Learning To Seize The Moment

For the first time in a long time, we found ourselves with a free Saturday this past weekend. It seems like the past few months have been jam packed with activities between holiday parties, birthday parties, family in town visiting….we were looking forward to having a quiet weekend at home, cleaning up and organizing. I had plans of catching up on some writing for my book, since this is the year that I’m going to finish writing it!

And then Friday night rolled around. It was cold and cloudy and the forecast said to expect rain. I’d been thinking (for the past few weeks) about taking the kids to the snow. Here in Southern California, we don’t get snow days very often and unless we live in high altitudes, we have to plan our trips to the mountains when it snows. The only problem is that we never know when there will be snow in the mountains, so it’s a little tricky to plan! Last year, we never made it because the only weekends where we ended up with snow were weekends that we had solid plans or commitments. The kids were disappointed about that.

So there we were on Friday night, sitting in our friend’s car while out on a date night, and I made a comment about how I wanted to take the kids to the snow this winter. I wondered out loud where (and when) we might find snow. A couple of minutes later, I found myself scrolling through Instagram and happened upon a friend’s post about their family trip to the snow! Wondering where they were at, I read through her comments and discovered that they were in the mountains not too far from where we live. I showed the pictures to Jeff and our friends that we were date-nighting with, when our friend Josh said,

“Let’s take the children tomorrow.”

Normally, I like to plan these kinds of trips out in advance so that I can prepare properly. I’m a planner. But, I’ve also been reminded (way too many times) over the past few years, that we never know what the future holds. How many times do we put things off and say we’ll do them another time?

I’ll read to you tomorrow night.

We’ll go fishing another time.

Next year we’ll make it to the snow.

What if there isn’t a next time? What if here and now is all we have?

I don’t mean to sound doom and gloom. My point is that our time in this life is precious. Lounging around the house and having a lazy day is good (and necessary) once in a while. But sometimes opportunities come along that are too good to pass up! I am learning how to let go and embrace those moments. We don’t know how long the snow will last or if we’ll have free time again this winter to make a trip. It seemed to me that there was really no other choice to make.

In ten years from now, my kids won’t remember a Saturday in January when we stayed home and cleaned the house. What they will remember is that Saturday in January when they woke up to a surprise trip to the snow.

They will remember catching air with their sleds down thrilling slopes.