Reset

Rest. Reset. Slow & Deliberate.

What Christmas break looked like for us. We made the choice this year to relax and reset. Life is exhausting anymore, and we haven’t enough time to sit down, enjoy our home, and enjoy just being without doing.

It wasn’t merely necessary…it was imperative.

Life is hard this season.

The last time we had time ‘off’ was July & that doesn’t count because we spent the month traveling. But August first was back to business. Cheer. Tumble. Football. Golf. Chorus. School. When football season ended, it was time for basketball season. Since November, we’ve been going, going, going, going, going. Addy cheers at four games a week most weeks, and varsity games don’t even start until 8 pm. Evenings are long. Nights are late. Mornings are early.

Add the holidays into the mix, and it adds class parties, school events, class functions, award ceremonies, holiday lunches, Christmas parties for sports, chorus concerts, cookies with Santa, fall festivals, and many, many additional events. With four kids who also have friends, their own events to attend, and the need for someone to drive them here and there and everywhere in between in the rare moments we are not busy with sports and activities, and our family hasn’t had much togetherness. Craig and I are coming and going with different children all the time. We spent most of November passing the flu around our family of six.

This season doesn’t provide much time for adequate sleep or rest, and we felt it. Most of us were cranky, in a funk, exhausted, irritable…it wasn’t fun. We. Need. Rest.

So, we made the decision to cancel our annual mountain vacation the day after Christmas in favor of staying home and resting – and it was the single best decision we made all year. We rested. We enjoyed our home. We enjoyed one another. We had family dinners and family game nights. We had family movie nights. We set up Carter’s tent in the family room and hand camp outs. The kids had sleepovers with their besties, and we had slow, easy-going pajamas and brunch and nap dates and documentary days with our friends. My point is that we took the time to slow down and be deliberate with our rest and our minds and our bodies, and it was good.

Now I face the smallish problem that I have absolutely no desire to leave my house. I figured it out – we can all do literally every single thing from home and there is no need to ever leave the house again, and I really, really, really want to become a hermit. It’s so appealing. But my husband told me no (fun sponge…)

We just don’t have the time nor the energy to be on the go all the time anymore. Nor do we have the desire to be busy all the time anymore. We want peace, and we found it this break. We finally feel rested, healthy, and back to ourselves, and the kids were supposed to go back to school today. However, we are expecting some seriously bad weather this afternoon, so their schools made today a half-day (I don’t participate in half days), so Christmas break extended itself by one day in our house. Also something very necessary. No one is ready to go back to real life tomorrow.

So, today, we enjoy the rain and the weather. We spend one last day sleeping in and being a little lazy. One last family dinner at home before sports keep us out every weeknight. One last pajamas and slippers only day before we have to wear real clothes again.

I’m not looking forward to it, but I am glad we had the time to rest and reset. I recommend it for everyone. Sometimes, going off the grid and doing your own thing is the best.