Speed Bump

The house is quiet as the snow falls outside my window. The world is awash with white, hushed and still. Branches bend under the weight of the wet snow; there are no cars passing by on the street. Ryan took the kids sledding and Hazel is curled up and sleeping on the couch after a romp through the fresh snow. My Mom and Dad left yesterday for their annual month-long stay in California, just escaping the snow storm. It was this same weekend last year, the day after my parents left, that my brother’s house caught fire. It was just after midnight on Saturday night and my brother, sister-in-law and their three kids were all sleeping in their second floor bedrooms. The fire started in the basement. My sister-in-law woke to the scream of the smoke alarm in their bedroom. They opened the bedroom door to find smoke waist high in the upstairs hallway. After going half-way down the stairs and glimpsing flames through the floor grate in the kitchen, my brother ran back upstairs to get...

We made new memories last Saturday. Somehow we found a day when everyone could get together to make Christmas cookies. We were three generations in a place that has been my family's home for at least that long, and all was right in the world. Mom was having a good day and was energized with all of her family at home. KU won a big basketball game earlier in the day making everyone, especially my Dad, happy. The girls made cookies while the boys played basketball on an especially warm December afternoon. Our cookies weren't Pinterest-worthy, but they were delicious. Mom was much more interested in taking care of her newest granddaughter, 5 month-old Hartley Paige, than in helping decorate cookies. She lights up and is her happiest when around the baby. Hartley has this effect on all of us. Any hint of sadness gets snuffed out with her around. Baby smells, baby sounds, a touch of her soft skin, those big eyes smiling up at you - that's all a person needs to fill their...

I pull myself out of my warm bed and shuffle in the dark towards the kitchen to make a pot of coffee - a must before braving the frigid morning air to walk the puppy. Dim lights from a holiday wreath blink from the living room wall and I realize I forgot to turn the lights off the night before. The batteries that power the string of lights in the wreath are from last year, replacing them is on my to-do list. I decide I like the softer, muted effect on the lights and I’m not going to replace the batteries just yet. It’s December. That crazy time of year when my kids run on candy canes and sugar cookies, and each day they wake with the hope that an overnight snowfall will cancel school. They are 9 and 7 this year, old enough to know Santa isn’t real, but still wanting to believe. My son differentiates what he calls the “mall Santas” from the real thing - proving to me, and to himself, that he still believes. The season is filled with the promise of magic and the innocence of believing....

I give myself a B for today’s parenting. Breakfast was uneventful (if slightly less than nutritious), the dog was a bit less crazy than usual, lunches got made and we all got out the door with completed homework and full water bottles. Importantly, there were no tears and no yelling. Success. I try not to grade my parenting daily, but more often than not I end the day feeling inadequate. Some days I feel like an outright failure as a parent - days that begin with a hurried morning to get to an early meeting, a meeting where nothing gets accomplished and that I should have skipped. Days that start with forgotten lunches and misplaced library books lead to an evening where I’m late to drive the soccer carpool and dinner gets on the table at 8:45. Everyone is tired, some of us cry, some of us yell. No one goes to bed happy. But even on the days I give myself an F, I hug my kids before they go to school. I feed them a healthy dinner and tuck them into bed with a kiss. I ask them about ...

I had the best, unexpected and unplanned Sunday with Charlie. Izzy had a busy social calendar (first grade girls do not mess around), Ryan was busy and Charlie and I found ourselves alone. What to do? Sundays are our catch-up days at home and our parental to-do list is usually long. I don't enjoy it, but it is the one day we go to the grocery store, do laundry, vacuum, run errands - all the stuff that has to get done around the house when both parents work all week. Most Sundays we encourage the kids to play outside, have a neighbor friend come over and basically entertain themselves. On Sundays, I say 'No' a lot. No, I don't have time to play. No, I can't throw the football. No, I can't play dolls or dress up. No, no, no. There just isn't enough time in the day, in the week, to get it all done. This Sunday I asked Charlie what he wanted to do and he said he wanted to make a saxophone! To back up a bit, Charlie's third grade class went on a field tri...

8 and 6. Those might just be the absolute perfect ages for Halloween. Costumes, candy, school parties, ‘booing’ friends, carving pumpkins, ghost stories – they love it all! I will admit that I loved coordinating the kids' costumes when they were little and they made for some pretty darn cute pictures. But when they were that little, Halloween was more about what I wanted and the kids didn't really get it. Now, I happily sacrifice the cute coordinating outfits in favor of them using their imaginations. I love seeing what costumes they come up with each year. And as long as I don't have to make it - anything is fair game! Trick-or-treating with little ones can be hard work, and one scary clown sighting can ruin the entire night. We're past the hard work/scare easily stage and in what might be the very best stage. My kids are so excited to go trick-or-treating this year - and they want to go with us, their parents! Another couple years and th...

