Vacation from Life Day

Sometimes everything just seems a little bit overwhelming!

For Ryenne, this has been manifesting itself more and more over the past week or so. Yesterday morning I could tell that Ryenne was very much feeling like she couldn't face the day. After a little bit of thought, I declared it a Vacation from Life Day. We've never done this officially before, and so I wasn't sure what it would entail. But then I realized that was the beauty of it- we didn't have to have a plan. We were going to do whatever we felt like doing for a whole day. (Well, mostly!).

Being that it was also officially Ryenne Day at our house, it was especially fun! Ryenne was served breakfast in bed on a tray. She was thrilled to allow me to cater to her every whim. (We all need that every now and again, don't we?) School was a no-show. That meant we didn't have to do the morning rush of making her bed, doing homework, and trying to get out the door in time. Heaven!

After an hour or so, we decided to watch the movie, Heidi, which I had rented for the weekend and we'd never gotten aroung to watching. Loved it. All of us girls cuddled in my bed. After lunch we sent Kate off to school (she was feeling quite perky and so it was decided that a Vacation from Life day for Kate wasn't needed yet- we decided they are reserved only for those days when you REALLY cannot face life. And Kate could face life yesterday!

After a little while, Ryenne wanted to make cookies and so we did: sugar cookies cut out in all the shapes that represented what we were grateful for: house, carrot(harvest), and boy and girl shape (our family), and of course, turkeys. (We saved a turkey for Daddy for when he gets home from out of town.) I assigned Ryenne to be my "cookie policeman" to ensure that I would only eat one. Quite a feat for me, but she did her duty well!

And what did we do the rest of the day? Nothing much! I had thought it would be fun to take the girls to a matinee, but Ryenne wanted to wait until Courtney would be home to go with us. This made me realize that it's funny how I think that in order for a day to be special, we need to do something. . .well, special. But Ryenne was perfectly content just being home, with me paying attention to what she wanted to do. A little lesson learned.

Being that it was Ryenne Day and Courtney was out of town, I didn't know how we would quite pull off the ice cream date that the girls get on their special day. Ryenne was lucky to have Grandma & Grandpa C handy to fill Daddy's shoes. I asked them if they could take her, which they did. She was thrilled to go get a treat in her PJ's while the other girls went to bed.

All in all we didn't do much of anything out of the ordinary. But in retrospect, I think that was the beauty of Ryenne's Vacation from Life Day. Late last night, after everyone was in bed, it occured to me that we all need to take one of those days every now and again. A day of doing nothing much of anything every now and again somehow put a little bit of magic into a perfectly "ordinary" day.