Our Everyday Chaos

We live a life of chaos by choice, and many people cannot fathom how or why we choose to do what we do.  There is 2 questions/phrases we often hear; “How do you do what you do?” or “I don’t understand how you do it”, and “Why do you do it?” In today’s busy society, I thought I should blog a series of how we manage to do what we do. I plan on offering tips and tricks and even recipes on how we manage our chaotic schedules. Our chaos equates to a well-oiled machine, and each of us has a part that keeps the machine running. Today I will answer the why, because it’s simple.  If I have learned anything in almost 17 years of parenting, it’s that as the kids grow older the phases change, and as a parent you have to be flexible and willing to change with each phase.  

I have touched on why we do what we do in my other blog (you can find it here and I explain it in several different posts), but the most simple answer is; because our kids are happy and there is no other joy as a parent than watching your kids do things that they enjoy doing. We have always taught our kids that if you attempt to follow your dreams, some pretty amazing things can happen.  Of course we keep it real by also teaching them or allowing them to learn that there are disappointments in life and not all dreams will come true, but none of them will come true if you don’t try, just like they don’t know if they will enjoy doing something unless they try it.  Thus, began our journey with our chaos.   Besides, how do you know what makes you happy unless you have experienced it?  How do you know you will like to watch soccer unless you have seen a game?  How do you know if you don’t like traveling unless you have tried it?  

Over the years our kids have asked to try many different things, drama, band, a variety of different sports, boy scouts, girl scouts, traveling abroad. And over the years they have discovered what they are passionate about and have found things they didn’t really enjoy.  For example Shawn discovered he doesn’t like soccer and he doesn’t really enjoy baseball.  Jacee has discovered that she doesn’t really like Lacrosse.  And both of them got to a point that they didn’t enjoy boy scouts and girl scouts.  Through trial and error that got us where we are today.  The chaos we have moved into the past year is our new normal. 

Long story short, we are at a point where our kids have found what they love to do.  They play the sports they do simply because they have a love for the game.  Doing what they do today is following their dreams. And wrapped into that, it is our dream to see our kids happy and attempting to achieve their dreams, and we made the choice to help them achieve them in whatever we can.  That meant, as a family, we chose to move them to a competitive level within their respective sports that they play. And this year was a great snap shot of what the next 4 years will be.  It will be more chaotic than ever before. We thought we had little spare time in years past, we now really will not have spare time.  There will be lots of practices, lots of tournaments, lots of showcases, lots of games, and lots of traveling and very little spare time. There will inevitably be blood, sweat, tears and many sacrifices made by all 4 of us. The dynamics of our lives have changed.  Our time management skills will need refined, our family organization more important than ever before. We will miss functions (and please don’t take it personally! We try to make every effort to make things but sometimes it will not work out!  Don’t stop inviting us, just understand that we will try!). We will have to forgo some of our own annual parties (don’t take this personally either! We will try here as well).  We won’t be camping every other week.  We won’t have the best lawn on the block, or even the cleanest house.  And we will undoubtedly be exhausted, so very exhausted.  At the end of the day, looking into our kids eyes and seeing their eyes light up and seeing their smiles doing what they love is worth every single minute.   They are happy, enough said. If I have learned anything this past year, it’s that our family dynamics are unique and this is our journey to be on and a choice we have made together.  I tell my kids two things; “Shoot for the stars, but expect the worst.  Sometimes you will reach the stars and sometimes you will miss, and sometimes you will find that it turned out exactly as it was meant to, but differently than you had dreamed.  But in the end if you miss, make a choice to try again, or decide it’s not your cup of tea and move onto something new.   But you can neither succeed nor fail unless you try.” AND “The world is a beautiful place and has too much to offer, don’t just sit and let it pass you by.  Experience it.”

Be happy……..follow your dreams.

Now that I have answered that question….The rest of the series will be how we manage the chaos, still grow our own food, and overall manage to do what we do.  I will even share my tips and trick on budgeting.