“While the earth remains, seedtime and harvest, cold and heat, winter and summer, and day and night shall not cease.”  Genesis 8:22

It hasn’t been very many posts since I was glorying in the arrival of spring, and here we are deep into autumn.  In a few more days, October will be over, and we will lose an hour of light in the evening as we cause our clocks to “fall back”.  Where, oh where does the time go?

It is at this time of year that I feel myself going into hibernation mode.  While I love the beauty of the fall colors, I know that soon the leaves will all be fallen and the trees will be bare, seemingly devoid of life.  The weather is getting colder, and it won’t be long before I’m worrying about snow and ice as I run those errands that can’t be put off.   We had an exceptionally cool summer, so now an exceptionally cold winter is predicted.  (Global WARMING?  Not here!)  I don’t do real well with the cold.

I feel as if it is time to start gathering my children close around the fire until the world comes back to life.  ;-)  I know that is rather silly, but maybe there is some good in that idea.  Maybe it is time to turn my focus inward toward my children and my house.  I have had to be gone from home so much over the last few months, that it will be good to slow down.  My pregnancy required 3-4 doctors appointments per week for the last  couple of months.  I thought that things would slow down once the baby was born, but running errands with a newborn takes 3 times as long as running errands by myself!  There is still plenty of training that my children need, and I’m afraid that there is a fair amount of retraining that is needed in all of the children after all of the time I’ve had to be out.  Now that Baby Girl is almost 3 months old, I am able to do more errands in less time, and I’m working to cut down on the time I’m away from home.  Some things are seasonal and are winding down, so that is a help, too.

Yes, I think it is time to turn the focus inward.  By spring, I want to have done a lot of retraining, and I want to finish going through and decluttering.  Perhaps we can make inside feel more alive, even if things are barren and dead outside!