It's a good day.

I love this time of year when everything starts warming up and the neighborhood starts coming alive again. It brings me so much excitement because I know that summer is right around the corner. I realize it's only April, and real summer is still a ways away. But - it's warm enough for the kids to go outside and run around, to stop at the park on the way home from running errands, and for eating popsicles on the porch. It's also the time of year when storm clouds move in and burst open with rain, when the nights are still cold enough to want to curl up with a big cozy blanket, and when David's busy schedule is finally starting to wind down. I love everything about it.

(Our trip to the park yesterday. Lydia figured out how to spin herself around on that blue spinning bar and Austin climbed to the very top of the big-kid play structure. A beautiful day.) 

I've been bitten by a spring-fever-house-project bug and I have a whole list of things that I want to organize and work on. I'm so excited about them! We've gotten a few quotes for building a window seat into our stair pop-out and for building lockers into our mudroom. The stair pop-out is going to happen and I'm SO excited about it! (The jury is still out on whether we are going to be able to make the lockers happen, or if we'll need push it off until next year.) When I picture our completed window seat and bookshelves I get so excited I can hardly stand it. Some other projects we have in the works are: adding a wood plank wall in the half bath, cabinet hardware in both upstairs bathrooms, and a peel-and-stick tile backsplash in my laundry room. Pinterest and I have been great friends lately. I am just so excited about everything.

So, David was in Minneapolis last week. It was the first training on a new software called Knowledge Coach to be a knowledge coach trainer (an incredible opportunity to learn a new software and then travel and teach the rest of the company). I've said it before, but I'm so proud of him. When he was first contacted about the opportunity, his first concern was that it would require more travel time for him over the course of the year. It won't be a forever thing, but he will be traveling a bit more, especially in the next couple of months. Of course, I told him that we would be fine and that he should definitely take the chance! It's a great thing for his career, and even just shows how good he is at what he does. We missed him a lot, but my happiness for him outweighs how much I don't like to have him gone. However, when he isn't here - I have a hard time turning my brain off and making myself go to sleep so I always stay up way too late. One of the days we went to visit Jenna and ended up sleeping over at their apartment, which was so fun. When we first put the kids down and Austin, Camille, and Jason were crying and Lydia was nowhere near falling asleep - we wondered if we'd made a bad life choice, but luckily they all fell asleep and the night was as good as I could have hoped it to be!

(I asked David to send me a cool picture from Minneapolis.)

In addition to staying up way too late while David is gone, I have the tendency to spend, spend, spend. I may or may not have done some online shopping while he was gone, but most of that tendency was curbed by the fact that before he left we ordered new cell phones! I'm SO excited! I've been wanting a new cell phone for a long time. Specifically, a new cell phone that has a really awesome camera. David has helped me look around at a bunch of options, but I've been dragging my feet. One night, he pulled up some options on the computer for me to look at, when finally I was like "I know I'm dragging my feet, but can I just explain to you why? It's because I want THIS phone (pulling up a Google Nexus phone on the computer), but I know it's too expensive. So I know I can't have what I want - but it makes it hard to get excited about something that isn't really going to be what I want." David nodded and took the computer to get a better look. Lydia woke up and I went into her room to help her, laying down and falling asleep by her for a minute. When I came back into our bedroom he was like, "I know this might sound crazy, but I think we should buy these phones... right now." Google just happened to be doing a promotion with their Nexus 5X phones which dropped them down into the price range that we were looking for. You get the promotion when you sign up with their Project Fi cell service, which ended up being even cheaper than the super cheap phone service we have with Virgin Mobile (who we would definitely recommend). So we did it and I think its' going to be a really great deal for us monetarily, and I still get my dream phone! I know it's silly, and it really doesn't matter. But I really am just very excited about it.  We realized after the fact that we needed to order a sim card kit in addition to the phones, so even though the phones got here while David was on his trip, we still haven't set them up. I might be going a little crazy. But the kits got here tonight and we have plans to set them up and play with them.

Some days I feel incredibly anxious. I feel stressed without knowing why and without having a good reason for feeling that way. Then I feel even worse because I'm obviously so, so blessed, and have not a single reason in the world to complain. We have so many blessings, we don't even know what to do with them all. Today I'm counting those blessings: the sunshine, my kids laughter, my hardworking and loving husband, our beautiful home, my old fuzzy-camera phone, my new fancy-camera phone, the internet, a dishwasher, eating pasta for dinner while David is working late and not cooking a real meal, my new weed-puller that does an incredible job and is going to make the dozens and dozens of weeds in my backyard shiver in their roots, this blog where I can write my thoughts and feelings and record the happenings of our lives. It's a good day.

Happy Tuesday!