Changing Times

All of the busy-ness this past weekend (Sunday was crazy too) got me thinking about how our family has seemed to turn a corner recently. The kids are all out of the baby/toddler stage and starting to go out into the world, and it's like the whole family has been in confinement and now we're suddenly free and bursting out with activity. I think it happened when I wasn't looking, sometime during the lost year that was 2008. Lost because of my grandmother's death and the work involved in settling her estate and, to a lesser extent, the volunteer work I was swamped with for Girl Scouts. (I should've said no, but the work was fun and personally rewarding, and it kept my mind off my grandmother.)

Those things kept me active individually but not the family as a whole; now, more and more often, our activities involve either the whole family or some subset of us. Girl Scouts taught me to camp so I went camping recently with The Eldest and her troop. The Youngest started soccer which involves the two of us going to his practices twice a week, and all of us going to his games on Saturdays. DH and I gave each other bikes for Christmas so we all go biking together as often as we can. Miscellaneous things crop up now like movies we can all go to or the ice skating event we attended Saturday. Sunday is another example- the in-laws hung out with us while we saw "Monsters vs. Aliens", biked, and had a fire and s'mores on the back patio. We've actually become an ACTIVE FAMILY, go figure!