Five on Friday--June 21

I stepped outside today & was met with the sticky, damp air and the sound of the cicadas chattering away, which I always seem to notice for the first time around mid-June and realized summer is officially upon us. This is my 3rd full summer here in Jacksonville, we arrived in town August 1 of 2016, and it sounds funny to say this but there’s something about the return of the cicadas and crickets and humidity that feels right to me. I don’t love the heat. But I can say now I’m pretty well adjusted to it and it almost felt welcome when we left church this afternoon. Or if not welcome, at least familiar. And I’m grateful for air conditioning every single day! I hope wherever you’re spending your summer days you’re finding plenty of air conditioning, water to play in and ice cream to enjoy! And now onto this week’s 5 things…

ONE

I recently heard from a friend who was saying “man, you are so good at carving out time to read aloud with your kids, and visit the library and do audio books with them, I don’t really do any of those things and I wish I did.” The first thing that came to my mind when I heard this (which I said aloud to her) was “oh my gosh but I look at what YOU do with your kids and think ‘man I wish I liked hiking or taking my kids on outdoor adventures, I should do that more often!’” It’s SO easy to compare what we each do with our families or in our free time because of social media, isn’t it? It used to be that you really never knew how another family spent their weekend unless you talked to them. However, thanks to the internet, we now find ourselves thinking “man, that mom is ROCKING summer, look at all the fun things they’ve done together,” or “look at her doing that super cool craft project with her kids, I wish I liked doing crafts with mine! I wonder if my kids will grow up somehow deprived if we aren’t painting dried macaroni at my kitchen table?” I do read with my kids, not every day but we make that a huge priority in our house because I LOVE it. It’s not a chore for me or work for me and is a great way to pass time on the floor with my boys while they quietly play without actually having to pretend to be some Lego character that I don’t understand in the slightest. But this conversation with my dear friend got me thinking about how many gifts we all have as parents and how we each parent out of our own interests and strengths, which is a beautiful thing! One of my very favorite essays is found in Shauna Niequist’s book Bittersweet, and its called The Things I Don’t Do. In it she gives herself the freedom to own the things she’s just not interested in or good at doing. We can’t all do it all. I can’t teach my kids to love books, the outdoors, school, friendships, cooking, camping, team sports, our faith community and serving others all in the same season of life. That’s enough to make any person exhausted just thinking about! What I can do is play to my strengths, lean on what our family values, and let that be good enough for right now, knowing in another season our priorities may shift.

One of the things Shauna writes in this essay is “it’s not hard to decide what you want your life to be about. What’s hard is figuring out what you’re willing to give up in order to do the things you really care about.” So she created a list of the things she loves and cares about and the things she does not do in order to have time and space for the first list. I read a lot to my kids, make sure they are in church every Sunday unless someone is sick, and I take them on lots of outings with friends because faith, community and reading are three of my highest priorities and values in life. But you know what I don’t do? I don’t craft with my kids. Ever. A year ago I made slime with them in the kitchen and thought I’d have a nervous breakdown from the mess and that was the last time we “crafted” together at all. I don’t take them on hikes. My husband will occasionally, but I am deathly terrified (like almost pass out from fear) of snakes so hiking in Florida sounds like the worst idea ever. I don’t garden with them. I have a beautiful friend here who is an incredible mom and she and her kids have created the greatest vegetable garden in their yard together and every time I’m at her house I think I should probably do that someday. But when it comes down to it, that’s not at all how I want to spend my time. And that’s okay! It doesn’t make me a less than mom because I’m not teaching my kids to grown their own food.

The same applies for those who aren’t parents or whose kids are grown—it is not just moms who play the comparison game! We look at our friend who is amazing at home DIY remodel projects and think we “should” be doing the same thing or another person’s posts about their workout routines and feel somehow like we aren’t living up to their standard because we don’t spend 3 hours in the gym multiple times a week. Friends, if you need it today, I want to give you permission, the next time you see someone post something that triggers a “oh man I should be doing that…” response in you, stop for a minute and think about the amazing things you DO fill your life with and celebrate what you DO instead of what you don’t do. We can’t all fill our 24 hours with the same activities and this whole idea of comparing how we spend our time with how another person spends theirs is robbing us of experiencing peace in whatever it is we are doing.

