These Days

As summer appears to be approaching full swing out here in these parts of the Southwest I am embracing all that the season has to offer. Hot days (but not humid and there is a H-U-G-E difference) have found us and I am loving it. It certainly does help that we have central air. (Which we just turned on about 2 days ago and only for part of the day because the heat really isn't too bad. It isn't a bad gig either that we live in the desert and so even though the temps may reach the mid 90's during the day the nights are still pretty crisp. This allows us to have the windows open at night thus alleviating the need for the central air to be on all day/night.) It also really helps that we have a pool and can cool off at any point during our day (or night) for a few moments or a few hours as we see fit. We are blessed. Truly blessed in so many ways and I grateful for what I have.

Summer also allows for me to slow down our family life. For a few weeks no one has soccer practices and I am not running around several days a week taking one child here and one child there. The only activity that we have is the girls gymnastics class on Wednesday nights. This slowed down scheduled has allowed Bob to take the car to work more often than not (instead of me driving him) and in doing so, has given me the luxury of having days and days where I cannot go anywhere that I am not willing to walk because I do not have access to a vehicle. We had discussed getting a second vehicle as of late because I am running the kids and myself around every.single.day., but now that everything has slowed down  I am no longer pushing for that. (I do think that eventually we will have to cave in and get one although in so many ways it has been so nice only having 1 vehicle.)

Another reason for this new slow paced life is that towards the end of the spring I was really wearing myself down. I was just constantly feeling burnt out. I hated the fact that even though we are a homeschooling family and don't have to deal with the hustle and bustle of getting kids to and from school 5 days a week I was still feeling like a chicken with my head cut off running here and there. One of the greatest things about living in NM (and there are many) is that the homeschooling community in Las Cruces is amazing. There are a ton of homeschooling families from all different walks of life, all different economic backgrounds, all different nationalities, and all different family belief systems. It truly is a blessing, BUT on the flip of that is the ability for me to over schedule our family with activities out the wazoo. This burns me out and it burns the kids out. After weeks of feeling icky, as often does, a thought popped into my head that I hadn't really thought about before. And it was this:

By the nature of the way our family is set up, with me being a stay at home homeschooling mama, I am the one who controls the activities our family does each week. Therefore, I am the one who controls how stressed out our family gets. 

With that thought in mind I decided that, with the exception of practices in the evenings, the only days that I am going to commit to activities for our family during the day are Wednesday and Friday (and even then I will be a bit choosy about what we do). The other days of the week we will be at home focusing on family time and other home related activities. I know that by doing so I am going to miss out on some really cool activities with some really cool people, but for my sanity and the sanity of those who reside within the walls of my home I just need to say 'no'. 

We began implementing this plan a few weeks ago and it has been really nice.The kids and I have not done anything on Monday, Tuesday, Thursday for the past few weeks, and I cannot tell you how much this down time has positively affected our family.  There are still some activities I do in the morning (alone) before Bob goes to work such an errand here and there, but I would like to get it to the point where I am doing absolutely nothing outside of home on Monday, Tuesday, and Thursday of each week. That means all appointments: doctor, dentist, etc...are all scheduled for Wednesday and Friday.

I think that part of the reason things got so out of control here is because I was so intent of getting all of the kids settled into a new life that I wanted to expose them to as many different opportunities as I could to help them transition well. But in doing so I compromised my family by over scheduling us. Now it is my job to right that wrong and get us back focused on the 6 of us with friend time thrown in here and there as a bonus. 

Our family chooses to live the way we do because we don't want to live a life at high speed. We don't want to consume, consume, consume and go, go, go. That isn't a life worth living - not to us anyway. But because that is the pace that our world tends to move it is easy to get caught up in that fast moving life. Sometimes I even ride in that lane for a while before I realize I joined in the race. That is what has what has happened to us. And to be honest, it probably will happen again because unless I am paying attention to it that life just sneaks up on me. It is my job as the heart of this family to keep it beating at a pulse that Bob and I determine to be the best rhythm for what we are trying to achieve as parents : to allow our children to flourish and provide them with a solid foundation from which they can go out into this world and be the people God intended them to be.  

Slowing down by saying 'no' to outside commitments is a step in the right direction.