The Art of the Peaceful Weekend

I've become pretty adept at having peaceful weekends. I usually try to get all my errands done during the week - except for grocery shopping. My daughter and I are both homebodies, so staying home all weekend is fine by both of us.

That's what we did this weekend. Except for venturing out to get groceries, we stayed inside where it was warm and cozy. I read, did housework, and got in some great writing time. She played some video games, watched a few movies, played with her doll house (which is full of animals, not dolls), and pretended to be a tiger stalking its prey (our cat). Together, we made cupcakes, played with her new puppets - one is a lion, the other is a tiger - and even worked on her writing homework assignment (not due until the 28th, but she's already done!).

The only time we ventured outdoors was to go grocery shopping. That was about perfect for me.

Now I don't mean to say that we do this every weekend. Sometimes, we do other things - we went to the art museum one weekend, another we went to the children's museum. It varies. But the point is, we don't cram as much stuff as we can into the weekend to the point where we're exhausted when Monday morning rolls around.

I don't know about you, but if I don't have some kind of peace and quiet during the weekend, I don't feel prepared to handle the coming work-week. My daughter is not involved in any outside activities right now - and that is her choice. She is not into sports. Believe me, I've asked her several times if she'd like to go out for volleyball or basketball or softball. It's a big, fat NO. She doesn't want to do dance class or gymnastics. She doesn't want to take music lessons.

What she does want to do is take art lessons. And I'm working on getting that one set up. :-)

(I'm not going to go into the whole discussion of whether or not I should make my child do those other activities right now because I firmly believe that it depends on the child - and I could write a completely new post on this topic!)

I have a goal with my peaceful weekends. It's called living stress-free, and it's part of my larger goal to live my life simpler, which I've blogged about before. It's also about listening to who you are as an individual and shaping your life to fit your persona. Does that mean you should always live within your comfort zone? Not at all. Stepping out of that comfort zone is imperative to keeping life interesting, to learning new things, and to broadening your knowledge of the world. We just need to make sure we keep things balanced.