TWO

This week has been Kids Kamp at our church—which is basically our version of Vacation Bible School. They offer it 2 weeks in a row—identical programs both weeks to accommodate more kids since they were finding we were completely filling a week with just our own church’s kids and not leaving space for friends or any kind of outreach. It’s a LOT of kids and volunteers (we have 380 kids each week) and it’s a really fun experience but it’s a lot of energy and what I’m realizing actually drains me the most—noise. It’s LOUD. Every room is just loud. It’s so fun, but after that many hours where it’s loud with music and kids screaming and chattering and games I am exhausted. I love helping each year, but I’ve also realized after serving the past 2 years that I need to be really careful of what I put into the rest of our week. I pretty much don’t say yes to anything else for the week, even though we’re home by about 1:30 each day and this year I made sure to schedule a baby sitter for at least one of the afternoons so my kids could have a playmate and I can go have some quiet (I’m currently sitting in Panera writing this while my kids happily play board games at home with one of their favorite young adult friends). I let them watch a movie every day when we get home so I can eat lunch and lay on the couch with them and rest. They go to bed early and I do too. I canceled speech therapy for this week so we didn’t have to drive back out to the beaches area after being home two hours. There was a time probably two years ago when I would have found myself feeling guilty for those things—for allowing a full movie every day or getting a sitter when I didn’t NEED one or not scheduling any afternoon activities or play dates. For some people that sounds silly, but for some reason I have battled a lot of guilt for these things. Lately though, I’ve been working on true self care—doing those things that really help me take care of myself so I can give energy to my family. For me I’m learning those things are sleep, quiet, uninterrupted conversations with friends (so those mom’s nights out I talked about last Friday are SO important to me—I see my friends throughout the week but we always have our kids which means no conversation is ever uninterrupted and therefore it’s great, but not truly as fulfilling as uninterrupted time is), and good food that nourishes my body well. And I’m done feeling guilty for making these things a priority. As a mom, with kids that no longer nap, we watch a movie each afternoon so mom can have quiet or a cat nap on the couch with them. It means I don’t schedule anything on top of a mom’s nights out. It means I’ll hire a sitter for a summer afternoon, not every week, because that gets expensive, but I absolutely will when I know I have an exhausting week for some reason. It’s okay to put on our own oxygen masks before we crash and burn and have nothing to give because often it’s mom who sets the tone for the home if she’s the one home all day every day, and if mom is on her last thread, that probably doesn’t bode well for anyone else’s happiness either! The guilt isn’t doing anything positive for any of us, it’s time to realize that by taking care of ourselves we are setting an example for our kids of how to do the same one day.

THREE

Does anyone else have an absolutely overwhelming amount of digital photos floating around in their life? And no idea how to start sorting through them or getting them off your phones and into a form you can enjoy? With our phones turning into our cameras we have a camera with us absolutely everywhere we go and that means we have literally thousands more photos than our families took growing up. In some ways, that’s so fun—we can capture those ordinary, everyday moments so easily and as a writer and storyteller those things matter to me just as much as photos of a big vacation. But if we aren’t careful pretty soon we’re overrun with quickly snapped photos and we have no idea how to start narrowing them down and dealing with them. Asher’s teacher last year mentioned to me she had over 10,000 photos on her iphone at that particular moment and I almost had a mini heart attack for her when I heard this. But I suspect she’s not alone. I also think many of us don’t start currating them or doing something with them because in our heads we think we have to start at the year of our child’s birth and make these elaborate albums for every year of their life but we have a 7 year old and haven’t ever made one album and now we’re so overwhelmed we are almost paralyzed with the sheer number of photos those 7 years represent. I’m sharing this because I have had so many conversations with friends who maybe didn’t start making albums or off loading their photos regularly when their kids were babies (for good reason—babies are exhausting!!) but now feel so overwhelmed they don’t know where to start and wish they had a routine in place for dealing with what’s essentially become digital clutter in their lives. Someone once told me “I wish I could Marie-Kondo my phone and photos like I did my closet but that feels so much more overwhelming than sorting through old jeans.” I get that.

I heard a trick about a year ago on a podcast that was SO helpful when it came to managing digital photos that I wanted to share it here, because just by starting this ONE trick TODAY can begin to make a huge difference if you’re feeling overwhelmed by digital photo clutter. It’s called the “daily delete.” I don’t know about you, but I usually find myself snapping several photos of one moment because I’m trying to get the best expression of my kid, but then I end up with 8-10 photos when I really only need one, and we never really take the time to go back and delete those other 9, which only adds to the digital overwhelm when you look at how many photos you take in a month. This podcaster shared her routine of doing a daily delete. She set a reminder on her iphone to go off every evening about 8:30 when she was usually sitting on the couch scrolling social media or watching a show. When the reminder went off she would remember to open her photos app and simply delete any photos from that day that weren’t the absolute best—like “I’m putting this in an album or printing it for my wall” quality. That’s it. That one simple act helped her gradually start getting on top of the number of photos she was storing so when she WAS ready to make an album or do something with her photos the number to sort through was so much smaller (because making albums is literally 80% of sorting the photos first!).

