I am content

This past week we've been on Spring Break. Tomorrow the kids go back to school and Mike & I head back to work. And I am content.

It's such a peaceful feeling. I'm really grateful for the time we spent as a family, but even more grateful that I am in the calm, rested place I find myself.

We didn't have an extravagant Spring Break. We visited my father-in-law for a couple of days and visited two college campuses for Annie. We spent one night in a hotel and spent 4 days at home.

There were times that I logged onto Facebook and saw people's vacation photos from tropical locales and felt a twinge of jealousy. But I didn't go there. Instead, I chose to "sit still and allow contentment to come to me." (Thanks Elizabeth Gilbert.)

So what's made me content?

1. A deck of cards. I bought a deck of cards from the hotel gift shop and since then we've had hours of fun sitting around a table playing Crazy 8s and War. Best $2.97 I ever spent.
2. Rain. Annie & I got caught in a torrential downpour during one of her college visits. It was wet and inconvenient and memorable. Whether or not she chooses that school, we'll always be able to remember that day we got soaked in St. Louis.
3. Laundry. Ordinarily laundry would not be a source of contentment. But I spent the past 2 days doing load after load of laundry. The result? We are heading back to reality with clean clothes and matched socks and boy, does that feel good.
4. Sleep. What a difference being rested makes! While we were on a schedule during the first few days of Spring Break, the past 4 mornings I had nowhere to be, so I slept in until 9:30 or so. Love that little luxury. 
5. Cooking. I know...who am I and what have I done with Amy? Honestly, because we have been home with no place to be, I've had the time to plan a menu and cook. Nothing fancy, really, although tonight I did make some pretty yummy roast cauliflower. 
6. Love. I got to spend this week with people I love doing nothing special in particular (ok, the college visits were pretty special), but sharing space and time. Life is good.

Better than the Food Network

Here is the scene:

Annie - at theatre rehearsal

Charlie - at soccer practice

Mike - running the carpool between the two

Robbie - outside playing with friends

Me - Lounging on the couch, firing up the DVR to watch the first episode of Next Food Network Star.

I was just settling in, beginning to size up the contestants when the back door flung open and Robbie ran in.

"Mom, can we go to the park?"

What I wanted to say: "What? I just started my show. The house is quiet and I was ready to be quiet in it."

What I did say: "Why do you want to do that?"

"Because it's fun. And my friends are going."

I took a deep breath and let out a long sigh. I knew what I wanted to do, but Robbie never wants to go outside, let alone leave the homestead. So I hit the pause button on my show and said, "Sure."

Twenty minutes later at the park, Robbie had climbed and slid and teetered and swung. And his friends were nowhere to be found. So I suggested we take the nature trail -- which is really a paved path -- and walk over by the creek.

Silly me. I thought he'd be content looking at the creek from the path. Nope, we had to go down to the bank. I thought he would be content tossing rocks into the water. Nope. "Mom, can I get in the water?"

The water level was low and the hope in his voice was high. So this is how we spent the next hour:

 

Wet. Muddy. And so much better than watching the Food Network.

Bedecked

Given that it's December 1st, I thought it was time to deck the walls here at the 4th Frog. And I'm quite tickled that I was able to do it all by myself. It was mostly a cut and paste job, but I did have to go in and edit the HTML. So a little woot! woot! to moi!

But what's way more amazing than the fact that my blog is looking all holiday-ish is the fact that my house is. And I can't take any credit for that.

I left home at 10am on Saturday morning to take Charlie to basketball practice, ran a few errands, picked him up at practice at noon, ran a few more errands and came home to Christmas central. A not-so-short elf named Annie had been busy for several hours decking the halls -- and the bookshelves and the staircase.

I can't tell you how good it felt to walk in and have all that work done. Just about the only thing she didn't do was put up the Christmas tree. So, when Robbie looked at me and said, for about the 12th time since I carried the $49 bargain Christmas-tree-in-a-box into the house, "NOW can we PLEASE put up the Christmas tree?!," I happily said yes.

There was definitely some apprehension as I took the tree out of the box, hoping it wouldn't look like a $49 tree. It went together easily enough. But it as the branches unfurled, the tree was looking a little Charlie Brown-ish.

Annie was moritifed. "Mom! You bought a Christmas stick! I can see right through to the middle."

As I assured it her it would look fine once we fluffed all the branches and hung all the ornaments, inside I was afraid she was right. But I was determined to make it work. So we all kept fluffing and hanging, waiting for the transformation from Charlie Brown to Martha Stewart.

Hearing the kids recall where certain ornaments came from, seeing them light up upon finding foam-laden, puffy paint-coated ornaments made by their formerly preschool hands gave me that warm, tingly "thank you God for putting me here" feeling.

When it was all said and done, I'm not sure what we got was Martha Stewart, though truthfully I'm not the Martha Stewart type. What we ended up with was the warm, hodge-podgy look I love in a Christmas tree.

Now that the decking is done, I'm hoping we can spend the next weeks of Advent creating more of those "thanks for putting me here" moments, really enjoying the season. Driving around looking at lights, doing a little holiday baking, going to Christmas concert and live nativities, etc.

How about you? Have you decked your halls yet? What do you hope to do before Christmas arrives?