Busy, busy, busy

Whenever I say we're busy, one song that always pops into my head is this Thomas song, "Busy Busy Busy..." It's rather quite annoying because I only know a couple of the lines and the song is sung by little British kids, and I can't recreate their accent at all.



(Even as I was searching YouTube for this video, James heard the music and came running over. We had to watch the whole thing. It's in my head again now! Is it in yours?)

Busyness is a theme around our house though, to be sure. Though fall is my absolute most wonderful time of year, it also exsists as being my absolute most busiest time of year. I don't really understand how that can coexist that way, but it does.

For my husband, fall means of course football. The coaching of it, watching of it, fantasy footballing of it, and perhaps even playing of it himself. Which I love. It is one of his biggest passions. It just means that he's super busy. I was at a baby shower this past weekend, and I met a lady whose husband is both a football and track coach and she has four kids. When we introduced to each other as having football coach husbands, she said "So you don't see your husband until November too?" It was so funny and dear. I feel that a lot of people really don't understand how busy you can be, when your husband is a coach. It's definitely a lifestyle. Though it does take a lot of time, there is nothing better than a cool crisp Friday night sitting in the stands watching my husband do his thang. I'm so proud of him, and proud that he puts himself into whatever he is passionate about. Besides coaching, he has the usual school where he is the teacher and grad school where he is the student. I don't know how he does it all. I have one too many loads of laundry to do and I loose my schmidt- he has 1,800 things to do and keeps his cool.
For me, I find myself busy 'cause my husband is. Does that make sense? I think I talked a little bit about it above, so I don't need to reiterate it here. This past weekend I helped throw a baby shower for one of my dear friends, and that took a lot of time. I think I did my share of baking for the next four months. I've never seen so many mini muffins in my life! The shower turned out nice and I do hope that she felt blessed. We  also have the normal daily stuff with kids.  This weekend I am running the Dances with Dirt in Hell with my husband, uncle, cousin, and a friend of Dave's. It's a 100k relay through woods and swamps and lakes. Suffice to say, we won't be exactly "clean" once we are done running (And yes, the city where this race is held is called "Hell." Go figure).

For James, I don't know when he's not busy. He's busy learning to spell new words, and we recently got some school workbooks to go through the alphabet and such which he gladly does each day. He is of course busy playing with trains, which if any of you are wondering, is still a big passion for him. Lately, I've been okay with that. I'll be honest, at times I thought that trains (more specifically Thomas) were sorta lame and dopey and I would try to encourage him to get into other things like pirate or dinosaurs or something. I realized that this is who my boy is and I only have these couple of very short years when he is into something as dear and sweet as trains. I guess I'll stop trying to change him or to make him like something "cooler" and just let him be, trains, Thomas, British songs and all.

For Clara, she's busy learning new words and colors. She's in the stage where she'll closely repeat any word or phrase that you ask her to repeat. Her vocabulary has about doubled or tripled (I don't really know if that's mathematically true- I just know that she knows alot!). She loves colors too, specifically yellow and blue. (Or as Clara would say, "lelow" and "lboo"). If she doesn't know the color, she's just say "purlpuh" for purple. I suppose any non-yellow or blue color falls into purple into her mind. She loves animals and has a particular fondness for ducks. Luckily, we live mere minutes away from the Bird Sanctuary where there are ponds and ponds full of ducks and geese for her to feed. We do this often, if you're wondering. She loves Elmo, and has been sporting some really cute pig tails lately. As a mom who couldn't wait for my daughter to have long hair so I could do it, I am beyond excited.

That's us in a very large nutshell. I suppose I was very long winded today, no? Well, things are about to get even busier for us, so I thought I'd give ya'll something to read as I don't know when I'll be able to update next!

How is your fall going? Is it busy for you too?

A few photos to share:

Clara, who lined up all her babies and stuffed animals herself. Sweet Delby.

James, painting.