The days are finally getting a little cooler here in Austin.  An ideal day for me is to have highs in the 50’s or 60’s and while that has only happened a couple of times, it’s getting closer and that makes me very happy.  David and I are trying get ready for the holidays earlier this year so that there’s less last minute scrambling.  But right now after school activities, homework, and just keeping up with getting dinner on the table and everyone fed is taking up the majority of my energy.

We had some sad news earlier in the month.  David’s mother is battling Leukemia.  It’s particularly heartbreaking to be so far away at a time like this but David’s mom is blessed to have so many of her kids still living in Hawaii who are there to help every step of the way.  This is one thing I have always admired about David’s family.  Everyone helps.  Nobody needs to be asked or told what to do and somehow each person knows how to be uniquely supportive.  I’ve spent time just observing them all (there’s 8 of them!) trying to figure out how his parents instilled this trait in their children, but the exact formula still remains elusive to me.  I am only left to hope David and I do as good a job with our own children.  This news, of course, has led to some delicate conversations with our kids and a sense of sadness that lingers in the air through the midst of our routine chaos.

This past weekend David and I made a shoe rack for what I call the “shoe crisis” by our garage door.  We had a little store-bough rack that was no match for the amount of sneakers, cleats, and sandals that seem to accumulate by the door.  I got the idea from Pinterest and we set off to Home Depot to buy and cut the wood, choose the stain, and get the hardware necessary to make a sturdy, 4-level rack that was big enough to fit in the spot across from the garage.  I am actually quite thrilled with how it turned out!  I stained all the wood and David drilled the holes and helped put it together.  It was truly a joint effort and now we have the perfect solution to all those shoes! My mind has been spinning since last night thinking of all the other things we could build for our house but I am trying not to let my ideas get away with me since that was actually a fairly labor intensive task for us with all the boys wanting to run around and “help” with things they couldn’t actually help with.  But still, there’s nothing like the gratification of seeing something you’ve built put to use!

Finished product!