For all kinds of really great reasons, the weekends leading up to Family Day weekend were really busy.
As we looked at our calendar for the Family Day long weekend, we realized that we didn't have many plans and as the weekend got closer, we made the radical (for us) choice to keep it that way. Other than an overnight Grace had planned, a long awaited breakfast date that I had on Saturday morning with girlfriends, Church on Sunday and skating on Monday afternoon, our weekend was pretty open.
This weekend turned out to be fantastic. Can you believe I told Steve that I think I enjoyed it more than Christmas holidays? Friends spontaneously dropped by on Friday night for a couple of hours. Steve had time to work on the construction of our new mudroom. We rented movies. Planned spontaneous friend sleepovers for the girls. Tried 2 new dinner recipes that were BIG hits (and that is saying a lot!). Napped. Skated. Walked. Hung out and rested. The fact that the sun was shining was pure bonus. I feel like my soul was enlarged this weekend and I actually feel refreshed. Tonight my cup feels full.
Going into this weekend, I was praying for God's peace to rule in our family. Peace that would permeate and settle in deeply - in our home, in our hearts and minds, in our conversations and so on. My hope and dream for the weekend was that we would "ruthlessly eliminate hurry from our lives". It was a quote I had heard from a study our Mom's group had done a few years back ( I believe the credit goes to John Ortberg). That was my prayer for the weekend. And God delivered big time.
More and more, I'm seeing the value in taking time to slow down, rest, create margin and leave room for the unexpected and spontaneous. One of my goals for 2012 is to do more of it:)
Happy Family Day!
p.s. the recipes I mentioned can be found here and here.
As we looked at our calendar for the Family Day long weekend, we realized that we didn't have many plans and as the weekend got closer, we made the radical (for us) choice to keep it that way. Other than an overnight Grace had planned, a long awaited breakfast date that I had on Saturday morning with girlfriends, Church on Sunday and skating on Monday afternoon, our weekend was pretty open.
This weekend turned out to be fantastic. Can you believe I told Steve that I think I enjoyed it more than Christmas holidays? Friends spontaneously dropped by on Friday night for a couple of hours. Steve had time to work on the construction of our new mudroom. We rented movies. Planned spontaneous friend sleepovers for the girls. Tried 2 new dinner recipes that were BIG hits (and that is saying a lot!). Napped. Skated. Walked. Hung out and rested. The fact that the sun was shining was pure bonus. I feel like my soul was enlarged this weekend and I actually feel refreshed. Tonight my cup feels full.
Going into this weekend, I was praying for God's peace to rule in our family. Peace that would permeate and settle in deeply - in our home, in our hearts and minds, in our conversations and so on. My hope and dream for the weekend was that we would "ruthlessly eliminate hurry from our lives". It was a quote I had heard from a study our Mom's group had done a few years back ( I believe the credit goes to John Ortberg). That was my prayer for the weekend. And God delivered big time.
More and more, I'm seeing the value in taking time to slow down, rest, create margin and leave room for the unexpected and spontaneous. One of my goals for 2012 is to do more of it:)
Happy Family Day!
p.s. the recipes I mentioned can be found here and here.
