Embracing Simplicty

Since we were teenagers, Scott has consistently said that I am simple. Maybe a little weird, but simple! No question, I march to my own drum. Fine, I like not following the crowd. But, I never labeled myself as simple. However, as I have gotten older and as I go through each season of life, I have realized that his "simple" comments may be true?! I am finally starting to appreciate that aspect of myself- especially when it comes to mothering! My desires are simple. My goals are simple. I don't like complicated. I don't like a bunch of "stuff" that clutters the simplicity of life! And right now, as a mother, I simply want happy and healthy children that deeply love each other! Nothing more, nothing grand, just the blessing of health and happiness. And for me, happiness has always been rooted in simplicity!

This post is for my children to remember the simple days and these moments that I, as a mother, embraced simplicity!!  In no way am I doing a "mothering post" about how great my view is. Because I know every mother has their own reasons, and I never judge a mothers reasoning. Every mother makes the best call for her own individual family. For my family...simple has been the way to go!

We spend our spare time in very simple ways. Yes, we do the occasional sports lesson and church activity. However at this time in their life, we have chosen not to fill their days with summer camps, activities, lessons, and stuff. In general, our days are very 1950's style! We walk down to our "Morning Tree" everyday (tree at the end of our culde-sac) which is a favorite tradition of ours! We take a handful of pennies to the water fountains in Town and Country and make wishes. This activity takes hours, and they have a blast! We walk between the 4 fountains and share our wishes and toss the pennies! Such sweet memories. We go look at the peacocks a few times a week. We drive in a neighborhood off Memorial Drive which is known for having tons of peacocks. There are always tons of them, showing off their feathers. We sit in our car, take pictures, talk to them...we love this! We walk to the creek in our neighborhood to visit "Sherman the turtle." The boys named the turtle, and we love to go sit and watch Sherman!

And most of all...we play outside, hours a day! I open the garage and the kids run and play hard. They play with each other, creating games, and they LOVE the big ditch in our front yard- hours of entertainment! Our kitchen faces our front yard, so I keep my eyes on them.  There is a constant daily rotation of neighborhood kids in our home! I often go out and play baseball with them or take part in their created game- yesterday was shooting the red lego block off the table with the nerf gun, you loose if you hit the yellow block! They also love putting the mini-trampoline in the ditch and creating all sorts of cool ways to slide or jump down the trampoline. One of my favorite things to do is embrace the simplicity by pulling a chair in the driveway, enjoy my 5:00 Corona Light and watch my children be children!! MANY of my memories will be just this...watching my kids play barefoot, outside in our front yard- their favorite thing to do!Our neighbors say they always love driving down the street to see what our kids are up to for the day- haha, drive by entertainment!

It is so easy to get caught up in technology now a days. Yes, my children will love technology and will want the latest and greatest in the future. But, not now. My children have never really played with an Ipad, I do NOT have one app on my phone (gasp), I don't even have my email set up on my phone, we have one TV in the entire house, one very old computer in the house. I know,I know...hello, it is 2015!! My children play with buckets, pine cones, sticks, and invent games in our ditch. Not because I am against technology. I just honestly don't think about technology- it never crosses my mind. Scott and I never had a discussion about keeping technology away from them, it just happened naturally. I wanted to document this because one day, my children will laugh at this paragraph as they are reading it on their "travel chip" they transmitted into their shoelace or whatever the next crazy technology thing is!!

And if they didn't laugh at that last paragraph, they will laugh at this! Yall, I have a dinner bell!! Not kidding! And I actually use it everyday! Since the kids are always, always outside...I got tired of yelling when dinner was ready. I never knew if they were in our yard or in a neighbors yard- so I would just scream! Scott got me a dinner bell, and it is SO cute to ring that bell and the boys come running! When I ring the bell, I can hear all the street kids screaming "Hunter, Trent your dinner is ready." Then, there they come running barefoot, side by side, headed home to eat!

An older man lives across the street from us, and he told me, "watching you raise your kids is like a flashback to my childhood- simple pleasures and great memories!" That wraps it up, simple pleasures and embracing the simplicity. I have chosen a simple life, and for right now- it works and feels good! However, I know that life comes in seasons. I will have a season in my life that has lots of running here and there, lots of technology, and lots of places to be....but, not now. I am not in that season, and I am loving it! Embracing the simplicity!