We said goodbye to the first month of 2021 and welcomed February today. The new year has been marked by a lot of intense personal work, but the last week has been full of beauty in the natural world around us and also sprinkled with fabulous family play times. That is what I will focus on for today. Just a few days before the winter precipitation hit, a friend came out with his drone to take a bunch of aerial photos of Tangly Woods. It was a lot of fun to see what our place looks like from above - a birds' eye view for sure!
Then we woke to a morning when the world was coated in ice. It took me immediately back to my childhood in Mississippi where an ice storm made it such that I could pull an entire holly leaf ice piece off the tree in our yard. That was spectacular and the other day was similar. It was fun to walk around with Alida and Terah as they marveled at and took great pleasure in the transformed world.
I loved that the day landed on a "non-office-work-day" for me and so Tala and I also got to enjoy a walk together in the winter wonderland!
Even Little Buddy got to play in the garden with the girls and the ice!
The ice went away in a day and then the snow arrived this past weekend. We woke Sunday to a world once more transformed, this time in white. Again, the timing was great for enabling me to enjoy being outside in the elements! Jason and I took a very snowy hike Sunday morning with Jonathan and Christen to Hensley's Pond while the kids got up and going on their own (yes, it is not lost on us that we are in a new stage of life on that one!). An invigorating walk, meaningful conversation and a snowball fight at the end, joined by the kids, started the sabbath off right!
Later in the day we headed over to the Hidden Meadow sledding hill, only to find that some young heifers were in the sledding pasture. It took quite a bit of convincing to get Terah to feel willing to join the cows. But once she got comfy, she was all in! And it didn't even seem to phase her when on one ride down the hill a cow came running down behind her. She also had it good - riding down and getting a variety of rides back up!
The cows genuinely seemed curious about what we were up to. One time our long black sled got loose and careened down the hill without a passenger. One of the cows took after it, as if it thought it was a small oddly shaped cow. They spiced up our sledding adventures (and today - our second day back - they had also added a good number of cow pie obstacles!).
When we went sledding late last year, we had to cross a running stream and we were grateful no one got wet. Jason decided to be proactive this time and bring along a ladder to help us cross safely. This time there was no water and so the ladder was unnecessary. But he had carried it that whole way and and got a bee in his bonnet to turn it into a sled. I was skeptical. I should not have been. It was SO FUN! We did it sitting down and standing up (snow surfing).
Today we were joined by good friends for some "COVID-appropriate sledding" and the ladder was a great addition to our time together.
In trying to address my state of burnout, one of the things my therapist encouraged me to focus on for a bit is activities, relationships, conversations, settings, etc... that "fill my cup." All of the above definitely fits into that category!
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