Imagination in Parenting                              [a creative blog]

Wow – I haven’t blogged here since the end of JUNE. and even then, it was sporadic at best. It’s been a challenging fall/winter — but so far, health wise, I seem to have turned a corner as we changed the calendar into 2014. I’m working (very) hard at keeping my health in check – and am looking forward to getting back to blogging. Only not here. For now, I will be blogging in my space, what was once only my professional space. I have a new website and a new blog — with a first blog post written on Valentine’s Day. (it took me that long to figure out all the technical background work to make it all link up properly. have I mentioned lately that I do not miss my IT profession?)

Please follow me over there, I’d love to see familiar readers! In return, I hope to return to reading your blogs too, if you’re a blogger!

Happy February,
Annie
www.AnnieLance.ca

Life tends to move at warp speed. I’m not sure if having kids has made it feel faster – or if maybe it’s just cause we’re getting older — but regardless, it’s moving fast. and then every once in a while it seems to move even faster when you wonder how that’s possible at all. Cause wasn’t it moving as fast as humanly possible just last week?

their last day of kindergarden

This summer seems monumental for our family. Elizabeth & Alexandre start grade one in the fall. The very first of public education for our family. The first mainstream education even. The first five days a week. Actually, the first more-than-two-days a week. They will be nearly seven and more than ready – but it doesn’t minimize the huge (huge) change for our family nor does it minimize the fact that in an ideal world, we’d be homeschooling. Instead, like the lovely Erin often said, we’ll be using school as a resource — where they will do some of their learning and spend many days. While I attempt to work a few more hours a week — a big deciding factor in not homeschooling. And so for right now, we embrace what is the end of an era for our family. And we ready ourselves to embrace the biggest change in our family since well, our twins arrived in 2006.

Which brings me to where you can find me. On the porch, drinking coffee. or sipping tea. or having breakfast, lunch or dinner. or making lists. or playing games. or reading stories. or planning adventures. with three little ones. (while Adam works. he took an amazing trip-of-a-lifetime to Poland with his dad and his sister and now had little vacation time – enough to disconnect for a full week at the cottage shortly though!)

We had a screened in porch built this summer (we converted our carport!) after having talked about it since we moved in eight years ago. Well, in all honesty, Adam and I have converted this space in different uses in our minds through the years — but we finally settled on a version of heaven. It’s so perfect. Soooo perfect. We’ve barely seen the inside of our house since it was completed last week. Other than to cook and sleep.

And most importantly, all of this finds me disconnecting a whole lot from the internet world. which is long overdue. I want to keep a blog for documentary reasons – but I haven’t been keeping it up at all. I am disconnecting for the summer — and will see what comes of it for the fall. perhaps a new space, perhaps space in my professional workspace for these sort of posts – or maybe, just maybe, I will start documenting on PAPER. Imagine? what a novel idea. I might be back during the summer months to share random photographs, but I think that’s more wishful thinking.

happy summer!

My bliss this morning:

Morning Sun.
Birdsong.
Coffee.
Green.
Book.

Ten minutes to myself. outside. before the bugs even woke up. priceless.