We’re back.  Back from our week-long road trip.  Back to our summer routine.  And most importantly, back to our eating routines.

Let me preface this post by saying, we had an absolutely amazing time away.  We got to see and do things that we will take with us for a long time to come.  The kids were absolutely amazing and for the first time ever, we didn’t use a stroller!!!  The little one did a LOT of walking, but she did it without complaint!

But, there is a certain comfort in getting back home, and getting back into routine.

One thing I do like to do is to menu plan for the week ahead.  It’s a habit that forces me, on a Sunday morning before we go the market/grocery store/specialty stores to think about what we have going on in the week ahead and to make sure that we achieve some sort of balance in what we eat.

I also really like to ensure that we always have a nice chicken to roast for dinner on Monday night.  Really, who doesn’t love a roast chicken?  Whatever we don’t eat for dinner on Monday nights gets chopped up, portioned out, and frozen to be used in lunches for the Husband and myself during the week.  And after dinner is cleaned up, and the kids are getting ready for bed, I get out the crcok pot and start a batch of bone broth with all the bones from the chicken.

After all the pizza and other questionably food we’ve all consumed over the last week, I can assuredly say I am absolutely CRAVING a nice roast chicken tonight!!!

So we stopped at the Kalahari Water Park for one day this week as part of our family road trip  The Husband had looked into it, booked it, and was super excited to see the kids go nuts in the largest waterpark in the US.  I have to admit, I was pretty excited too; I thought I really liked waterslides.

Thought being the operative word.

As we entered the park, I did a quick scan of all the slides, and settled on one we could all do as a family.  The Rippling Rhino.  I envisioned a gentle ride; not too fast, gentle curves, lots of smiles and giggles from the kids.  We climbed the stairs up to the start of the slide, hopped into the specialty raft, and were launched into a pitch black tunnel.  The sharp turns had us rocking from side to side, the current of the water was spinning the raft around, and there were bumps and drops that literally had my heart leaping out of my chest.

In the back of my mind, I knew that quite literally, there had to be light at the end of the tunnel.  That the ride would come to an end, there would be lots of giggles, and my heart rate would return to normal.  But that did NOTHING to quell the panic I was feeling.

And just when I thought I couldn’t take another second of the ride, I caught a glimmer of light, and before I knew it, we were back into daylight, the ride was over, there were lots of giggles from everyone, and the kids raced off to try a different slide.  But my panic didn’t really subside.

The same scenario repeated itself over and over again for the next two hours.  And again the next morning when we got up and did it all over again.

I could not just “go with the flow”, enjoy the twists, turns and bumps in the slides, especially when I had no idea what was coming up next, and I certainly did not find any sweetness in the moment when the darkness gave way to light.

And so, the slides at the Kalahari Water Park have become a metaphor for my life.  I don’t like going with the flow, I really don’t like NOT knowing what’s coming up next, and rather than enjoy the sweetness that comes from making it through a difficult time, I prefer to re-group and strategize on how to be best prepared for whatever might come my way next.

Evidently, I have some work to do . . .

In the meantime, the kids are already asking when we can go back.

We left today on a little road trip.  It’s the Husband’s 40th and so, in his honour, we’re off to see some of his favourite MLB teams in action.  Neither of my kids particularly like the concept of leaving on a trip.  Once we get there, they love being away.  And there are usually tears when it’s time to come back home again.

So, this past week, the little one has been asking lots of questions about when we’ll be leaving, how many days until we leave, do we have to leave???

And then this morning, I heard my favourite phrase of hers these days, “Is today tomorrow?”.

Yes, yes, it is sweetie.

Today IS tomorrow.

And on that note, I’m going to go out and enjoy all that this tomorrow has to bring.

Our usual morning routine is to get the kids eating breakfast, which includes a small glass of smoothie, while the Husband and I get organized for the day.  For some reason, a long time ago, the Husband and I thought it would make the smoothie more “fun” for the kids (read get them to drink it with less prodding by us) if we let them have a straw or two in their smoothie cup.

This morning, while I was in the kitchen making my breakfast, the little one managed to use both her straws to overturn her glass and spill her entire smoothie across the breakfast table.  In retrospect, it’s kind of remarkable that this doesn’t happen more often.  But, since it is a relatively rare event, the poor thing was horrified and on the verge of tears – so rather than respond with anger and/or annoyance, I looked at her and calmly said “It’s ok.  Really.  We all make mistakes.  Even mommy makes mistakes”.  To which she replied “What????  You make mistakes?”.

