Skip to main content

Intentional


Nothing about this holiday season went as planned.

We started the stomach flu in our family of six a couple days before Christmas and it finally took down the last person a week later. It was exhausting but also forced a major slow down, in a good way.

Traditions got pushed aside to make room for illness, plans were cancelled, all expectations of holiday celebrations went out the window.

There was a time when this would have destroyed me.

Several years ago, my plans for New Years Eve were cancelled due to a snow storm. I pouted and cried, I believe I may have even wailed "Why Me?" and I know for certain that I made the evening miserable for my husband. All because my expectations had been set too high and I couldn't see what was still possible.

I don't know if it's age, experience, maturity, or a glorious combination, but this holiday had all the makings of an epic temper tantrum, yet it never happened.

I wasn't Mother Teresa, let's be real, but I sort of just rolled with it. When the first kid got sick, I just adjusted, and the next and the next and the next.

Somehow, miraculously, it all was just fine.

Christmas still came.

The world did not end.

Time moves on, whether we are sick, ready, sad, happy, or otherwise.

As we head into the new year, I am sitting at my desk, with my hair and makeup all fancy, just to stay at home. We are finishing up the stomach bug, so we won't be going out.

I have painted the girls' fingernails, we put on dresses, we made classic junk food snacks (for those of us who are up to eating) and we will watch movies and be together.

I do not set goals for the New Year. That feels way too much like expectations, but I like the idea of choosing a word for the year. A theme to set the tone for the year ahead.

Intentional.

Thats the word that kept coming to mind as I tried to make the most of the time we did have with family and friends over the past week. I knew we wouldn't make it to many get togethers, so the ones that we did get to, I wanted to really be present and enjoy it. I was intentional about the time spent.

It felt really good.

It felt quiet.

It felt comforting.

It felt right.

Happy New Years friends!



P.S. The first year.

The second year.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Changes

I was cleaning today, which gave me time to think, and thinking always leads me here. The house is 'weekend messy', so decided to clean my floors, because The Nester says if your floors are clean the rest of the house feels clean too, even if it isn’t.  I have found that it is pretty good advice, so when everything else feels chaotic, I clean the floors. Of course for me, cleaning the floors also means picking up the toys, shoes, clothes, etc. so that I can even begin to vacuum, which naturally leads to a cleaner home as well.  While cleaning up I began to think about how this blog has evolved over the years, from a desire to write like The Nester about home, into what it is now.  I started writing this blog when I was dreaming of building a new home. Then plans changed, life took turns, and we ended up in a home so different than I expected and so perfect for our family. Somewhere along the way I realized that home wasn’t in the walls that went up or in the co

A Year End Photo Review

I have been catching up on the blogs that I follow and I see so many end of the year round ups. I am not that organized, nor am I anywhere near having before and afters of the work on the Lucky house  all tied up in a pretty bow. What I do have though, are before and in-progress photos. I will let the pictures do most of the talking, but here is a little recap of where we started and where we are now! The journey to finding our home was a bit of a surprise and definitely a whirlwind of the best kind. In May of 2013, I got a message from a neighbor asking if we would be interested in buying their farmhouse. You can read all about it, here , here ,  here  and here ! So we bought a house, poured the foundation and moved the ninety year old house approximately two miles. We then jumped into renovations, additions and remodeling. We moved into Lucky in February 2014. Since then projects largely stalled, while I awaited the arrival of our third baby! It has been a crazy year and

How to Brighten Up a Friday!

What's a girl to do when the babies are driving her crazy on a Friday and she's in the middle of an existential crisis ? Go shopping of course, then out to lunch with her brother and a good friend! I couldn't help myself today when I found this bright turquoise chair at a local store and the star strainer was just what I needed to brighten up another gray skied day. Have a beautiful Friday! P.S. A blog I follow just released a fabulous app for pictures! I used it on the photo above!   Posted with Blogsy