68 days of bliss...

It's summer vacation. The kids are home and yes, I am one of those annoying moms who loves having her kids home for the summer. No, they are not perfect angels that play delightfully at all times. Yes, they do fight with each other; with me; with the dog; with the fly that dares to land too close to their cereal.

However, I look past all that and I am happy. Grateful to have them home. I relish those times when they are lost in playing with each other, laughing and creating memories that I know they will hold onto into their adult years. Those delicious mornings of rolling to a slow start, everyone in their PJ's late into the morning, deciding at the last minute to hit the beach, the river, or hide in the house and pretend we are camping in the backyard.

These are the days of no school lunches, no wrangling for a spot in the school parking lot. This is a time free from IEP meetings, homework and all the hubbub of the school year. This is a time of quiet, and family, when we close up shop a little and just soak it all in.

Today started with the knowledge of many changes for the coming school year. Next year there would be kindergarten for a little girl, new staff, a little boy entering intermediate classes. It seems that most people don't like change, even fear change. For me though, I think I've learned that I refuse to classify change as good or bad. Change just is.

There are 68 days between now and the next school year. You can do a lot of living and loving in 68 days, and I refuse to let any anxiety about change, rob me of one second of my 68 days of bliss. Arriving in the back field to get Graysen, everyone was looking up at the sun in awe. I looked up to see what they were checking out, and there was a rainbow circling the sun. Someone joked that it was a sign of the coming apocalypse. Meanwhile, to me, I saw an omen of good to come. Some people see scary, and some people see magic and some people I suppose, just see a rainbow formed by ice crystals way high up in the atmosphere. It's all about your perspective, or more so, the perspective you choose.

So, tonight, sitting on our back deck, I felt totally relaxed, and our kids seemed totally relaxed. Usually, it takes us all a couple of weeks to fall into a routine, to really chill and yet we were all just in it. I wondered what changed.

Maybe the kids picked up on our mood, and it set the tone for the whole family. Who knows? I heard a saying once, "Never worry for more than five minutes about things you can not change." I looked everywhere to try to find out again where it was from to attribute it to someone, but the message is one to hold onto. Sure, it's not an easy feat to master, but it seems to be, that not worrying about that which you can not change, gets easier with practice.