The subject of resilience has come up in my reading a lot this week; and the idea that the way parenting has evolved, we now try to shield our kids from experiencing anything that could be remotely negative or upsetting.  And as such, we’re not teaching them how to recover from making mistakes or how to pick themselves up after life throws them a curveball.

As much as I’ve tried to teach my kids the value of hard work, and how great it feels when you achieve a goal, I have clearly not shown them nearly enough just how many mistakes we (I) all make in a day; and more importantly, how we (I) work to rectify those mistakes.  And so, I will set about explaining to the little one, that while sitting down and having a good cry over a spilt smoothie might seem like the right thing to do, you can derive infinitely more satisfaction from cleaning up the mess and getting on with the day.

Now . . . back to those smoothies.  Yes, we do make the kids drink a smoothie every day.  We make enough so that each kid gets a small glass and the Husband and I get a large glass.  We use a Vitamix blender, but have also had a Blendtec and a Black and Decker blender along the way.  We use kefir as a base for our smoothies – but also add in some orange juice.  The Husband typically makes the smoothie, so he’s the one who knows all the ins and outs of what goes into it – but it’s usually a banana or two, an orange, an apple, and then whatever fruit we have in the fridge, and/or frozen organic berries to round it out.

Coupled with my desire to clean up/out my house is a desire to really make it our “home”.  Or, as my daughter would say “Mommy, you need to put on the finishing touches”.

One of these little touches that I want to add to my kitchen is a framed copy of one of my family’s staple recipes.  It holds a very special place my heart, and I think it already does for my kids too.  So, as my printer was warming up to scan the recipe, I started to poke around on the internet.  And in looking though Brene Brown’s blog, I came across this quote from Harriet Lerner that stopped me in my tracks:

“It is not fear that stops you from doing the brave and true thing in your daily life. Rather, the problem is avoidance. You want to feel comfortable so you avoid doing or saying the thing that will evoke fear and other difficult emotions. Avoidance will make you feel less vulnerable in the short run but, it will never make you less afraid.”

I’ve avoided a lot over the last few years.  I’ve found a LOT of comfort in the aisles of Target and Loblaws and the corridors of Yorkdale.  I told myself, and the unbelievably understanding Husband that we needed all these things.  The kids NEED enough clothes to allow for three changes of clothes per day and the possibility that laundry only gets done once a week; I NEED to have enough toys/crafts/things to do with the kids in the event that one or both get sick and we’re stuck inside without cable and I need to amuse them; our pantry/storage room MUST have enough back up supplies in it that we can go at least a month, if not longer, without visiting a grocery store.  It was a good strategy . . . in that it worked for me for a long time.  But it would appear that I finally got tired of running.

I have lots of theories as to why I needed/wanted to avoid really dealing with the events of the past few years.  And several theories as to what has lead me to the place I find myself in today (thank you Crossfit).  But rather than get into that now, I think I’m going to take my newly-scanned recipe to Michael’s and find a frame for it so that I can finally put those finishing touches on my kitchen.  And for the first time in a long time . . . I can safely say . . . that’s all I am going to come home with!

This morning, my daughter sat on the steps leading down to our basement watching me shovel piles of soon to be discarded ephemera amassed over the last 20 years into garbage bags, questioning why I was getting rid of so many “treasures”.

“Why, Mommy?”  She asked.  “Is it because you’ve had it for long enough?”

And just like that, she hit the nail on the head.

Over the past few weeks, I’ve been slowly picking through my house; tackling small jobs like cleaning out the kids’ closets of clothes that no longer fit, cleaning out the medicine cabinet of meds that are about to expire, and weeding out the pantry for staples that have passed their prime.

But at the end of the week, I started in on my “BIG” job; cleaning out the basement.  Realistically, this shouldn’t be such a big job.  When we re-did our basement 2 years ago, I cleaned out lots of stuff we no longer needed.  But somehow, we still managed to have bin after bin filled with “important” stuff.  And so, at 6am this morning, I started to go through the bins.

And by 8am when my daughter came down to check on me and what I was doing, she found me surrounded by piles of stuff that I just no longer needed to hold on to.  Sure, I kept some things; but as for the majority of it all . . . well, I finally realized that the memories of things, events, were far sweeter than the physical mementos I had been holding on to for so long.  And with that realization, I found the courage to let it go.

So yes, my dear sweet girl, “I have had it for long enough”.