Skip to main content

Life has changed!


Isn’t it interesting how quickly times can change?


At the start of this month I was prepping for our busiest season of the year. All six of my kids were signed up for Spring season sports. Baseball, softball and soccer. We would have a practice nearly every evening. We would be double or triple booked some nights. We also had one night a week of religious ed and were looking forward to our 8-year-old’s first communion.


Every time a friend would ask how I was doing, I’d reply with “Busy. But it is a good busy.”

I knew it was a ‘good busy’ because my kids enjoy sports and I enjoy watching them play. I knew it was a good busy because time is crazy fast and I’m aware that one day I won’t have littles to take to practices and games and school science fair nights and friends’ birthday parties and . . . well, you get it. It is a busy that I wanted. A busy that I appreciated.


Now the calendar has been wiped clean of all of that and I’d be lying if I said it didn’t make me sad. And anxious. And a little afraid of just how long this all will last.


But I have an internal mama bear instinct and I’m thriving on that currently. It is my job to give my kids a sense of normalcy and a feeling of security amid all of this chaos. I’m in brainstorm and planning mode now of a new routine at home.


This past week was our school district’s Spring Break – so we slept in every day, went to the park some, and mostly have been really lazy.  But next week? The week we were supposed to return to school and sports and church? Since we can’t, now, I’m planning to homeschool.


I am not going to be overly ambitious and try to implement some rigorous 8-hour schedule of school work. But I also can’t let my kids become zombies with their faces stuck in devices all day – we need some sort of routine. So I’m prepping for that. We are fortunate that we are going through this while we have so many resources available to us – technology is amazing and the internet has a plethora of information for homeschooling parents. I’m grateful for that.


I already miss my gym, but I’m doing home workouts thanks to Youtube. If I am going to have my kids with me 100% of the time now I’m going to especially need the self-care that working out provides, so I am taking that seriously. I am still staying alcohol-free. I remember in the past when I was drinking how it made my anxiety worse, so the last thing I need is to fall back on something unhealthy.


I’m really sad about missing out on Mass. But I can read aloud the daily readings with my kids each day. We can watch Mass being streamed online. We can pray together just as we always have.

This is difficult for all of us but in my home I am choosing optimism and choosing to trust in God’s plan for all of us. I pray you keep your spirits up as well.




Until next time . . .








Comments

Popular posts from this blog

A love story

Once upon a time, a 20-year-old female sailor was almost arrested for violating article 134 of the Uniform Code of Military Justice.   What was she doing, you ask?   Well, she was conducting in a nature that would bring discredit to the Navy.   More specifically?   She was drinking under the age of 21.   Even more specifically?   She was drinking a bottle of Bud Light, with approximately 8-10 other young sailors, in a friend’s barracks room. This young girl knew she shouldn’t have been drinking underage.   But she wasn’t very bright, and was not thinking of the consequences of her actions if she were to be caught, so she did it anyway. That evening, a young male sailor on duty (he was a master-at-arms in the Navy, in other words-military police) was patrolling the barracks.   He’ll tell you now, if you ask him, that he was bored and looking for something to do. Well, he found something.   He found the aforementioned girl and her friends, drinking beer at the barracks, door

I don’t drink anymore. But nothing has changed! (Except everything.)

Hi, my name is Christy, and I don’t drink. I used to. I used to drink kinda frequently, actually. But now I don’t.   No, I didn’t hit some ‘rock bottom’ moment, like drinking and driving and almost killing myself (or someone else.) I didn’t stop taking care of my responsibilities while drinking. I still woke up and took care of my kids every day. I just decided that it was getting to be too much. I was starting to dislike the way I felt. And I quit. I don’t drink anymore, but nothing has changed. (Except everything.) I used to be the first to say, with a laugh, “I don’t WANT to parent without alcohol!” Parenting is hard. My children are gifts that I thank God for daily, but the work involved with raising them is the hardest work I’ve ever done. ‘Mommy wine’ culture is a thing, and I was all about it. (well, I wasn’t so much a wine girl as a beer girl, but nonetheless I bought all of the 'mommy juice' sentiment that came with drinking.) I would tell myself that I deser

A different kind of workout motivation.

  Have you ever googled “workout motivation”? Oh, I have. I sometimes wish that motivation was something I could bottle up and take a big gulp of. I want to WANT to work out, but sometimes I just don’t. Know what I mean? I want all that comes with exercise. I want to feel good, I want the health benefits and I want to like the way I look in my clothes. I want the stress relief that it promises. The endorphins. I want to BE fit. But, you know, I don’t always want to do what it takes to be fit. They say motivation doesn’t last, and that’s true. That is why exercise has to become a habit in your life. You have to be disciplined. There is no getting around that. There is no easy button. But, there are some nudges that can be found if we look for them. I am always inspired by the busiest people I know who are also the most fit. Active moms being one example of this demographic, I wrote about them a while back during the craziness of 2020 (that blog post can be found here http://myon