies.  That I blinked, and suddenly we have the life I always dreamed of, and now our kids are approaching the ages we were when we met.

No joke, four years from now, the twins will be sixteen.  The same age Josh was when I met him.

It takes my breath away.

I watched our wedding video last Friday (with all the time we have on our hands) and a couple things stood out.

One, we were so young. My god, so young.

Two, we were so confident. So sure of our love.

And three, I was so thin.  And I had no idea.

My takeaway from the reminiscing was that I should fully embrace this moment, because looking back on it later, I will feel fondly for whatever the circumstances are.  I should love this home, this body, this day... because one day it will just be a memory, likely a fond one.  And today's all we got.

***

Josh,

I love you.  
I've known I loved you since about three weeks after I met you, 
and it's only grown deeper since then. 

I love you for teaching me that I can be brave.  That I can take risks.  That I can do something hard when it's the right thing to do. Leaving my church (my home for ten  years) for you was one of the hardest things I've ever had to do, and I would do it again in a heartbeat. I knew you were the one for me, and that God handpicked you for me. He told me so.

But if I wanted to claim that prize, if I wanted a future with you in it, I had to choose. I had to be brave.  Glennon Doyle says, "Brave means listening to the still small voice inside and doing as it says.  Regardless of what the rest of the world is saying.  Brave implies wisdom...  Sometimes brave means letting everyone else down but yourself."  That is definitely what this felt like.  And I am so glad I was true to myself, to you, to us.

Because look at what we've built.

We could have missed this.

And I'm so glad we didn't.

I love you forever & always.

~Shelly

***

"What a terrible waste of life it is,

to always take the easy path,

to never know what it is 

to risk everything

for what you love."

-Beau Taplin

"You were a risk,

a mystery,

and the most certain thing I'd ever known."

-Beau Taplin

"You are the poem I never knew how to write

and this life is the story I have always wanted to tell."

-Tyler Knott Gregson

***

Week 36 Around Here {2019}

(Logan, Adam's son Brent, and Jack)

The whole gang

Carly LOVED Nate's sweet dog Gabby

Hearing... someone say there are 12 weeks left this year and that's a great amount of time in which to start a new habit, to help you go into the new year with some of your goals already in motion.  I really like that idea!

Taking... the kids to Silverwood Theme Park on Saturday with the tickets they earned after reading over 600 minutes each last spring.  The weather was hot and it was crowded, but we made the best of the day anyway and had loads of fun.  Carly was, hands down, the most enthusiastic.  She was also sure she could go on every ride (even Panic Plunge) and was so sad whenever we told her no. (Sister is FEARLESS!) The boys fought over who got to take her on her rides, which warmed my mama heart to no end.  They're so good to her.
Logan, like Carly, is fearless, whereas Jack is more cautious.  Wyatt, like his mother, will get on a ride and then, as it's going, second guess whether that was a good idea or not.  Hah!  Luckily on nearly every ride he had Josh with him to talk him down and remind him to have fun.

Sticking... close to home Sunday after canceling our lake plans.  Josh wasn't feeling well (at all! poor guy!) so I worked on unpacking bit by bit while keeping track of the kids and checking on him periodically.  I got the towels unpacked and the linen closet organized while Josh slept.  I was super proud of myself when I built Carly's new scooter all by myself (!) so she could ride with her brothers.  Normally I reserve those kinds of jobs for Josh.

Listening... to The Last Romantics on Overdrive and really enjoying the storytelling.  Sometimes I feel like listening to a story is cheating (like it shouldn't count as reading) but lately I've been noticing how much I really enjoy my time when I am listening to a good story, and I have decided to do away with the guilt of not "reading" it, and just luxuriate in the deliciousness of a well told tale.

Reading... Eden's Outcasts for book club and struggling to get into it a bit. It's been hard to have a long stretch of time to really dig my teeth in.  Luckily we extended this one into next month, so I have a little more time to get there.  The book is about Louisa May Alcott and her dad, so the content is interesting to me... it's just not a page turner necessarily.

Praying... for my goddaughter Ilya whose aunt passed away after a tubing accident on the river.  It's a devastating loss for her personally (and her whole family), but also for their community where her aunt was so beloved.

Spending... Memorial Day at Josh's cousin Nate's house.  Nate and his wife Dunette have two kiddos and they invited Josh and Nate's other cousin Adam and his wife and their eight kids over as well, and we had the most fun catching up and letting the kids all play together.  Adam's kids and ours look SO much alike it's eery, and I love talking to Dunnette because she's so super real about motherhood. It was a great way to close out the summer, spending time with family.  Thanks again for hosting, guys.  It was so fun!!!