This is one of my favorite Fall posts and Izzy's first trip to the Pumpkin Patch! Hey kids, what's with the expressions?  Better late than never. We made it to a pumpkin patch this weekend. The pumpkin pickings were a little slim, but so were the crowds so it all worked out. Combined with the beautiful weather on this late Saturday afternoon, we couldn't have asked for a lovelier day.

Family, time, love, work, friends, age, health, laughter, happiness, grief, life. These are just words - words that fail to convey the tangled web that is my thoughts these days. But that's how life is, sometimes words just aren't enough. And other times words are everything. Words can fall far short of conveying our thoughts, but there is also nothing more heart wrenching than words left unsaid. Finding the right words and putting them down can offer perspective, be restorative, and help process a life event.  I have a friend who wears a shirt that says "I ❤ words." It always makes me smile. I need to get one of those shirts! I love finding the right words and having them exist beyond my thoughts. I love to write and I miss doing it here. I don't know how many people actually read this blog in the past, but I'm always surprised when someone mentions it to me out of the blue - often someone I've never met. That happened to me yesterday a...

Of course, a KU basketball game, right? Yes, but not just any KU basketball game...a women's game! Earlier this year we took the kids to their first KU basketball game at Allen Field House.  It was a men's game and it was really loud, a packed house, and very intense. Not exactly the best environment for small children that can't sit still and have a short attention span. But last week we took the kids to a KU women's basketball game and it was the most family fun we've had all winter. There are no crowds at the women's games and you can wander through all the old Jayhawk memorabilia and the KU Athletics Hall of Fame at a slow pace. There are some interactive displays where Charlie measured his vertical jump and checked his wing span against Wilt Chamberlain's. We compared the size of Izzy's red boots to the giant basketball shoes behind this glass display. We were the only ones in line to shoot some hoops! We went to the game beca...

Ryan's surprise 40th birthday party. Check. Tree up & decorated. Check. Star family gifts delivered to the church. Check. December birthdays with my side of the family celebrated. Check. If I had even a quarter of Charlie's energy, I wouldn't need a weekend to recover from our weekend. This is such a perfect picture to depict our moments at home, no matter what we're doing. Charlie never stops moving. 

Charlie and Haley decided to lounge on the deck at Grammy and Papa's house, complete with their bed pillows and covers. They had so much fun and I took so many pictures. I couldn't resist posting most of them.

We spent Memorial Day having a big, all ages family baseball game....at my brother's house. Check it out. It is about the coolest thing ever. And they have a new pony! More pictures coming soon...

Hooray for us! We did it. We finally had a weeknight family dinner with the four of us. I've written in the past about how we struggle to eat with the kids during the week. Our normal routine is they eat at 6pm and Ryan and I eat dinner at 9pm after the kids are in bed. I cook for Charlie and Izzy, Ryan cooks for me. Two different meals, every night. It sounds crazy just writing that down. It isn't something we established intentionally, it just evolved over time and with the second child, etc. But we're making a conscious effort to make one meal for everyone and eat together. I know it won't be a quick change so I'm aiming low - a couple nights a week would be great. A few things that made our weeknight family dinner work: 1) I planned and shopped for our dinner over the weekend so everything was on hand and ready to go for the weeknight meal. 2) I prepped for dinner by chopping, measuring and organizing ahead of time. I did this in the morning just before ...

We had a picnic after the 5K run on Sunday morning to avoid the crowds doing brunch for Mother's Day. It was the perfect fit for all the kids and the weather could not have been more perfect. I had fun playing with my new camera and took way too many pictures. Dad was telling her not to put rocks in her mouth. How do they learn these looks so early?? Izzy interrupted the game of catch. I don't think they minded. The ladies chatting about Julie's wedding plans. After breakfast, the baseball game began in ernest. It wouldn't be a Geiger family game without someone getting mad or hurt and this day was no exception. Relatively speaking, it was only a minor upset and everyone had fun playing ball. Charlie learned a lot by watching his older cousins play ball. He looks so much like Todd in this picture. This is not your ordinary baseball tee - made from a coffee can, a steel pipe, some concrete and a little plastic tubing - thi...