Leaves, I Love You, and a Stripey Hat

It is clear to me that my journey towards joy will be a long one, and an arduous one as well.  But I'm hoping that it will, in the end, be a journey home.  I feel more and more like there is someone I once was, and I want very much to be again.

Each week seems to bring high-reaching ups, and to-the-depths downs.  I don't understand the cycle at all, though there does appear to be something cyclical about it.  Hormones?  I don't know. 

I do know that I appreciate the highs, and the more normal, regular-feeling days very much.  I have made some new goals that I think will help with evening things out (not evening as in nighttime, but evening as in making things even...it was an awkward word choice, and yet I will not change it), and I do hope that I will be able to achieve them:

-soda must be banished;

-exercise must happen frequently.

I think those things are doable, even though they will be very difficult at first.  I feel old, and tired, and a sugar addiction, while not crack, is still hard to kick.  Just writing about it makes me literally get all salivatey.  Pavlov's dog, anyone?

Woof!

As another part of my deliberateness to find joy during the day, I have tried to take the camera with me more often.  It comes in handy when the kids do things like try to catch the swirling leaves while dodging the first drops of an autumn shower...

"Which way did he go, George; which way did he go?!"

You might well imagine this is a tricky endeavor. 

She looks victorious, but I'm pretty sure this girl picked those leaves up off of the ground...

Christian was biding his time, possibly memorizing the fall patterns of the leaves, noticing the systematic curvature of each fifth leaf that was blown from the tree, taking note of how frequently the yellow leaves went up first before spinning down to the earth...

or maybe he was just letting his energy charge back up...

so that he could fling himself wildly at the leaves, which would always just escape his grasp before he threw himself to the ground alongside the leaf that he had been chasing.

On a completely unrelated note, I discovered this same afternoon that I had put Eliana's pants on backwards in the morning.  A bow on the backside is cute, though, no?

While she can drive me to the brink of, well, I'm already insane, so I don't know...she can push my buttons, for sure...

she is also such a sweetheart.  She throws her arms around my legs any time and says exuberantly, "IIII...luvyou!"  Just like that, too.

And on a similarly unrelated note, I always love to find pictures that Michaela has taken on the camera.  She saw a heart in our curtain the other day and took about sixteen pictures of it...

And as we were driving along last week, she asked for the camera.  She told me, "Don't look!" which was fine since I was driving.  Her secret task?  She was taking silhouette pictures of her hands; a message for me...

Sometimes I find joy in things as they happen and sometimes I get to experience it in surprise moments.

Sometimes I find it when I put on a stripey hat.

Or when I spend time with a really cool, really fun chick...

who has some pretty sweet dance moves.

Wherever it comes from, it feels so good.  I like the smile on my face.  I like the joy in my heart.

And I really like my stripey hat.