These are the days

I cannot believe that this is the last week in September. I feel like I've been avoiding my blog, but the truth is that life with three active, fun loving boys, we're on the go, even if it means on the go at home, playing, cuddling, hanging out. By the time I have time for myself, the last place I want to be sometimes is online, since lately when I have gone online its first looking for social work jobs. That said I've been a busy bee, as one friend put it to me recently. The boys are doing awesome in soccer, love how they're growing and learning from their coaches and from their teammates, love how friendships between us and other families are beginning through our connections to both school and soccer, and it is such a blessing for us. It is great to have conversations with other parents at practice about the school, and making new friends for our family.

That said, I have had an awakening of sorts, as mentioned previously in a former post. The comfort level with myself is expanding-who knew that would happen when hitting 30? I've accomplished great and wonderful things, and while enjoying what is, have one foot outside my world, wondering what the future holds, wondering what lays beyond the horizon. I'm at peace with decisions I've made, and have stopped thinking the grass is greener on the other side, since its green and tall and wildly beautiful right where I'm standing. I'm looking in the mirror, and while at night I'm exhausted, its a good exhausted, I'm sleeping at night and taking care of myself, a little more every day.

The holidays are approaching, and it will be a beautiful season. This year, we're doing without the stampede of overspending and list making and craziness of holidays, and just enjoying what we're blessed to have around us. I recently learned how a mom I used to work with for years, one who has a daughter just a few months younger than M, is choosing a different life path now, one far removed from charter schools, soccer, and PTA. She and her husband changed their lifestyle, one that was already far from cushy being social activists in the Bay Area, and relocated to Latin America with her husband and daughter, in the hopes of doing international community-development relief work, which was something she wanted to explore. She wanted to teach her now 5 year old daughter about consuming less, and having a global understanding of the world. That was so profound, and it spoke to how I'm trying to move forward in how and what I and R want to do for our children. I'm a big believer in progress, there's only one way to go, and that's how I and R are living life with our family. So that said, we'll spend less this year, but do more. Give more. Be more. And in the end for us, that will be the best way to be.

One final tidbit, more lighthearted than the previous paragrah, here are some wonderful pictures of the boys, growing more everyday.