Swimming and Time

Hopefully soon I will catch up on all my holiday posts.  Tonight I'm not in the mood.  Today we went swimming with our homeschool group.  Have I talked enough about how much I love them?  I'm not sure I have.  I mean there is nothing I despise more then trying to bundle up all my children, to get in the car no less, and brave the 80 below zero temperature just to try and be somewhere on time.  Actually that little fact right there was one of the first things that started to sway me into the homeschool camp.  Take out the garbage in 80 below, don't mind it.  Feed the chickens in 80 below, kind of like it.  But getting in the car to have to be somewhere specific at a specific time in 80 below, nooooo thanks.  But, but, when the other end of "specific place and time" is our homeschool group, totally worth it.  That's how much I love them.



Today while our kids swam in the pool (for 5 hours!) the grown ups talked.  We talked about many things (the usuals- food, non-food, how hard it is to reverse the effects of eating non-food, field trips, how stressed or not stressed the holidays were, how annoying some of our children can be, how locking them in a closet might be a good solution, etc, etc) but what I am still thinking about tonight is our conversations about time.  Or more specifically time for myself.  How does one (especially a homeschooling mom) organize their time so that all of those things that need to get done can get done- time to go grocery shopping (and even time to make a grocery list), and clean and do laundry, plan lessons, etc but also have time to sit and do nothing, meditate, exercise, write, draw, etc.  The practical to-dos must be balanced with the cup filling to-dos or this is whole thing isn't going to be sustainable.  I spent a small part of the first day of the New Year at a yoga studio doing yoga.  Aside from the hike I took last month this is the first time I have consciously exercised my body since last spring.  Why is that?  Why is it that I can't find the time to sit down and compose a decent grocery list and therefor spend 3 out of 7 days a week at the grocery store?  Why can't I find at least a few minutes out of everyday to meditate?  While I am pretty consistent about keeping my nights free of cleaning and other obligatory tasks, do I really use my time that wisely?  Some nights I seem to waist away on the computer.  Or maybe that's not even a bad thing, I don't know.  If it really made me happy then I would argue it's not, I'm just not sure that's the case.  Anyway, point of all this is that I want to be more intentional with my time.  So there it is, a January 6th New Years Intention- learning to be more conscious of my time and making time for what is really important.