My kids are getting older, which means winter break looks different here. Sniff.
Of course, we’ll still be decorating cookies and mushing together the family clam dip. (It’s a Breitenstein thing.)
But Christmas Eve, we’ll have three different pickups of three different kids: two teenagers have gone for more fun with relatives this week, and my oldest–the Marine–arrives from Camp Pendleton.
Confession: My heavenly intentions for Thanksgiving are often clobbered by my oh-so-real life.
I would love to be preparing our hearts all month for gratitude, but I find myself picking up someone else’s rank gym socks. I would love to be stuffing a jar with slips of paper declaring our thankfulness, but can tend to stave off a little more teenage complaining instead…?
Like so much of 2020, there are parts of Thanksgiving this year that are a bit sad. We’ve canceled our family trip for reasons you can probably guess (thank you, COVID).
But this year continues to fling doors wide open in raising resilient kids.
Back in high school, I took a crazy-cool trip with an organization, performing evangelistic street theater as we camped through Europe. It was unforgettable.
But I’m sure it was no easy feat. Our team consisted of 90 teenagers (not a typo). Tents were lined up with military precision, and meals were planned down to the number of boxes of macaroni and the packets of oatmeal.
In a similar spirit, free time wasn’t called free time, but “O Time”: Organized time. As in, be intentional. Don’t fritter it away.
So my kids are home for the summer after their first year in public school. Observations:
a. I’ve been looking forward to quality time with them. That said, if they fight like, one more time? I may be glancing at tickets for four children to, say, Abu Dhabi.
b. I am still working from home. So in contrast to what I wish summer looked like for moms, it’s more to the tune of “more bricks, less straw”.
![Now You're Speaking My [Love] Language](https://www.janelbreitenstein.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/08/love-languages-text-1.jpg "Now You're Speaking My [Love] Language")
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