Imagination in Parenting                              [a creative blog]

I turned thirty four yesterday. And for my birthday, mother nature decided to send us a FULL WEEK of incredible weather. Summer, in May. I am blessed to have the opportunity to have days in which I can spend doing what I would like. Realisitically, I have very few of those days – I tend to do too much or not enough, but always in “doing something or should be doing something” mode. I don’t do well with sitting still in a productive fashion. My downtime is normally “exhaustion” and therefore I crash instead of actually relax. Yesterday, I spent a day doing anything BUT things on a list. NOTHING from a list actually. Other than the loose list of what it was that I was going to do with my day.

It went something like this…

.. breakfast with the birds.

.. soaking up the kids playing at school and then heading off on their morning walk with them. This walk is such a gift. This school is a gift. This teacher… well, there are no real words to describe this teacher. We’re blessed, that’s for absolute certain. And being that the kids are six and a half, I hold on to the fact that there’s a high chance this school occupies a large part of their childhood memories to draw from later in life.

.. a walk in the forest ALONE. Not one, but two. (so yes, I went to the forest three different times on my birthday.) on the third time it was to run. during which I hurt myself so badly I’m forced to take a few days off. More importantly, I’m forced to not run the race I had been training for. I’m holding on to the fact that I sign up for these races to TRAIN. And I did train. And that it’s better to be hurt being active than getting hurt doing nothing and being out of shape. It’s helping a tiny bit.

.. Found daffodils in the yard. I was 98% sure we wouldn’t have any by my birthday this year since last week was winter(ish) here. But they bloomed with perfect timing as they always do.

.. picnic in the park with friends of seventeen years. This year, we flip the balance of ‘I’ve known them for longer than not.’ Amazing. (it also must mean I’m getting older, in theory. right?)

.. Picnic. twice in one day. Need I say more? A rare dinner outside before black fly season. YES! Actually, come to think of it I only ate outside yesterday!

.. key lime cheesecake. (we should refer to this as lime cheesecake. we didn’t have keylimes.) delicious. and an annual tradition since last year. With every bite I was thinking how glad I am that it’s easy to make a fabulous gluten free cheesecake Well, for Adam to make said cake.

.. and last but not least, colour in the sky at bedtime. and then quiet. while I sat still hoping my injury was less than it was. but today it was confirmed that it was as bad as I initially thought. and so sit I will do.