Finding the Fun in September

The life of a Greenbaum (my family of nascence) is the Life of the Party.  We are activity doers and party throwers and fun time havers.  I think the primary reason for the Party Life is that my father gets bored easily.  My mother would happily stay at home and read her book most of the time, peppered with family gatherings and concentrating her Party Life into two weeks biannually when she stages grand productions with forty kids and hundreds in attendance.  But my father needs constant entertainment.  Every single Saturday from the beginning of my memory involved doing activities with dad.  Not just one activity.  Average Saturday activities are three.  And while he's doing that activity he is planning the other one or texting people to come on along on the activity.  His nickname is Doctor Fun.  He's a fun enforcer.

The real reason he had eight children is so that he would have eight playmates to go do fun things with him.  If one of us isn't available another one is.  We eventually had to schedule to keep his fun having sufficiently stocked. See Dadderdays.

This trait has rubbed off.  All day every day I am thinking up ideas for activities, events, gatherings, and projects.  Whatever it is, I'm game.  Recently most of my fun has been centralized at home because of nap schedules and general pregnancy malaise.  Being homebound is difficult for me unless I'm doing projects or creating fun in other ways.  Looking through my phone pictures I found not a log of September: school started, routine ensued, thirty days passed. I found a record of the stuff I want to remember:  the activities and the fun!

Our ongoing project has been this mosaic wall in front of our house.  Gaudi covered Barcelona parks in tile and Venice Beach in California boasts many tile installations.  Right above this wall (to the left, dying) irises bloom in bright purple during the spring.  They always remind me of Van Gogh.   The layout of the tiles is meant to evoke Van Gogh's starry night, Gaudi's Park Guell and Venice Beach.  The tiles are from Michael's and the Dollar Store glued on with mosaic glue.  It takes forever to get them to stick -- you have to hold them on there while the glue gets sufficiently tacky.  We enlisted the missionaries who were walking by to help.

 School started.  I was PLANNING to get the kids new outfits for the first day but apparently every children's clothing retail store sells out of all of their clothes for the two weeks before school.  Not our fanciest first day but we've made up for it since.  Si is in K, Jude 1, and Mimi 3.  BL is nearly one year old in this pic.  Starting school is fun because these three hop on their scooters and bikes and coast the 100 meters to school.  They feel like they live at school and everybody else is finally coming back to play with them.

 We have even managed to find family-friendly free fun (alliteration FTW) on Sundays.  During the summer we go down to Liberty Park after church to wade in the Seven Canyons water feature and race rubber duckies.

 Our Sunday highlight is joining in the drum circle.  Hippies spend their Sunday afternoons drumming and dancing, hula hooping and doing other hippie type activities.  My kids join right in.  I love that they're learning rhythm by participating in a community that is so welcoming and positive.

 We've been spending a lot of time in our art/music/sunroom doing projects.  The children recently completed this painting and I must say, I am really proud of their creation.  I did not paint on it at all.  It's now hanging above our fireplace.  This photo was taken right as they started.

 And of course, Betty Lou must be included.  Painting, crafts and babies equals messes.  But she's so happy unloading all of the boxes I just can't stop her.

Betty Lou, one year, making messes.

BL had her first birthday this month but I will record that in another post.

Baby girl and Hush have fun playing music together.  She helps by strumming the guitar while he holds the chords.  We've also re-positioned the drums so that she can bang on them whenever she wants.  I've always wanted a house where the musical instruments were readily available and accessible for the kids.  They are welcome to mess with them and I'm grateful Hush is comfortable with the kids touching them.  We have to tune them a lot.

In September grandpa bought us a fabulous trampoline to expand the fun options in our backyard. In the first fifteen minutes Mimi injured her growth plate in her ankle.  She had a sweet boot to wear for one week and then she was fine.

Grandpa also brought Paige's kids out to play for a weekend.  We went to Park City to do the Aspen slide again because it is super fast and fun.

On Sunday we indoctrinated Jim and Paige's girls and some friends into the hippie gathering at Liberty Park.  At first the other kids were reluctant but the atmosphere is so welcoming everybody joined in, including some of my friends who were still in their church clothes.  Sundays in the park are one of my favorite things about Salt Lake City.  You should come with us some time.  Or just show up.  It's easy to find and lasts all afternoon.

This has got to be one of my favorite pictures of Jim ever taken because it shows his true nature: having fun with his grandchildren and dancing.  He's a great dancer.

And Betty Lou ran around making friends for us the whole afternoon.  I like having a toddler because they make you talk to people you wouldn't otherwise speak to.

There were some hard things about September but I'm choosing not to remember them.  That's why I like blogging.  I reduce the impact of hard things that happened by writing about the things I want to remember.  But I put these little notes in my blog to remind myself that really hard things were happening at this time that I don't need to specifically remember, and I do want to remind myself that this was that hard time and I kicked ass through it.  I have a short memory for un-fun things.  And for that I turn to poetry, specifically thirteenth century Sufi poets, don't you?  You need Rumi in your life.