The entire family at our wedding! Amazing that we got everyone in this photo!

Talk about a whirlwind!  In the past three months I have gotten engaged, planned a beautiful farm wedding, gotten married, rented out my house, moved and merged our new family into Teddy’s house, rented out his house, moved into our new house, and now ending my job at the end of the month because it’s going out of business.

Man.. just typing all that makes me feel better about how crazy I’ve been.  I’d love to say that I’ve been the perfect example of how to deal with stress and transitions, but I haven’t.  I thought I was managing everything great and wasn’t stressed at all but funny how our bodies sometimes know more than we do.. I started having heart complications on top of it all.  Soon to find out I had Mitral Valve Prolapse, fancy name for floppy valve.. which is a common heart thing but symptoms can be brought out by stress and other things.  I kept telling everyone “I AM NOT stressed!”  But my body knew better.. it was. And of course this heart thing just brought on even more stress.

Anyway, I learned and am still learning a lot through all of this transition.  My biggest takeaway.. happiness.  When we went on our day and a half honeymoon and stayed at a bed and breakfast in the Chattahoochee mountains our sweet hostess, who talked with us about her family and her deceased husband, said something that stayed with me.. ‘happiness comes with flexibility’.  I’m still trying to figure out what that means exactly.. how do we balance happiness in the chaos of our lives?  We all always have something going on, really too much going on, and sometimes I feel like the happiness slips away in the midst of it all.  But I’m realizing the flexibility part is being willing to step out of that chaos and the timeline of events and work that we feel we must stick to.

The Chattahoochee Mountains

Making the most of our day and a half honeymoon:)

Today I had my first day off in 8 days.. and let me be honest.. I have not balanced happiness in those 8 days.  But today.. today I indulged happiness!  Took my time drinking my coffee in the morning, waited til lunch time to get dressed, gave myself a haircut, baked shortcakes with Lillie, went to the lake beach with all of us, and had a game night to finish it all off.  I probably should have been unpacking more boxes or organizing my kitchen but I chose to indulge the happiness instead.  I wish I could be better at indulging that happiness in small capacities throughout my week instead of just saving it for that one day off finally.

I’m hoping to try that this week.. really focus on being flexible to happiness.. putting aside my busy-ness for even just 15 minutes to play a game of hide and seek even.

So, I wrote this about a month ago and had not posted it because I never quite felt like it was finished.  As I read back on this I realize I still did not do a great job of stepping out of that chaos this past month.  It was a tough final month of work and I woke up every day saying ‘another day.. I can do this..’.  But I do think I did a little better, maybe just remembering what I had written about I think I took a little more time to pause and do something outside of the chaos.  Even as I look back on my pictures I can see all the happiness..

This is Lillie’s chicken Cha Cha! We hope to bring her to our new house soon!

Liza learned to write the letter L!

Ice Cream!!

Make your own pizza night!

Turtle print matching outfits!

The best cappuccino!

This is what I do with leftovers:) Yummm!

Visit to the zoo!

My husband serenading me with a song he wrote for me:)

And now, I’m done with work for awhile.. gotta figure out what my next step is in life.. but I’m excited for this time that I get to have with my girls and to get settled into our new house finally.  But I know, even with not working, time can fly and life will still get busy, and before I know it the time off will be over.  I hope to look back on this time and know that I took advantage of every moment.  I’m pretty sure it’s going to be an amazing time filled with chaos and happiness!