Tomorrow is a big day for me...it's my birthday! But not just any birthday...its my 40th birthday! It pains my greatly to type that because honestly, I never thought I'd be here at 40! I thought I'd have a husband, kids, a house, etc etc but somehow I have none of those things. Frankly, most days I'm OK with it but some days, it's painful at how much I long for that. However, that's not the point of this post.
This past weekend we went to Michigan to my cousin's lake house and got to hang out with our cousins who we don't see a lot. I spent a lot of time in Indiana so they're like family to me but for my sister's it was a time to re-connect with them. And let me tell you - we had a good time reconnecting! :)
As we were walking to the dock to let the kids go wading, I was overwhelmed with smells and scenes from my childhood. When I was growing up, we used to go to the lake for at least 1 week every summer and sometimes 2. It was the best - we spent all day in the water and wore our swimsuits without any embarrassment, had sunburn upon sunburn, and ate our lunch while hanging over the dock. Everything about this weekend reminded me of that and how much fun we had with our cousins! This was a chance for my nieces and nephews to have those same memories with their cousins.
It reminded me of how much things have changed since then (and yep, I'm about to sound really old here). We didn't have DVD players to watch movies while we travelled, DSI's to play video games, or cell phones to text our friends and upload pics of the fun we were having. Part of me thinks that maybe it was a little better for us because we weren't distracted by all those things but we could live in the moment. Either way, our time at the lake always had a special place in my heart and I was reminded of that again multiple times throughout our visit. It made me think about how blessed I am to get to make memories like that all over again and how much I hoped that the kiddos would look back on it with as much joy as I do!
I kept thinking about this post numerous times and what I wanted to say - I was rewriting it over and over in my head. Finally, I realized that all I really wanted to say is that even though my life doesn't look like I thought it would look, I've made a lot of really cool memories over the last 40 years, cried a lot of tears (more than I care to remember), and have a lot to be grateful for! So what if it's not what I thought it would be? It never is, is it? So I promise to try to put my big girl panties on, get over it, and smile with as much grace as I can muster because after all, its just a number right?
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