Illness Inspiration

I have the perfect kind of cold today. Too sick to go to work, but not so sick that I am stuck in bed and totally miserable. So, it seemed like the perfect day to create a heart collage above our bed like the one I saw online that was so inspiring.
I've noticed since starting a blog years ago, we don't have many photos around our house. (Note to self: remedy that). I gathered a bunch from various drawers and albums and love how it turned out. These brought back such great memories: seeing the lowland gorillas in Cameroon, chilling in India with Dale, the family trip to Thailand a few years ago, my grandma at her kitchen table, and Dale's sweet pine cabin when he lived in Chile. My next step is to print out some more recent ones and fill in the middle with more love and memories.
An added bonus is that it detracts just a bit from the hideous a/c tube that was surprisingly installed over the summer, right above our bed! Yes, the cutie stayed home today as well. She is only mildly sick, but I always think that no teacher wants to be seeing a kid sneeze and having grody snot all over the place! She's downstairs with Momo making 'research' books while I recuperate lazily in bed.

Highs and Lows

Sojo's yoga teacher asks the students to share their highs and lows of the day when they come together in a circle, and I love listening to their tiny voices, and how they know almost immediately what was the high and the low of the day. We have carried on the custom at our dinner table, and it always feels grounding to share both the good and the bad from the minutes of our respective days.

As we sat at the table this evening, I was apprehended by the beauty of the white orchids on the table (thank you, flower lady who comes near our house on Mondays!), the turquoise wall that I love dearly, my favorite afternoon light and the new addition of one of the teeny, tiny chalkboards I found at a market this past weekend. I am grateful that I notice the smaller things in life, and that those snippets of beauty bring me joy.

Tuckered Out

This is what we found the other day when we arrived home from school. All ready for taekwondo class, but too tuckered out to get there.

What's New?

1. Dale has been making some more sock animals to join our friend Sock Monkey. Soctopus is officially the favorite at the moment. In a moment of total teacherness, we made a graph last weekend of all 3 sock animals and visited all our friends to have them fill in the graph. The cuteness of watching Sojo pile them all in the stroller, along with the graph and a marker, was so much fun!
2. Only the most adorable backpack ever! We are using our Cars backpack for travel and this one for school now. Sojo also tells us that the dog's nose carries all the love she needs during the day at school when she is away from us and Socktopus.
3.This overly-patterned girl (she's missing the cheetah print jacket that is in her backpack for the movies) spent her pocket money on rides and games at the mall. Being American, I just love that she calls allowance 'pocket money' like the British kids do.
4. Not new, but totally fabulous is how Sojo's skin is all but cleared up and has been for the last month. We went back to topical steroids, and it seems to have done the trick more than anything else in the last year. She feels great, is able to go through her days relatively itch-free, and there is a good chance that Dale and I are experiencing reverse aging due to all the sleep we are catching up on. Yippee!

Open House

A sneak peek inside Sojo's day in Pre-K. This one is a keeper. I love that my dad still has these types of things for my brothers and me in the filing cabinet right off our kitchen. It seems every time we visit them in Arizona, he inevitably pulls something out to show us from way back when. He's a keeper, too.

Glee

New sport sheets, new bed and some serious glee!

She looks so tiny in this bed!