Something to Show for It

Last week I decided that Monday, Labor Day, would be the day we did something fun as a family. We worked hard Friday through Sunday, so Monday could be our fun day. Well, our my plan to go out to breakfast and drive to the mountains started to self-destruct this morning, when I checked the weather and saw that it would be cold and rainy in the mountains. Not a great environment to take toddlers.

So we decided to go to our favorite little place for breakfast. It's about 40 minutes away in the foothills of the mountains. When we arrived (around 11), it was apparent from the crowd that we weren't going to get a table for quite awhile, so we continued on to check out The Donut Mill in Woodland Park, Colo. Unfortunately the power had gone out, so they weren't serving full breakfast and only selling the donuts they had on hand ... for cash. My $7 got us half a dozen donuts to tide us over. Then we drove back down to Colorado Springs to another favorite breakfast place (because by this point Kevin was set on breakfast), and we sat down to our hard-won pancakes at 1:08 p.m. 

Not the day I'd imagined. 

When we got home, I made Kevin take the picture above. I just needed something to prove we'd made a memory and had a good day. Proof that the day wasn't a total wash. But it wasn't. We spent time together. Kevin and I had good conversation. We enjoyed the beauty of the day as we drove from place to place. And we even got home in time for a nap, allowing the holiday to end on a relaxing note.    

Many days don't go as I imagined these days. I plan to finish a whole to-do list and only check off one or two things. Sometimes I find that frustrating. I often lack the sense of accomplishment I used to feel before I stayed home with kids. A few years ago I wrote about how sometimes I turn to Facebook to feel a sense of worth. But I'm learning that flexibility has its charms. When I allow plans to change without being too bothered by it, sometimes I stumble upon unexpected joys—like the tasty old-fashioned donuts we sampled in a Colorado mountain town. Or the bit of unexpected rest we received because everyone was so worn out by the excursion.

Sometimes a day doesn't go as planned. But that's not always a bad thing. It's good to stay open to being pleasantly surprised by what happens instead. That's part of what makes life sweet, I think. That and donuts.