Mental Holiday - SS Blog Challenge

The challenge: Where do you go when you know you have to go somewhere but don’t have the time, energy or inclination to actually leave the house? Posted by Lee =]

As many families are these days, we are always on the go. Marco is a pastor and our church is at least 30 minutes drive one way. We are there twice on Sunday, once on Wednesday, once on Friday, and Marco even goes in on Saturdays. Now that he is also working a separate full-time job, he doesn't go during the day like he used to. By the way, each of the times we are there, it is for a different thing. Church service, kids club, youth night - whatever. I also homeschool my children. We are together all.the.time. There are definitely times when I feel like screaming, "Calgon, take me away!" I have been all over the world and can think of many places that would be nice to re-visit. Instead, this is what I do:

If I can only steal away for a moment, I will hop on-line and visit some of my favorite sites and blogs. There are a couple of sites I visit daily and many, many blogs that I read on all sorts of subjects every day. To be able to just sit and tune everything out is always a nice break for me.

If I have a longer stretch of time and some quiet (ahem...) I will let myself get lost in a book. My favorite reading is a good historical fiction piece. It could be about that crazy Henry the VIII or a young girl during the days of the Civil War. I love interactive books that have replicas of love letters, ticket stubs, passports, etc. that you can take out and actually see and feel what the real piece looked like. I have several books like this. Love letters shared between John and Abigail Adams, a book on slavery, and several others. I also love biographies and auto-biographies. I collect books on women in history. I figure I can learn something from everyone, right?

My next choice if I had - say, a whole day to myself - would be to go to a crop and scrapbook (if it were available) or browse a book store at my liesure. Bliss.

Lastly, my favorite anytime holiday is to cuddle up with one of my children and just be quiet with them. This is hard to do these days. My oldest is 12 and my youngest is 6 months old. I can get lost in the thought of them and what the future holds for them. Little Marco is at the stage of saying mamamamama (with a mouth full of drool) and I love it when he looks right into my eyes and does this. So sweet. Makes all the hustle and bustle of life just melt away.