At the first hint of sunshine and warm weather last weekend, we took off on our first spring adventure of the year. Snacks packed. Kids in the car. Not much of a plan besides Beany’s request for a beach. Lucky for her, New England has plenty of coast to go around.
I tend to fall into such a trap of overanalyzing and overplanning every aspect of our outings. What if the weather suddenly drops 30 degrees? What if Bear gets cranky? What if the beach is busy, or we can’t find parking, or there’s no kid-friendly place to play?
Kids don’t worry about these things. And because of that, there’s a lot that kids can teach you. Pack extra coats. Pack extra snacks. But everything else? Just let it go. Here’s what my kids have taught me:
Appreciate the view.
Experience nature.
Love the company you’re with.
We need each other. Everything else is extra.
XO,
Katrina
Beautiful family, beautiful photos, beautiful thoughts. On another of your posts, “Before I Blink”, you talked about how fast kids change. Speaking from the perspective of someone who blinked and suddenly there were three grandchildren standing where three children used to stand, I can tell you that you can never take too many photos. There’s no such thing. I wish that digital cameras had been around when my children were little–oh my gosh, I cannot even imagine the terabytes of storage I would need!
And one more thing — you’ve got it exactly right about packing extra coats and snacks and letting everything else go. Oh, and add a stash of band-aids. Somebody always needs a band aid. 😉
Thanks for your sweet words! My mom says the same thing about digital cameras. She has piles of photos from when we were little, but there’s something so wonderfully easy about snapping so many without having to worry about replacing film! 🙂
And you’re totally right about the Band-Aids. We have a handy first-aid kid, complete with princess Band-Aids, for exactly that purpose. 😉