Today’s my last day of winter vacation.  Tomorrow, everyone in our house starts the daily grind all over again.  Which means, 5am start times, getting kids up for school (or grandma’s), packing lunches, making breakfast, getting out of the house by 7:50 or 8am, rush hour traffic, happy new years at the office…all good things generally.  But I am going to miss being home, just a bit (I’m not sure I can take too much more though lol).  Any parent of young kids will tell you, it’s absolutely draining.  Don’t get me wrong, I enjoyed many of the moments, but it has also been taxing, probably more so than my regular job.  I’ve been at home with the girls for most of the past two weeks, with the exceptional day or afternoon off to myself (like this afternoon) and I almost feel like I need a break from my break.  Fortunately, I’ve had plenty of fun new ventures to distract me in the meantime.

But you know what I will miss?  I’ll miss the lack of an agenda.  I’ll miss not having to be somewhere all the time.  We created our own structure the past few weeks.  If we wanted to go for a drive, or run errands, or work on a business plan (me not them!), then that’s what we did.  Now we have less time to choose to do the fun things, like dance to Madagascar’s I like to move it  or belch out another rendition of Frozen’s Let it go.  We’ll have to schedule that in just like everything else in the coming weeks.

I’m usually a big advocate of slowing down the pace of life to enjoy the journey, but I gotta tell you, as I sat in the living room with my wife last week planning our 2015, calendars, budgets, and family vision and all…I got a little overwhelmed because I knew that this time was ending.  At the same time, I couldn’t help but be excited about what the future will bring.  Hopefully things won’t go so fast that we can’t unwind again like the last 2 weeks from time to time.  This was not just down time, it was renewal time, and reconnecting time, both with my purpose and also with my family.