The Luckiest No Matter What!

As I was scrolling the other day, I saw someone writing down things they wanted to remember from this pandemic time. It's obvious this time in our history will be wrote about profusely. I can't predict the future, but I have a feeling this time in my life will be monumental... something that will have definitely shaped who I become. I decided I wanted to take some time to write down some thoughts about this time in my life. To tell my own story.  What I Will Remember About the Last Two Years: The Earliest Days I remember first learning of the pandemic. It became a topic of conversation with anyone you came in contact with. I never thought it would even come to the USA. If it did, I thought it was going to be no big deal. Maybe my naïveté was a positive so that I didn't go directly to freaking out and losing my mind.... that took a few months to come.  Another big moment from the earliest days was when my kids went to school on Friday March 13th, 2020. I knew it was their la...

Mistakes are tricky for me.  I know I make hundreds of them a day. But, I work tirelessly, to the point of exhaustion, to prevent myself from making them. Mistakes are where our greatest learning and unlearning takes place, which makes them extremely necessary. However, when I make mistakes, I'm simultaneously tearing myself down to shreds while  learning and unlearning. I outwardly embrace mistake making, encourage it both to my own children and the students I've served. Inwardly, though, the thought of possibly making a mistake makes me nervous and sometimes downright terrified.  I am working on my complicated relationship with mistakes and failures in therapy. I have been reacquainted with why this tricky relationship exists, where it came from, and what triggers it. I'm slowly working on how to sit with the feelings that making a mistake bring to me... uncomfortable ones of sadness and failure. Finally, I am learning how I can help myself  feel better and mo...

One of my reasons for writing anything down is to preserve my story in this big, big world. Putting my fingers on these typing keys help make my family's memories have a place to sit so I can revisit them whenever I want and remember, soak it all back in.  Time is a thief! I can't remember the last time I captured what's going on with #hundtboysx4: what they are into, what they love, what's been challenging for them. It always feels overwhelming to do that kind of necessary memory preserving justice, but I always try and that's what matters.  Here's whats up with the Hundt Boys... NOLAN N loves to do these jumping pictures and I am always ready to say yes. This guy is more than 7.5 years old. This last year during the pandemic has arguably been the hardest on him of my four sons... outwardly anyway. He has lost sports, which he loves more than any other activity. He has only been able to build a relationship with his teacher over a screen, which is the most impo...

 I am a writer. As I type that out, I immediately want to erase it, take it back, and blush with embarrassment. I am not classically trained, or frankly, trained at all. Until a year ago, I had no idea what passive voice was (or how much I liked using it). I struggled to teach my own students writing conventions because I often didn't know them myself. I have learned more about prefixes and suffixes as well as Latin and Greek roots from my second grade sons this year than I ever remember learning in school. I hated my linguistics class in college. My writing was called "too fluffy" by a professor in one of my masters classes.  Yet, somehow, for as long as I can remember, I've always written. Writing has actually been a HUGE part of my life. I love it. I fall in love with it in different ways as time goes on. Because this time of year is full of love and thinking about our loved ones, I thought I would write a love note of some kind to writing. These are the loves of ...

I have never considered myself to be "outdoorsy."  I love the beauty  of nature: mountains, lakes, the ocean, a tree lit afire with color in the fall, the smell of spring, all the noises of wildlife in the summer. I love to be in the presence  of nature- seeing God's glory with my eyes and taking an obsessive amount of pictures of it. There is nothing that brings me more calm and zen than being by the water. I have always liked to just stand and see nature, but I didn't really need to hang out in it for long periods of time. I didn't need to touch it or interact with it. I just wanted to be near it. Am I making any sense?  All that has held up for my entire life- liking to be near nature, but not really wanting to be all up in it. Until 2020 happened. 2020 has made me an outdoors(wo)man!  Needing to Escape When you're in the hustle and bustle of your life: taking people back and forth to practices, going to school and work, stretching yourself thin from a v...

Happy 2021! A new year is here. I honestly can't believe it. I took such a beating from 2020 that I am still recovering. It was truly a year for things we did not expect, things none of us could plan for. For that reason, I am treading lightly into this year and I would imagine a lot of you are too.  #OneWord For the last several years, instead of making a new year's resolution, I've focused on one word. Last year, my #oneword was TRY. I had made this awesome list of things I would TRY to do each month. I spent January, February, and March doing just that. In January I tried being a vegetarian. February I wrote a card each day to friends and family expressing my love and gratitude. In March, I tried never to go over my allotted Weight Watchers points; I tried to use none of my weeklies. Each of these things I TRIED taught me lessons, gave me pause and reflection. I had many more written down and ready to roll out as the year continued. But, after March, the only thing I cou...

I honestly can't believe we are nearing the end of 2020. Most of it felt so challenging, often shocking, and so pain-stakingly slow sometimes that I wasn't sure the end of the year would ever come. I'm sure this year, especially, has us all reflecting on a lot: thinking back to where we all started, how we first felt when the pandemic hit, when we were smack dab in the middle of it, and how we've adjusted to what is our new normal for the foreseeable future.  I have so much I want to leave behind and never revisit: the memories of all the time I lost my patience with my family, crying in the shower more times than I'd like to admit, the feelings of isolation and loneliness, the worrying. I chose right now, however, to focus on the bright spots of this year. It was hard, indeed, but it wasn't always  hard. Here are some of the things I'm incredibly grateful for in 2020... Starting 2020 on the Right Foot On January 2nd, 2020, I started taking care of myself. I...

Throughout this pandemic, I lost myself.  I lost my personal interests and my personal identify. It was a gradual process. I began to notice, through the spring shutdown, that the things that helped me balance out my role as mom were not allowed or closed. Seeing friends was off limits, going out to eat or drinks or dessert with adults was not an option, writing curriculum while I was taking a break from teaching was put on hold. Not having these things in my life, suddenly, made me really, really sad. As time went on and the weeks became months, I began to also notice the other things that helped full me up and provide respite were also taken away from me. Having time to myself to do ANYTHING like reading, writing, working out, or working on creative projects was non existent. One day, in early summer, I realized that anything I did or was interested in or spent time doing that was just for me was gone. Anything that helped make me who I was ripped from me.  Kicking and Screa...

My kids have been learning remotely since March. There is no end in sight for us. I am working my tail off, the kids are working their tails off, their teachers are working their tails off. We've had ebbs and flows of things going pretty smooth and going like a goat rodeo, but one blessing (and curse) at this point is that we know the drill.  I know N and J will have zoom calls from 8:30-11:45 with a 15 minute break at 10:15. I know they will do literacy first and then math. I know what their asynchronous work looks like and about how long it takes. I know C will write about his weekend every Monday morning. I know he does Freckle on Friday. I know when he sees his new sight words. It is all predictable and known at this point.  I called this kind of monotony a blessing because consistency is important, routines are important. My young children can show a lot of independence when things are predictable. I also put that it is a curse in perenthesis because knowing exactly what'...