Saturdays blessings - S

The S from Stress was requesting my attention on Saturdays balancing acrobat' s act. The juggling of fun and blessings doesn't come natural to me. Till suddenly I had a flylady whisper ... ok not so sudden ... and ok I might already have had lots of hints pointing in the direction of a possible solution ... but somehow some messages are hard to digest. The sinking in process is time and energy-consuming and the bricks of truths somehow get pulled back up to the surface ... waiting for a new AHA to start sinking in AGAIN! Lol!
Anyway for my stressfreesaturdayfunandhomeblessing I need the S from small. I just need to see the bigger picture through the small pleasures. I love my timer for breaking time into manageable sessions varying from 5m to 15m, sometimes in sessions of 45m or an hour. They are very concrete. No escaping the buzzer. Both rescuing us from Princessy and the inner hyperfocused cleaning/organizing/creative banshee ;)
But why love the Small Slices of time, but whenever it comes to my children, food, my relationship with dh, schoolwork, fun activities I tend to get stuck in the all-or-nothing-trap. All my dreams tend to be big, bigger, biggest lol. I don't have to explain the becoming overwhelmed-guilt-self pity -chocolates-in-front-of-telly-syndrome I guess ...
So up till now, after being energy-deprived due to being ill, I tried to overfocus the fun with the family I wouldn't allow myself anymore to give in on family life because of work Or better because of my perfectionist views om what a teacher should do, or what a principle may expect from my work. I would put my health, my family, centimes first. Weekends are family time. But somehow this focus ended up putting my health last because I started to neglect my schoolwork, plan and play for the home-blessings ... bringing in the Stress ...
No my family, my kids don't need whole day outings to the coast, theme parks etcetera every weekend. Small pleasures can make a child's day. Small gestures can put a smile on dh face. And I guess the end result won't be small at all if I manage to keep these insights in mind!
So yesterday I first had a session of poor-ole-me, because there was "lots" of home to be blessed and "only" an evening outing to my school for dinner. Luckily I remembered this kids-magazine subscription with lots of fun activities. Small fun activities. Easy activities. Up till now I had procrastinated about using them. Because I first wanted to scan the magazine for re-use. Because there were some activities which needed special materials. Because I only had a few minutes to spare. Because I didn't have t... Hit me hit me hit me lol. Actually please don't, who knows I might forget what I (hopefully) just learned :)
So I gathered the kids and asked if I would read a story (mostly I only read a bedtime story) ... they were thrilled ... Ok no lets burst the pictureP*idyllic scene ... dd was thrilled ... ds saw the story and though about all the other books we have and started to get them out of the chest lol ... anyway I read for about 5m and both kids were happy! I could go on with my home-blessings. After some time I did another activity with them: 10m! "When will we do the next one?" I was dreading the question for quite some time. But she accepted my answer, that first I had to work a bit and that I would join her in a bit for another activity.
At the end of the day, my house wasn't picture P*, the resume of the day wasn't impressive ... but I certainly was impressed by my new love for the Small :)