Life lately

It hit me the other day that I have not taken pictures with a legitimate camera in months. And let's be real. My point and shoot camera hardly counts, so I haven't taken good pictures in even longer. I do hope my children don't feel neglected when they look back at their childhood and have no pretty pictures to help them remember.

Life's been good over in casa de Deyle. (Spanish Deyle doesn't look right... I wonder what house of Deyle is in German?) I started up my piano lessons again this week and while it'll take some adjusting to get used to a new, more scheduled routine, I think it's going to be good. I decided to bring the girls over to grandma's earlier so that they could get a good solid nap in every lesson day instead of me having to put them down super early, wake them up to go, and then deal with them being grumpy about it later on. A nice perk to this is that I have at least an hour, maybe more each of those afternoons child-free. I need that time to either get my errands done or go to the gym. I'm so hoping that my routine will include gym time because I need it desperately and hey I'm paying for it, so I might as well use it. We'll see how it goes today.

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I've been heating and icing my foot every night for a week or so. I can tell that it feels immediately better afterwards, but I'm not sure how much it is doing to actually help heal it. I'm not wearing my walking boot much anymore, but it's nowhere near completely healed. Some days are pretty decent with minimal foot pain while other days are terrible and I feel like it hasn't healed at all. I so wish I could understand what is truly wrong. Not knowing is driving me crazy. Now that I'm thinking about it, I realize that I haven't prayed specifically for my foot. I'm terrible at praying for the day to day things like this, so I hope to improve in this and truly hand this over to God.

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As I mentioned on Instagram, I've been trying to make my own version of a pumpkin spice latte. I'm getting closer, but it's still not as good. I want the real deal but I don't want to pay for it. Bahh being cheap has it's drawbacks! Currently, I'm trying this:

1/2 cup of whole milk (what we have around for Josie)
pumpkin spice
nutmeg (I just eye it, no specific amount)
2 tbsp of pureed pumpkin
1 tbsp of brown sugar
more concentrated coffee (3 scoops for 4 oz when I was previously doing 2 scoops)

It was better than before since the coffee was stronger! But it's not perfect. I'll keep tweaking it but I'm not sure that I'll ever get it to be good enough.

Cinnamon dolce "latte" for the win (at least at home) I guess.

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This last weekend, I went to stay with my sister overnight and we had soooo much fun just the two of us. We ate out at a fancy but affordable restaurant and then went to a few bars just to get a feel for each of them. I think we only spent about five minutes in each bar, but it was fun to just walk around (trick foot and all), laugh, and truly enjoy each other. Our relationship is pretty awesome, but we haven't had a ton of time just the two of us. I've been having babies or we've been with the babies for the past three years so it was just... nice to have a bit more freedom and enjoy my sister's life instead of us trying to work around mine. Does that make sense?

The next day, we went and got breakfast and a pumpkin cheesecake latte and then headed over to my cousin's baby shower. It was a relaxed morning and couldn't have been more perfect. After the shower, I headed home for some much needed family time with hubby who was going back out west to work the next day. Even though I loved being away for a bit , it was also wonderful to reconnect with the girls and hubby. I so love my family. The grin on my face was oh-so-sincere when I walked in the door and scooped up Josie, kissed hubby, and grabbed Audrey from her nap. They are so fabulous.

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I haven't been in blogging mode much lately, and I do apologize for that. It comes and goes, my desire to write, and right now time, motivation, and ambition are pointed in other directions. I'm still busy unpacking and rearranging things here and there and I've been experimenting more with keeping the girls moving, busy, and not whining. There is more whining when I'm not challenging or interacting with them enough, so I know I need to keep things moving around here. Figuring out how to do that every single day is challenging for me. By the end of the day, the last thing I want to do is focus on any one thing (ie. blogging) that will take more time and energy than I have. Regardless, I've been staying up super late every night doing something or another. Time just gets away from me!

Can you relate?
Did this post even make sense?
How do you manage your time so that you aren't feeling frazzled but still getting things done? A question that probably doesn't have an answer.

I've got no decent pictures of lately, so how about a picture of Josie back in the day? Just under six months old

Audrey, also just shy of six months. They look like sisters, right?

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