i'm back...

I didn't intend to stop blogging for two weeks. I have just sort of been in an overwhelmed, busy yet unproductive funk.

January is my least favorite month. Every year I get a case of the post-holiday blahs. I miss all the fun and festivities. I miss having the kids home. I miss having all the family around. I miss the break from all of the kid's activities. I start to really miss the sunshine.

I am accepting my reality...the reality of a busy schedule and responsibilities and bedtimes. I am also trying to figure out a way to

...even if just a little bit.

Mike and I talk a lot about this phase of life we are in. I want to do the important things--the things that will make the biggest difference for our kids and our family. I have had a few little reminders lately about just how fragile relationships are and how fast kids grow up.

My big "to do list" is still long. It feels like the 'checking of'f'' is going slowly. But, I am snuggling my babies and reading to them and cooking for them and helping them with homework and making them healthy lunches and listening to them and helping in their school and taking them to their activities and washing their clothes and trying not to yell at them.

Here are a few thoughts that are inspiring me these days:

Things that matter most must never be at the mercy of things that matter least.

Goethe

I have discovered that life is not a series of great heroic acts. Life at its best is a matter of consistent goodness and decency, doing without fanfare that which needed to be done when it needed to be done. I have observed that it is not the geniuses that make the difference in this world. I have observed that the work of the world is done largely by men and women of ordinary talent who have worked in an extraordinary manner.

Gordon B. Hinkley

No other work reaches so close to divinity as does the nurturing of the sons and daughters of God.

Gordon B. Hinkley

You have nothing in this world more precious than your children. When you grow old, when your hair turns white and your body grows weary, when you are prone to sit in a rocker and meditate on the things of your life, nothing will be so important as the question of how your children have turned out. It will not be the cars you have owned. It will not be the large house in which you live. The searing question that will cross your mind again and again will be “How well have my children done?”

Gordon B. Hinkley

(I sort of like President Hinkley.)

(Both images found on Pinterest. A place I always have time for.)