Crested Butte

We had a great time celebrating America's Birthday in Crested Butte this past weekend equipped with gorgeous scenery, fun friends, a sweet rental house, s'mores, sparklers and laughter to boot.

With that said, don't let me fool you into thinking it's always that rosy around here.  After all, the original title of this post was 'Drowning':

...I decided to finally sit down and write this post just after I had cleaned our floors while the kids were eating lunch (contained and focused) when Weston decided to simultaneously dump his bowl of mac and cheese on the floor and throw his bottle across the room in order to alert me that he had finished.

It's constant scenarios like this that make me feel like I am struggling to keep afloat during the day.  The fact that I am posting right now and suppressing the drowning sensation is a huge feat, let me tell you.

I thought that selling our house and settling in to our new home would alleviate the feeling that I have been having for several months now.  But, alas, we are as "settled" as they come and I still can't shake it.  Realizing that demands in all shapes and forms are status quo rather than the exception has been a hard thing to wrap my head around.  And yes, I do think that there has been a shift in these feelings going from one child to two.  Which is not to say that having one child is not plenty demanding...

Weston has entered full blown toddlerhood and is living it with a vengeance.  He is very physical and gets in to ev-er-y-thing.  Two things that I did not experience with Logan.  Suddenly our house has become a war zone and it stresses me out to no end that it never feels put away or clean.  I finally understand that futile feeling of cleaning up one mess only to move on to the next that has just been made.  While "leaving it" is always an option, walking into (or out of) a house that is a disaster quite literally sends my cortisol levels into overdrive.  Logan, on the other hand, has her own agenda.  One that is not quite as physically demanding but is emotionally and critically thinking charged nearly every moment of the day.  And the two of them together?  Let's just say "STOP WESTONNNN!!" is a popular phrase screech at any given moment.

It seems as though the very things that make life rich - the playdates, catching up with friends, spending time with family, social gatherings, the classes, the parks, the trips- are the ones that make the days slip away leaving no time for the "have to's".  The laundry, the bills, the yard, the phone calls, the floors, the car maintenance, the dry cleaning, the cooking, the grocery shopping, the doctors appointments, the time with your spouse!!   

The weight of the waves feels heavy and just when I think I can see the lifeboat around the corner, something else is on the horizon making it impossible to ever feel "rescued".  And what would being "rescued" look like you may ask?  Good question.  Fully relaxed?  Without worry?  Without burden?  Without commitments?  That doesn't sound quite right either.  Wouldn't that eventually translate into boredom and the antithesis of a full, abundant life?  Plaguing thoughts seem to be my norm...

And then I decided to delete most of it and focus on the positive.

Because while the days are hard, exhausting and at times self depleting, they are also the ones that make times like these all the more sweet.

Hope you had a fantastic 4th!