Now I know what you’re thinking. “But Sarah I have three years worth of photos on this phone! How is deleting 9 photos from today going to help?” Well for the first few months you’ll have to do a “daily delete” for a week’s worth of photos at a time or maybe set a 5 minute timer each evening and see how many you can get through. Keep doing it for every day and then scroll back and keep working your way through one week or one month of photos at a time. I think we often assume we have to do this whole huge project in one sitting and that feels so daunting we can’t even begin. But if you give yourself 5 minutes a night to start going back through that photos app and see how far you can get, deleting duplicates, photos with eyes closed, photos that are cute but not the best, you will start to get a handle on the digital clutter and just like with clearing out anything else, I promise it will make you feel lighter. Next Friday I’ll share what I do once I have my photos sorted through, because what I’ve found is that working with 40 photos from a month or a few hundred from a calendar year is so much more do-able than looking at several hundred photos from a given month or literally thousands from a year. If you’re feeling overwhelmed maybe give it a try, set that reminder, do a 5 minute daily delete when you otherwise would be scrolling instagram, and see how that routine feels for a week. Let me know if you try it!

FOUR

After seven years of watching basically nothing but animated movies as a family, Charles and I are more than ready to start finding family friendly films that are live action. Don’t get me wrong, i love animated movies, but, well variety is good too. Recently we’ve watched a few together as a family that everyone loved and I thought I’d share those here in case you’re looking for great family friendly movie night ideas. The boys and I watched Dolphin Tale a couple months ago one afternoon and all 3 of us absolutely loved it. So much so that I think we watched it 3 more times that weekend. It’s based on the true story of Winter the dolphin who is found with her tail significantly wounded from a crab trap and her rehabilitation process. She learns to swim with a prosthetic tail and becomes a spot of great hope and encouragement for kids with different abilities. She lives in the Tampa area and now my boys are begging to go see her in person.

Netflix recently started showing Evan Almighty with Steve Carrell and I put it on one afternoon and the boys loved it. They are so familiar with the story of Noah’s Ark and while they didn’t follow all the politics involved in the film, they loved watching Steve “become” Noah and how he built the ark and the animals. We also recently watched the old Mary Kate & Ashley Olson film It Takes Two with Steve Guttenberg and Kirstie Allie (don’t laugh, I grew up in the 90s! Their cheesy movies are part of my childhood!). They loved that one as well. Also on our list for this summer are Cheaper by the Dozen with Steve Martin and Yours, Mine and Ours. Do you have any other live action films your kiddos have loved that I should try??

FIVE

I have never been a huge baker, but awhile ago my friend Sarah was baking every Sunday afternoon and I loved the idea. So I had made it a goal for awhile to bake one thing each week and send homemade goodies to work with my husband. I made a lot of muffins because my kids love muffins in their lunch boxes at school, but I stumbled upon a few cookie recipes that were absolutely incredible & I wanted to share two of them here—one involving peanut butter and one that is safe for our peanut-free friends to try. Both of these cookie recipes have received rave reviews from everyone who has tried them so if the summer thunderstorms end up causing your afternoon plans to be cancelled grab the kiddos and try one of these—it will take up time and no one ever complains about homemade cookies!

First, these Triple Chocolate Fudge Peanut Butter Cookies from Mels Kitchen Cafe. Have you ever tried any of her recipes? You cannot go wrong. Some of our favorite dinner recipes come from her site and these cookies, even for a person who is not a crazy sweets lover like myself, are incredible. These involve peanut butter, unsweetened cocoa powder, melted chocolate chips, reeses pieces, and whole chocolate chips. It’s like chocolate peanut butter heaven.

Second, these Chewy Chocolate Chip Cookies from Averie Cooks are so so delicious. They call for a packet of the dry instant vanilla pudding mix which I thought was odd but they make these cookies so fluffy, flight and good I couldn’t believe it.

I’m off to go bake cookies now because they pretty much sound delicious to me now that I’m thinking about them! If you try either of these recipes let me know!