So many goings on!

 There has been lots of apple picking. Which, of course, means lots of baking. Baking is not my favorite thing, but it keeps getting more and more fun as the kids get older. We also finished out our garden with a giant batch of pesto and some tomato sauce which I froze. The habaneros continue to roll in, much to my hearts delight. 

 Its looking decidedly fall around here. The kids helped me plant a bunch of mums and everything is feeling very festive. I love fall and winter in our home. It gets cozy and everything just feels very homey. 

 We are back to twice weekly soup batches. This is one of the kids favorites, the spinach basil tortellini soup. Butternut squash is a weekly necessity as everyone loves it and it is SO easy to make, and I love having hot soup for lunch as leftovers. 

 These two had two thursday and fridays off in a row thanks to the Jewish holiday schedule (who knew that there were so many Jewish holidays so early in the school year?). That ended up being great as we got to go to a wonderful weekly yoga class for kids at the studio where I am studying. 

 Her first batch of banana bread made all by herself. She was very proud. 

So!!! My first weekend of teacher training was amazing. And EXHAUSTING!!!! The group is fun. There are 12 of us and one person who will be joining us for some weekends that she missed last go round. We are a diverse group there for different reasons. Some people are looking to deepen their practice and are not sure that they want to teach. Some people are getting their doctorate or are pediatric nurses looking to help kids via yoga. Some want to teach and only teach yoga, looking to leave hardcore careers like technical software writers. All sorts. All shapes. All kinds of practices  ~ some people are very into yoga and have a very deep and disciplined practice and others appear relatively new to yoga practice itself. It was also overwhelming ~ there is a lot of information to take in. It was a little overwhelming. I also didn't expect to be teaching (one another) right of the bat. That was intimidating. We worked on developing our own centering/intro portion of a beginners practice. In addition to our many weekends of Sat and Sunday 9-4:30 class time we have to attend 30 classes at the studio, find a mentor, and do a TON of reading. I'll list out the books that we are reading and writing about when I'm not rushing to get the girl kid off of the bus. I will say that I came home on Saturday spent. To then have to fulfill my promise to bake an apple cake with the kids and then have to shower everybody and put them to bed as Nate had a night out with the MBA crew ~ and then do yoga school *homework* after an 8 hour day was a lot. I can't even imagine doing that on a daily basis, all I wanted to do was pass out on the couch. Sunday morning I felt like I had to get the whole house in order as I hate heading into the week without doing a good Sunday cleaning, so I was vacuuming and whatnot at 8 AM before heading to class. Not exactly the most relaxing entre into a day of yoga practice. We again worked on mirroring (when you are teaching, you are showing the class what to do ~ thus telling them to raise their right arm you are raising your left arm. This is really hard for my brain. We did a lot of practice on this. It will take a lot more practice before it comes naturally). We worked with partners to do our beginner centering and warm up, a 15 minute portion of a practice. It went well. I'm such a visual person that I had to literally write out mine on Saturday night ~ working through everything from leaving your thoughts at the door to creating an intention to working through breathwork and into movement and aligning the body etc. It came a little easier the next day but obviously it will be a good long time before there will be anything "natural" about it. 

We watched a really fascinating movie called "Yoga Unveiled" on Sunday. It was really interesting, but really long. LOTS of practice sitting like a yogi ;/. My meditation practice is leaps and bounds ahead of where it was simply by my newfound ability to sit in full lotus for hours. With my tight runners hips it isn't my favorite position but I'm getting lots of practice simply sitting. For our next session, which is the weekend of October 19, we have to have worked on our centering and warming up sequence, our mirroring, be able to teach (and adjust) two standing postures of our choice, and do some reading. We ended each day with an asana practice that was lovely. I was SO excited to come home and sit on the back deck after class and get caught up on the weekend by Nate. We were all heading out to dinner that night and it was so nice to have a family dinner out and simply enjoy being with my family after all that time away from them. I missed a football game and two of Luke's soccer games so there was a lot to catch up on. 

I went to yoga the following Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday, and then golf got in the way. I played Wednesday and Thursday, with a lesson on Friday morning, and then took off for the beach. SOMETHING had wreaked havoc on my lower back and I kicked off our girls weekend with a lovely facial, deep tissue massage and manicure. After three days of heavy duty icing of my lower back, the massage finally worked out whatever had been wrong with it and I felt better. My friends and I had a great weekend away with crazy unseasonably warm weather at the beach. Two weekends in a row away from home, however, wreak havoc with my schedule and my life! I feel behind with everything, and out of whack in general. I wouldn't plan it that way again. To compound things Nate is away this weekend on a guys weekend, and then I have yoga training the following weekend, then we are away with friends the weekend after that at their family farm. SO, its not going to get better or more on schedule any time soon. After about 6 weeks of truly glorious, warm, sunny weather we are expecting rain for the next three days, and I admit that I'm looking forward to hunkering down a little. Squash soup is on the stove, Jake is deep into a long nap, and I'm skipping my inversion class tonight so that we can enjoy a family night before Nate goes away. Despite my love of socializing, I have a deep down need for routine and crave order, so when my weekends get too hectic I can feel out of balance. I feel behind on my yoga reading (I 100% blame the fact that I, who don't watch TV, have fallen hopelessly and deeply into the time suck of the show Breaking Bad, which Nate downloaded recently. I'm a little obsessed. I just want to get THROUGH them at this point so I can move on with my life and my reading and my usual 8:30 bedtimes!!! Anyone else hooked on this show? We are on season 4 now. I'm move convinced than ever what a waste of time and life drain TV is.....man, its a killer!!!)

Anyway. I can't wait to put away some summer clothes and pull out more fall things this weekend. We had family portraits scheduled for today but got rained out, which is a bummer. I continue to simply marvel at how much life has changed with smalls in preschool three mornings a week and the bigs in full day school, its just amazing. Our routine feels so good and natural during the week, and everyone is just thriving in school. I'm a little bit awed by the amount of paperwork that I have to pay attention to, the amount of things that I feel like I have to stay on top of, and the effort that packing healthy and creative lunches every day takes, but that is all really about organization and staying on top of it, at the end of the day. Not hard stuff, just busy stuff. 

I have to do a lot of yoga reading, and work on choosing then teaching two standing postures. Anyone have a favorite standing posture??? (That would be beginner appropriate, not looking for dancer here......thats another thing that is difficult for me ~ I tend to only go to power yoga or more advanced flow yoga classes.....and I need to start attending beginner classes.) I've been to a few in the past few weeks, and its a great change ~ but a HUGE change. Everything is different. You can't just cue people through vinyasas ~ you are explaining every detail of every simple action. A totally different world. So, I have a lot of classes (beginner) to experience in order to create a practice that I could teach that would be beginner appropriate, as a beginner teacher.  So much to learn...........