Friday is here again!

Linking up with Five Minute Friday again! "On Fridays we silence that voice and we just write without worrying if it’s just right or not."

This week's word? Together.

Together. The word alone sounds nice, something that brings comfort. Recently Brian went away and I was left with the kids... but while he was gone, some friends near and far showed me that we are all in this together. The first morning I was on my own, a friend appeared at my door with a Starbucks coffee and an invitation to join her and her little guy at a playgroup. Another friend brought ice cream and cookies and took Bronwen for a walk. Someone else brought pizza and a friend for Bronwen to play with. I had phone calls from friends far away. These friends are like family!

Living far from all of our family, at first glance sometimes things can seem the opposite of together. But really, that's where community comes in. Like the people who showed the kids and I all that kindness the other week. Like our church family here... who really have become like family. It takes a while to build up this kind of togetherness when you move to a new place, and I think that the first year or so that I lived here I was resisting putting down roots and finding community. But now, over four years later, I feel quite differently. In this place we find ourselves in, we are together with others, and we live life alongside each other. And it makes all the difference.

That's five minutes!

Bronwen and friends- Lots of babies born in our little community too!

Five Minute Friday

Linking up with Five Minute Friday here... see my post last week here for an explanation.

Today's word? Laundry! And go!

I don't mind doing laundry. It's rather satisfying to fill our closets with clean clothes again, and get to the bottom of our green bucket laundry hamper. And the kids' green cloth bag. Or to see the bottom of the diaper bucket again.

I do miss doing laundry in the summer though. On a sunny Newfoundland day, there's no better way to dry your clothes than to let them flap out in the fresh North Atlantic wind. This is such a classic Newfoundland sight that its become almost an icon in the latest tourism series... lots of quaint clotheslines with lines of quilts, colourful blankets.

I'm not really sure why the government emphasizes the clothesline so much in their tourism propaganda here, but I think it's something to do with the quaintness of days gone by and slowing down. It takes longer to peg items onto a line. It takes a while to bring them back in. But it symbolizes a time when mothers stayed home more and had time to do this, when no one had heard of indoor dryers, or when they were a luxury to be used only by those who could afford electricity. Some think that a clothesline is an eyesore.. I think that some neighbourhoods even ban them. I'm glad ours doesn't, because I think it's rather nice.

And stop.. that's my five minutes! Not really very profound, but that's kind of the point of this exercise... to see what comes to your head.

from a recent tourism campaign.. source http://www.releases.gov.nl.ca/releases/2007/tcr/0620n08.htm

The start of Five Minute Friday

I am going to start participating in something called Five Minute Friday. One of my favourite blogs, the Gypsy Mama by Lisa-Jo Baker, started it all. Basically a word is given each week, and you write for five minutes about it, whatever comes to your head. Unedited and uncut, just pure thoughts. Then, you post your name/blog link back on the starting page for that week on the Gypsy Mama blog, and read the post by the person before you, leaving them an encouraging comment. Kind of like an inspirational blog chain of sorts.
That might be a little confusing.. if it is, don't worry about it. I just wanted to describe what I was doing for those interested. :)

Today's word is... ORDINARY.

Go!

When I think of ordinary, I think of routine. Mostly of the day-in, day-out life of raising our two little ones right now.. because let's face it, the days are fairly ordinary. I get up to usually one or both of them crying. Change diapers before they both end up with wet pj's and/or wet sheets. Put the water on the stove to boil for oatmeal. Oh, and the water for tea. (though recently, the tea was skipped when Brian found a new espresso machine on Kijiji!)

I have to say, I kind of like ordinary. I am a routine person, really. I like predictable things and I find comfort in things like oatmeal in the morning (or maybe granola, if we're in a hurry). I like the bright spots in the routine.... how John always smiles now when I change his diaper, and how Brian and I get to chat over breakfast and how Bronwen is learning how to use a spoon.

But I also look forward to breaks, to holidays, and lately I have been feeling a bit confined. There's no travelling for us in the horizon, which is a big change from last year when I was all over the country with Bronwen. With 2 kids, that's just not going to happen.

But I just need to embrace the fact that this is the season of life I am in. Find the extraordinary in the ordinary.. in the little things that stand out and make me appreciate everything I have been blessed with.

And I truly am thankful. Because one day, I will travel alone with my husband again and we'll worry about the kids in a whole different kind of way. But we'll still have as much fun as we did when we were newlyweds.. because we stuck together through all those years of holding hands at the breakfast table with the crying kids and the soggy diapers.

Stop!