31 Days of Loving Where I Am: Day Two

I'm participating in The Nester's 31 Days challenge. If you missed my intro post and wanna know what this whole this is about, you can check it out here. 

I'll be honest, I had no idea how to kick this whole thing off. Where do I start loving where I am? After brainstorming for a bit, I decided to keep it simple. I started my challenge by getting outside. We had beautiful weather yesterday morning, so we took our school session outside. At first I looked around and was not pleased with what I saw. We've had quite a bit of rain lately, and I seriously need to call our lawn guy. I sat there on our blanket and critiqued my surroundings pretty harshly. And then I stopped. Negative thoughts are part of the reason I'm in this situation, and they aren't welcome from here on out.

So, I made myself name three good things about what I was seeing. For one, we had beautiful purple flowers popping up all over the place. Not only were they pretty, they made my girl insanely happy. She'd run around picking them one by one, tucking them into her hair, and bringing them over for me to smell. Secondly, just a few weeks ago our grass was desperate for water. Texas is known for our droughts, and while we've seen much worse, this year hasn't been very different. Our grass had been an ugly dying patch of yellow that crunched beneath your feet. Now it was lush and green, and I could walk barefoot in it and it felt amazing under my toes. The third thing I listed was the fact that since the grass was a bit tall, M's cat could play hide and seek with our dachshund. Well, maybe not so much hide and seek, and hide and pounce. Such a simple ting, yet it was hilarious to watch. Nona never saw Binx coming, no matter how many times Binx crouched down in the grass and leapt on top of her.

We did some schoolwork, then painted for awhile, and then I laid on our blanket and watched M put on a "show" for me that involved swing set and trampoline acrobatics. And then it dawned on me that I was happy right where I was. Feeling the slight breeze, watching M play, feeling the baby kick, I had momentarily stopped despising where I was and I was content. So simple, right? That little window of time we spent outside changed the rest of the day for me.

Lesson learned for the day: a change of scenery and a timeout can make a huge difference. Stop for just a second and learn to cherish what you've got. It's simpler than you think.