Hi. I am an English Squffin. Have you never seen a square muffin before?

A few months ago I was so over the daily grind routine of wake up, get ready, go to school, come home, do homework, rinse and repeat.  However, this week school started back, and frankly, no one in my house could be happier about it.  My children love the schedule, they are happily tired every night, they chatter about seeing their friends, what they need for their classes, how nice this teacher is, how strict that teacher is, and what projects are happening.  On top of school starting, soccer practice started up again for my rec league players.  And practice–bless practice.  The weather is not scorching hot right now, so they look forward to getting their gear on, going out to a field, and glory be, running and playing.  I feel like this last week has been bathed in a glorious fall light of less heat, more activities, and tired but happy children.

The last few weeks before school started back were definitely the dog days of summer for us.  Or maybe it would best be described as the sloth days of summer.  It was scorching hot outside and stayed hot for an uncomfortable number of hours in the day.  The heat, coupled with the fact that our entire state is on fire and the sky looked hazy and smudged and awful, pushed us indoors for weeks on end.  I love my home, am a total homebody, but after a while, I felt like the creativity was leached from us and we ended up doing a disproportionate amount of laying around.  We can call it chilling if we want to be cool, but it was borderline lethargy.  I am not sure what happens in other houses, but after too much lazy me time, my people get cranky.  I would like to say that the rest and the reflection fill my people with contentment and makes us better humans, and I am sure to a certain extent that is true.  However, I have found that too much of it just makes us selfish and cranky for more.  It tends to turn our focus on ourselves a bit too much.  In short, it is not a good look.

This is where the contrast is most startling, this transition from summer sloth to fall busy.  I think in our modern lives we have a tendency to overschedule and take on too much.  I will always preach long and hard against that.  However, having been there recently, being under-scheduled and too self-indulgent is definitely a concern as well.  Sigh, I guess there is a sweet spot or goldilocks space of balancing the two, or at least attempting to.

My bread giveaway this week was to another household, or specifically, two members of it, that are also experiencing this transition right now too.  I have been blessed with four amazing nephews, two on each side of my family.  Each one adorable and unique and fabulous.  My giveaway this week was for my sister’s two sons.  This year, she and my brother in law launched their boys into middle school and high school.  It is a big page turn for their family.  Suddenly there are high school sports (with 5:30 am practices and weight lifting!), there are off-campus lunches, there is walking around the house and flexing your muscles, there are changing classes for the first time, there is meeting your friends at the coffee shop and walking as a group together to school on the first day.  These are big, big moments.  And from all reports, the kids are dizzyingly happy.  They are exhausted at the end of the day and week, but very, very happy.  Oh yeah, and hungry too.

So this week, to honor the work and effort my nephews were putting into getting back into their routines, to being busy and tired, and to welcome back school, I decided to tackle a kid (and adult) favorite, english muffins.  Bonus, my kids didn’t mind getting honored by being taste testers either.  I have made english muffins in the past and they were good, but I didn’t have a go-to recipe.  Honestly, I am still tweaking the recipe trying to get the best large nooks and crannies for butter pools (recipe coming soon).  But, I had a few successes and surprises this week with them too, for instance, I love them best in an unfussy and charming square shape.

When I dropped the muffins off yesterday afternoon, I can tell you they smelled marvelously of yeast, they split nicely, and my nephews (and a spare friend hanging out) swarmed around them in a way that warms my heart.  Two of them even ate one untoasted while waiting for the ones that were already in the toaster.  The pleasure of feeding beloved hungry tween and teen boys will always make me smile.  I think my nephews enjoyed being an official giveaway as well…and, I even got to see some impressive muscle flexing.  All in all, it was an entirely delightful delivery to usher in the start of a new busy season.  Here we go!