Declaring a holiday. And sharing shoes.

Summer.  5th grade graduation, Vacation Bible School and the 4th of July are all past. Zoom! I feel a bit like Ferris Bueller but may I point out its important to slow down and look around?   I don't want to miss all the little joys in my deadline driven, list checking life.  

Bright and early on 4th of July my 4 yr old firecracker set about the house taping pictures of hearts to the walls.  I watched for a bit and then asked her why.   

"I've decided to celebrate Valentine's Day today."  

​Okay then. You do you little miss. 

She did accept with joy the cotton candy at the neighborhood carnival and handled her giant sparkler with the seriousness the event required. She's wearing my flip flops because half way through the day one of her shoes disappeared.  I swear our family can't manage our stuff. After valiantly attempting to keep my car clean it has again deteriorated into squalor. My mom left her glass dish at the 4th of July BBQ. I didn't dare take it out of the car to clean it off and properly return it to her because I was afraid the sewing room would swallow it up if I carried it into the house. So I handed it back to her today still with berry juice stains.  Sigh. I make it sound like our house is a mess. Truly not so. My husband is amazingly competent and so the mess is really quarantined to my car and my sewing room.  I'm afraid sometimes my kids follow my lead.  Or lack there of.   

Earlier in the week our eldest got to spend the day at the beach with a dear friend. Is there anything better than standing with someone you love staring out at a wide expanse?  It's like a reminder that everything is bigger than you at the very same time you are grounded with a closeness from your friend. Oddly enough this daughter is wearing my shoes also. She's reached the age we're nearly the same size shoe and she'd grown out of her sandals. So mine went to the beach.  I swear most of successful motherhood is in the accepting your stuff is not your own.  Any of it.  Even your time. 

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Right now I'm sitting in an empty house.  I just got home from work. One kid is off at a friend's for the night.  The resident chef and the little one are headed back this way.  If I remind myself to slow down perhaps tonight we'll paint, or eat strawberries straight off the bushes.  Or we'll read or take a walk.  If I don't remind myself I'm likely to sit self absorbed on my phone, or watch a brainless show and generally ignore my family.   I'll waste the space and time. So I'm taking these few moments to pause.  To remind myself.  Maybe this is why my daughter taped hearts to the wall and declared an extra Valentines Day right in the midst of our mess and crazy schedule on the Fourth of July.  Sometimes we have to be decisive to love well.  ​