Working For The Good

I had very different visions of what my 'post vacation' recap would be. I figured I would revel the time spent having my babies all home, detail our play dates with friends, express the smaller joys that beautiful days bring, when spent on school's spring break, while grudgingly giving into the Monday reality that it's over.

I didn't think I would be sitting here mentally exhausted, more than thankful the recess from school is over.



I jumped in blindly, assuming that this vacations would be spent as smoothly sailed as any other. That the crying and fighting would stem from children who were over exhausted as night approached, by the great adventures that has been seized between the day's growing hours.

Little did I know, that from the moment eyes were opened in the morning, heads would start butting, defiance behavior freely flagged, temper tantrums thrown at their finest, boundaries pushed and authority challenged well into the night.

I can't go with out saying that not all of our vacation time was not negatively. We had great vacation adventures, spent time basking in the laziness that 9 days of no school brings, visited playgrounds often and indulged in spending much time, with good friends.



Initially, I scolded myself for my lack of patience during a time that I finally had all my littles home at once. Five days in, I realized that our family has cycled around to be out of sync, something that doesn't happen often, but purposeful for growth when it does.

As of today, Nate and I hit the ground running. Restructuring fallen priorities, re-highlighting our family expectations, and handling all the negatively bold behavior with less 'fly off the handle' approach {one of us had to get a tighter grip on that handle than the other. Without naming names, I will simply say, it wasn't him}



Right now, I'm typing this at the foot of the bed of the smallest Richardson, who has seem to develop a rather intense "Mumma's gone radar". Even though, I've had to deep breath a few times after the cries have echoed as soon as the door has nearly been closed, bringing me back to my bottom of the bed perch, I'm feeling good that we are falling back in stride.

I'm holding a lot of weight in our new "Do/Done board" and I feel this vigor to simplify some of the areas of our house, I find stressful, do to their random chaos collection.


{Sheet of metal, painted with chalk paint. I hot glue gunned magnets onto the back of Snapple caps. Wrote "Do's" on construction paper and modge-podged them into the caps. Some Do's consist of Room cleaning, Dog feeding, Chicken watering, and Independent reading/play. The boys have been all but eager to move their Do's to Done's and have come up with many ideas on their own of new caps to add. I must say, even though we are one day in, I already love saying, "Check the board" as a response to them asking if it's time for their video games}

The frustrations of the bad, always has a refreshing effect on why I work so hard for the contentment of the good.



Happy Monday!