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Text of the page (random words):
that i allowed it one year ago i d have told you it would never happen over my dead body will they ever play that sport a decade ago i d have said my haitian babies are just fine being tiny they re alive that s the glory they survived a haitian orphanage and will live to tell the tale we re gonna rock the chess club like nobody s business two decades ago i d have given you a feminist diatribe against the machismo heteronormative disaster that is sport with a marxist bent of course but still and in college or high school well if truth be told i d have hugged my football playing boyfriend tight yes my college love was a football player and yes i dated the captain of the high school football team hoped for the best and religiously refused to participate in anything and everything football but there i was this football season learning about the game and making them their protein smoothies and screaming in the stands go bulldogs like the fierce mother that i ve become in the end it football was a good thing for us to do and i m glad we re now on to basketball season we are not now what we shall be but we are on the way every day i marvel at my gratefulness for it all my heart is bursting for it my whole self rests with gratitude each and every day i am one of the lucky ones i know joy daily i am present in the pain i am totally comfortable with the good and the bad all swirling together in each and every hour the students we live with the students i teach they are an abundant gift of youth and energy they have no idea what is coming and they re working so hard at life in those glimmers of moments when they allow themselves to be ok with the becoming it is a beautiful thing to witness it is an honor to play a part the process is not yet finished but it is actively going on i see myself in it all it does not gleam and sparkle but it is becoming when we allow ourselves to go deeper into it all when we revel in the blazing color of it when we note the sparkle in the raindrop on the umbrella then we know we are fully living living not in the being but in the becoming we are on the way it is the right road thank you to the precious tara livesay for the quote comments 12 october 16 2015 facetiming from dallas filed under bambinos heather 10 57 pm she never quite leaves her children at home even when she doesn t take them along margaret culkin banning braydon convinced me to facetime with the kids tonight i hate facetime i hate seeing myself on the screen and i get distracted by it and it makes me want to cringe but the kids they love it they love seeing themselves on the screen and they get distracted by it and it makes them crazy which also drives me crazy but i knew he was right phone calls are so old news and facetime is the way of the world with our 2015 kiddos so there i was facetiming from my dallas hotel room with my bambinos work trips are so crazy complicated i hate leaving them i hate leaving braydon alone to have to cover all the bases holding down the fort at home and oh what a crazy fort it is it is so disruptive for me to leave and i miss them and the re entry burn is so tough going back in i know all that but the time away focused on serious work getting real about real big stuff space to think for myself oh and time for such luxuries as room service and long uninterrupted showers and sipping coffee alone and flights dedicated to getting work done really really really it is such an amazing respite isn t that crazy that a hard core work trip can feel like a break whattha so yeah that s the truth and and i miss them like crazy when i m gone and i love getting away and remembering there s a whole me that is totally apart from them this trip has been really productive for me for my work and for my precious little family of five tonight during our facetime the boys told me to take a selfie they wanted to see all of me as if facetime wasn t enough man those two are pushing all the envelopes of their mama but i did it cuz if i can facetime for them i can selfie for them which kinda shows how much i love em i fly home tomorrow and it can t come soon enough but until then i ll enjoy this lovely hotel room the food network and the glass of cabernet i m sipping all by my glorious self at the end of a verrrrrrry loooooooong day of non stop work work work work work comments 2 getting the year off the ground filed under bambinos heather 12 15 am my dear readers you have been so loyal for so many years and here i am just a flaky blogger inconsistent and not blogging daily i m so sorry folks and i m so grateful for your sticking with me thank you have you ever noticed that all the real bloggers don t have other big careers totally separate from their blogging careers there s a reason for that it is super hard to be a mom of three with a big career and try to blog in any consistent fashion it s getting harder as the years go by and i ll tell you why the kids go to bed later and later i used to use my down time at night to reflect on the day and blog but these days by the time kyle and owen go to bed 9 30ish on a good day and we ve then cleaned up the house done a couple loads of laundry responded to a slew of email wrapped up work for the day and cleaned the kitty litter emptied the dishwasher sewn a stray button on a pair of pants filled out the school forms du jour prepped the crockpot for tomorrow stain sticked something cloroxed something and maybe had a glass of wine and checked in with each other on how the day was well by then it is midnight or so and i m totally done for the day and none of my brain cells are functioning oh did i mention i m also 43 years old i just don t have the bandwidth for creative blogging at midnight that i did in 2006 when we started this old blog and when the boys were in bed at 7pm so here i am it is what it is i ve gone mia in the blogosphere for the past 2 months as i ve had to be at the helm of my family for getting our year off the ground see that picture above that s not easy to accomplish at all especially when my own year is also kicking into full gear and braydon is working at full tilt too there is no effortless perfection here people it is all effort all the time every angle is effort and effort is coming from every angle that s real it s all good and it s all bad and it s what is happening here effort all the time we do our best and for the past few weeks our best has meant me not blogging sorry about that here s the thing i ll continue to try some of you will stick with me through thick and thin many of you have been doing that for a long time some of you for many years and again thank you and if it s not your thing to hang on with us that s totally cool i get it that s what s awesome about the blog you don t have to read it if you don t want to for those of you who want to and who wish to be more closely connected even in the thin of it there are a couple things i can offer you i post often to facebook if you friend me i ll approve your friend request i m on facebook as heather johnson at https www facebook com heather johnson 14661261 for a long time i ve been wanting to start photo posting to instagram my august goal was to start posting a photo a day i have been doing that which may in part be why my blogging has declined in the past couple months you can follow me on instagram as heather_ _johnson at https instagram com heather_ _johnson i m going to blog more but i ll be honest it s harder and harder