Epiphany

So lately, even though my life is so insanely crazy, I've been doing pretty well. Keeping up with school and work and the kids. Not perfectly, but good enough. Most of the time I'm quite happy with my life because it's full and pretty fun, and interesting.

Once in a while though, I have a minute or an hour of total panic. The sheer volume of things I need to do and should be doing and should have already done piles up on me and I realize that I just can't do it! And I have a minor panic attack. Or cry. Loudly. But then the moment passes, I get back to work, and I realize that even if I can't do everything, I can do enough.

And tonight, I had an epiphany. What if I decide that I'll do the best I can, and that'll be that? Obviously I can't add more hours to my day or more hands to my arms. And if I do my best and I still get C's or we have to sell our house or I get fatter or one of my kids gets behind in math or we don't have family night for a month or I forget some of Jason's doctor appointments or my bathrooms don't get cleaned for a few months or my kids have to wear dirty socks to school or we have frozen pizza for dinner 3 times a week or we go into more debt or I void the warranty on my car because I didn't get an oil change or heaven forbid I have to ask my parents for more money.......I think I'll probably live through it. I think my kids might live too-- and my husband! We will all survive.

Because here's the thing. In my handy dandy psychology classes, I've been learning about stress. And how people that see stress as a threat spend a lot of time dealing with their feelings of stressed-out-ness and people who see it as a challenge are motivated to get some work done. When I get overwhelmed and start panicking, guess what I'm not doing? ANYTHING! How ridiculous is it to spend a perfectly good hour crying that I could be spending doing some of this stuff that needs to get done?

So instead, I'll just keep going.  I'll do what I can, because that's all I can do.

Homecoming!

Big happenings at our house.  Our first daughter's first date!  And it was a formal dance.

The asking...

The answering...

(there's a bottle of soda hiding under there)

The gorgeous girl on the big night!

Posing with her new umbrella since it was raining....

The cute couple!  (This is Collin, he and Nat have been friends since elementary school)

The corsage!

This is the couple they double-dated with.  Earlier in the day they went bowling, then to Sizzler before the dance.

And here's one from the school website of them at the dance!

Sweet 16

Natalie is 16!  I was a terrible picture taker for her birthday for some reason.  Here she is with her magnifying glass cake, which she made herself:

And apparently the only other pic I took on her birthday was the amazing present Jess made.  She painted her this Nancy Drew poster!

Exactly one week later, we had successfully jumped through ALL the drivers ed hoops, and she got her license!! She's a really good driver, and I'm already basking in the benefits of having my own little driver in the house!  Especially nice since Jason isn't able to drive-- it's not just me anymore!

The weekend after her birthday was Homecoming (stay tuned for my next post!) so she waited and  had her party the next week.  It was a low-key Nat kind of party.  Games and swimming and homemade pizzas and Tangled!  They had lots of fun....and I didn't take any pictures.

I am SO proud of my gorgeous grown-up 16-year-old!  She is so smart and responsible.  She's up to 9 piano students now and does the grocery shopping and cooks some dinners every week in addition to getting stellar grades and helping to watch the kids.  I don't know what I'd do without her!