The struggles of everyday life.... 

First, lets get this straight. I Love my life, even with all the struggles. Now as my daughter once quoted "Our life is perfect" I would love that to be true and I had to explain that none is perfect and give her examples of how its not. She got the point because one day we were having a bad morning and she said "yea life isn't so perfect". She's 6. 

When I was younger and had no kids, It seemed like whatever happened unexpectedly or not planned was mostly okay on a everyday basis. Now it seems like everything we do has to be planned out around work, kids, spouses, school, extra curricular activities and everyday life. 

As of even the beginning of this year, it seemed like I was overwhelming everyone by the amount of getaways we were planning, it became almost like a chore to go away because we couldn't recover from our last trip and then have to get ready for the next. We traveled constantly since 2020 and even before then some. We have always been the kind of couple now family- that has always  been on the go. Both my husband and I have been close to our families even though we live far away from family and friends. Always takes hours to see them, so any visiting has to be a getaway. Its hard. I remember when I first got married to my husband and it was hard to not see my family for long periods of time and when we did we would miss out on being home constantly, we didn't feel like we were locals to our community. Through the years we learned that sometimes we have to say no and understand that we cant do it all. 

This is the first year that I decided after living in our town for 7 years that we would be out of town less and try to enjoy our Santa Ynez valley. So guess what, I decided to sign up for almost all and overdo it at home. LOL. We have our daughter enrolled in Ballet, hip-hop, soccer, she does skateboarding at times and my husband enjoys helping our church youth group on Thursdays and now we are going to be Sunday school teachers! Gosh. Talk about winding down...Let alone both of us work fulltime and my daughter goes to before and after clubs. I had to stay away from the PTA at school this year and I slowed down on constantly changing and redecorating our condo. I now love our condo and little by little the upgrades we make. 

I love being busy but as I get older I have to realize that spending quality time actually doing nothing or taking the time to relax is a good thing. We don't constantly need to be out doing something. Now I know a lot of you might not have this problem. I know so many home bodies and its okay to have a balance. I love entertaining and when I'm home I try and come up with ideas to make anything more special than it has to be according to my husband. :)  I need to work on being busy with exercising and being more healthy. Our household could use some more at home cooking other than a couple nights a week. 

I guess what I am trying to say is every family is different and you cant compare or even want to do the same things other families do but just know whatever you do is to be happy. You try it and if it doesn't work out then change it. To accommodate the household chores I tend to break it up between before and after work. I hate doing any kind of chores on weekends but my husband likes doing laundry on Sundays if we can get to it. I have two or more days a week where I wont usually use social media or go on my phone to take the time to read. As usual most of my planning for parties, getaways or anything fun is late at night before bed. One thing we need to work on is more reading time and math time. Its so hard to squeeze that in during the week. Sometimes a few minutes makes a difference in whatever you do. I find myself multitasking while waiting for stuff or in line. Ultimately I wouldn't be able to do anything I do if it wasn't for my husbands help or the strength of God guiding our everyday lives. My husband knows what he signed up for and it helps that he never forgets.  :) Next semester or season maybe tone it down with the business....

Until Next time. 

Lately with Leslie Jacqueline.