all the time so i encourage you to go the facebook and instagram routes with me because well because those things are just a lot less time consuming than blogging is so i do them more or at least i do them more consistently but blogging well blogging is the real deal and i miss it when i m not doing it the reason i keep doing it is because 1 blogging makes me saner it s a great outlet for me i feel better when i m blogging it s cathartic and a good mindful meditative process for me and 2 so many of you tell me how much it means to you i can t really explain why this blog has connected so strongly with so many people but i know that it has because you tell me so and that keeps me going because i know it is meaningful and engaging for lots of people thank you for that thank you for reading love heather p s i m posting this from dallas tx where i m attending a conference for work the only way i finally got the chunk of time i needed for posting the photos from our august trip to nh was this lovely little hotel room all to myself with no distractions see if i could just sequester myself in a hotel room more often i d get a lot more blogging done comments 12 october 15 2015 nh summer 2015 precious and fragile 3 of 3 filed under bambinos heather 11 30 pm comments 1 nh summer 2015 precious and fragile 2 of 3 filed under bambinos heather 11 16 pm comments 1 august 20 2015 nh summer 2015 precious and fragile 1 of 3 filed under bambinos heather 9 19 pm yes it really does look like this it is so beautiful it takes your breath away or at least it does mine from the first morning i wake up there first photo on this post to the last sunset last photo on this post i am a bit breathless from the views the sights the colors the landscape the history every day i m there i m thinking about herman engstrom my great grandfather my mother s mother s father who built this little cottage with his own two hands we have photo albums with pictures of the early days i imagine that the lake water was just as crystal clear as it is now but the cottage the dock the well the outdoor fireplace herman had to build them and in doing that he gifted us with a precious and fragile family legacy that was this year s theme for me precious and fragile i wonder if herman had any idea that his great great grandchildren would be swimming in those same waters that the cottage the place and the experience would be passed down like this i know he painted it red and white because of the family s swedish heritage i wonder if he could have imagined haitian american boys waterskiing there coming all the way from pennsylvania with their mother his great granddaughter a professor it probably would have been unimaginable to him we can t imagine what will become five generations down the road i don t think there has ever been a summer of my life i haven t spent at least some time there some years especially my college and graduate school years a lot of time some years a lot less but it has been a constant in my life and in the life of five generations of my family kyle owen and meera know no summer without a pilgrimage to the cottage links here to many years posts braydon has come to understand this place as an integral part of his life too it is such a gift but it isn t a given it isn t ever to be taken for granted it is precious and it is fragile it like anything valuable and intrinsically important needs constant care and upkeep it takes deep commitment it s impossible to try to convey it but this year for me these two dozen photos take the best stab at it i m sure herman engstram could not have imagined iphones but these were taken by me with my iphone during my ten days at the family cottage on lake winnipesaukee in new hampshire there is something about preciousness that makes me want to try to remember and solidify it to try to make it less fragile than it is or perhaps to try to create a keepsake knowing the reality of the fragility life is so short time is so fleeting some things stay but so much does not remain the same there s more to come but these 24 were my best effort at capturing the gift we were given in this year s annual visit to the cottage comments 14 august 18 2015 home filed under bambinos heather 7 01 pm summer 2015 1 week of basketball camp x2 painting and drawing camp x1 1 week of baseball camp x2 mosaics camp x1 5 weeks at the beach in the lowcountry of south carolina 1 week of summer basketball league championships start of football 10 days at the family cottage on lake winnipesaukee in new hampshire 3232 miles in the car up and down the east coast and now as of 4pm yesterday we re home it may be that the satisfaction i need depends on my going away so that when i ve gone and come back i ll find it at home rumi comments 1 august 6 2015 blog break filed under bambinos heather 11 47 pm i found this leaf on the grass last night as i sat watching k o at football practice it was my first palpable reminder of how quickly fall will come fall meaning fall semester start of school end of the bliss of summer fall meaning 3 weeks from now gulp hopefully by the last week of august i ll be ready right now i am not we leave tomorrow morning for our annual pilgrimage to my family s summer cottage on lake winnipesaukee i ll be taking a blog break while i m there upon my return i ll finish off the food from the beach house posts i have a lot to catch up on with that and i promise i ll get back to it a goal of mine for this coming year is to be back to regular blogging last year i lost the overwhelming schedule very hard to make time for blogging battle this year i am determined to fight that battle and win see you soon my lovely blog readers in the meantime soak up those last drops of summer while you can xoxo heather comments 1 july 2015 in south carolina the end filed under bambinos heather 11 43 pm we drove 810 miles to get there we spent five weeks in the southern sun we got bleach blonde 2 of us and a few shades darker 5 of us and we learned again that home is wherever we are together we kayaked with dolphins we found 636 sharks teeth and saw a whole bunch of sunsets we caught blue crabs in our crab trap mullet and squid and shrimp and flounder in our cast nets and little sharks on our fishing poles we learned to hold fiddler crabs we saw baby loggerhead turtles hatching and got stung by a jellyfish luckily only one of us and only once unluckily it was meera owen grew 3 inches and gained 15 pounds kyle grew 3 inches and lost 5 pounds meera produced a huge volume of art built countless sandcastles and found it to be wonderfully true that her parents wouldn t force her to be separated for a month from her beloved cat pearl dash played with a ghost crab ran like a madman on the beach and swam in the salt water we all slept well at night we ate pounds and pounds of shrimp caught in the waters we view from the beach house we slept late almost every morning and we explored new places together we learned a lot we read a lot we laughed a lot we fought we cried we yelled at each other we lost our patience and found out once again that five weeks alone in a remote location with only five other people makes you really really bond with them and get really really aggravated with them we disagreed over many things large and small but we all agreed that we re five very very annoying people who are deeply imperfect and seriously flawed we climbed palmetto trees o learned a lot more history k mastered the front flip into the 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