March 22, 2024

Coming to you from my dining room table again. Drinking coffee in the early morning, ready to let the thoughts flow…

I’m usually the one taking the kids to school, so right now I’d normally be upstairs listening to their moans and groans about getting up. Jack usually lets out one moan, Natalie rolls around a handful of times and tells me how tired she is, and Ally gets up pretty quickly. 

But Brian is home this morning. He’s taking the day off to watch March Madness basketball and hang with his parents. For the next few days, there will only be basketball playing on our TV…

And I’m soon heading out to shop with my friend Kasey! We’re heading to “the city” for the day, as I like to call it. But it’s just Morgantown, WV. The big town that’s 45 minutes away and allows us to get our Target and Starbucks fix. Today we’re on a mission to find the kids some Easter goodies for their baskets and for mine, an Easter outfit. 

I don’t like to get caught up in the holiday outfits. When the kids were younger, there were times when they matched. At least the girls. It was easy to buy the same dress in two different sizes. But now, Ally doesn’t like to wear dresses, Jack just wants a pair of jeans and a button-down shirt and Natalie can go either way – frills and sparkles or simple and casual – when it comes to the holiday outfits.

No matter if they match or not, it’s at least a nice opportunity to add a new spring piece to their closets. And of course we’ll be putting jackets on over those nice spring jackets because here in the mountains, especially when Easter is in March, it’s cold for Easter. I don’t like to believe the long-range forecast…heck I don’t even like to believe the short-range forecast (if you know me, you know I usually say you can’t believe the forecast until at least 24 hours out). But I’m currently seeing 53 degrees for Easter Sunday.

Could be worse. It’s 25 degrees right now with a real feel of 12. Can you imagine trying to wear your new Easter dress and sandals in those temperatures?

By the way, when Brian is here on a school morning, he usually plays a loud, obnoxious throwback song to help wake the kids and get them excited. A recent pick was Enter Sandman by Metallica. Today he chose to sing a song. Natalie is up, gleefully hopping about and making sounds. Brian is the fun parent.

Speaking of fun and hopeful warmth, we’ve got summer camps on the brain. I have so many thoughts about this. Last year, between the three kids, we did nine different camps, maybe ten. While I love for them to be out learning and having fun instead of sitting at the house all day, it was a lot of running around. 

Part of that was my fault. I had 68 photo sessions between Memorial Day and Labor Day last summer so much of the running around was me coming and going. But when you weave a camp schedule of three kids into that, it’s just an unnecessary amount of running around…and it’s something that left me feeling overwhelmed and jumbled at the end of summer. 

So we’re hoping to avoid that this summer and create a much simpler schedule with more room for pool time at Mimi and Pappy’s house and time at the beach here at the lake. More room for spontaneous hangouts with friends and more room for the kids to have their friends over to the house. 

Now to pick a picture that might be relevant to this post…

A summer flower from my friend Maureen’s garden, featured in a recent blog post. I’m currently offering Brand + Biz Photo Library Creation for Deep Creek businesses/creatives/professionals. Single sessions and one to two-year retainers available. It’s like having a photographer on staff without having a photographer on staff. Read the blog post for more info!