While I am not a huge fan of summer weather (I hate heat!), I do love hanging out outside all afternoon and well into the evening with the kids. Sometimes I wish I had the money for big trips far away, but when I sip on my drink and eat my steak and corn that my husband expertly grilled for me, I know that things really don’t get any better. I love watching the kids run and scream (who cares what the neighbors think?) through the pool, chasing each other with squirt guns. I love to watch the kids ride their bikes well into the night. I love to snuggle a kid, wet from the pool, in a towel while we watch go from “blue dark” to “black dark.”
Sometimes I wonder if I’m providing every experience a kid needs. I have friends who take their kids to far off places and always seem to have more money than I for movies every week and trips to Paris or Dublin or even Florida once a year. But I also know that they miss out on everyday experiences because they’re so busy working to pay for the new gadgets, the movies and the trips.
I may not always be happy that I can’t take my kids to go, go, go…but I am happy with my life and the choices I’ve made to be there for my kids all of the time. I wish everyone could feel so lucky!
Valerie Willman says:
Michelle, Thanks for this post today. My husband and I just decided to make the transition to living on one income, instead of two, and we’ve been worried about it. It will be a huge adjustment from our way of living now, to, well, much less.
But less doesn’t equal less in this equation, does it?
25th July 2010 at 9:08 am