Getting... a phone call asking me if I had a cat.  I said, "Yeeees...." sort of slowly as Les, my "neighbor" (over two blocks away) explained that his wife had been looking out their back window when she saw a cat in their koi pond drowning and ran out to save it.
Turns out our boy cat George had gotten out when Logan was taking the garbage out that morning and had somehow made his way from our house to Les's house, two blocks (and then some) over and gone fishing in his koi pond, not bothering to determine how he'd get out after he caught the fish.  I rushed over to their house and found a soaking wet, very sad George in the grass on their side yard.  I brought him home, rinsed him off in our extra deep kitchen sink, feeling grateful for the sprayer this faucet has and rubbed him dry in a clean towel.  He definitely used one of his nine lives that time.

Enduring... total chaos everyday after school.  We are still in that "Sign All The Things/No Routine/Where Does Stuff Go?" part of school starting that comes when you have also moved the week school started.  It's ugly, people.  Add to that that the twins have started middle school (seven classes, each/fourteen total) and I am easily the most overwhelmed I have ever been at the start of school.
I keep wishing I could just video-montage my way through September and land somehow mid-October when all the papers are signed, all the routines are memorized and all the boxes are unpacked.  Instead I just keep plugging away, day after day, doing what I can on top of the regular daily life that often takes all my time.  (Dishes, feeding, laundry, cleaning... to name a few)

Loving... Jack's new loft bed that came on Tuesday!  Logan slept underneath Jack's desk, even though it's a loft bed and not a bunk bed since Logan's came a day later.  We are so happy with them.  They were my friend Shana's brain child and they have doubled the square footage in the boys' bedroom.  I can't wait to share pics of their finished room when we wrap it up next week!

Enjoying... how Carly plays with her new instruments with her stuffed animals.  A couple times this week I found her stuffed animals set up like a band, each with instruments to play, and whenever we go anywhere she wants to bring her music with her in her purse.  It's so cute!  Especially since Jack joined band and actually got a real trumpet and has to practice, so she's doing a lot of mimicking & practicing with him.  It's precious.

Finally... watching Season 3 of The Handmaid's Tale after being unable to watch all summer with the kids home.  I am riveted, wondering what is going to happen with June, Nicole and Aunt Lydia. Gah. It's all so consuming!

Also watching... "I Survived I Kissed Dating Goodbye" which was... well, I can't find the words for it...  It was validating, and sad, and proved in a way that what I felt was real.  (You can watch it free here) It confirmed that the Purity movement was not all it was cracked up to be and that many were hurt by it.  You can read Josh Harris' statement here- and I will admit that I did cry during the film when he apologized for any harm his book may have caused.  I personally was made to feel like an infatuated, over-the-top, boy-crazy harlot by the leaders of my church simply because I had a lot of crushes and wanted a boyfriend during a time when the church was encouraging us to give up dating, and to save not only sex for marriage, but also kissing and even handholding.  Looking back, I wish I could give 15 year old Shelly a hug and tell her what an amazing girl she was- how Godly and kind and good.  Instead I repeated the message in my head of "not enough" "not enough" "not enough"...  Especially when it came to holiness.  It makes me sad.
You can watch his TedTalk about admitting when we are wrong here.  It's so good.  It's been very healing to dive into this and explore some of these feelings that I had in my youth and that I still have today about how my religion shaped my sexuality.  It's all quite bizarre.

Organizing.... the house in some places while others remain in mass chaos.  For instance, I got the spice cupboard done this week, which is great for cooking; but I didn't get the desk done, which means it's pretty chaotic when I sit down to check my email or blog.

Sending... Carly off to Grandma School on Thursday, where she was overjoyed to work on her "ABC's and math". (That's what she told Logan she was going to do.)  Josh's mom has her for the whole day on Thursdays so I can have a day to myself, and I cannot even tell you what that day does for my mental well being.  Knowing I have an entire day to myself during the week, to do with whatever I please, is like being handed $1,000 every week.  It's priceless.  Plus, it's the highlight of Carly's week, too, so it's win/win!

Closing... out the week with some amazing pizza and a quiet Friday evening with my guys (Josh and his brother Samuel) which was just what I needed after a whirlwind of a week.  Here's hoping things settle down a little more for us next week.

***