Work It Out - Life, Love, Family, Motherhood & Faith

The catchy T-Swift song is stuck in my head as I overcome a mentally challenging day. The day went by quickly, but the battle in my head dragged on. It made simple tasks complicated. It made confidence the hardest thing to achieve. I am my own worst critic. I am incredibly hard on myself. I used to see this as a weakness. However, I am choosing to change my point of view and see it as a strength.Wanting to be better isn't a bad thing, but showing myself some grace is absolutely necessary while growing. Someone I work with actually taught me that. Bad days are going to happen. We are human and we are going to make mistakes. I made a few today and it really bothered me. However, as I was beating myself up about it all, this popular Taylor Swift song popped into my head. And I thought... "Shake it off." When a kid falls down, my instinct isn't always to run over to them and pick them up. I want them to pick themselves up, dust themselves off, and get back to it. ...

The holidays are my favorite. The whole holiday season. People seem happier, everyone excited to be off of work and spend time with family. Some families have cute matching pajamas and take the cutest Christmas morning picture. Some families just take perfect pictures capturing their Christmas traditions like building gingerbread houses or baking cookies. It always warms my heart to see them all over social media. Every year, I join in on the posting. Trying to take as many pictures as I can... hoping to get the cutest one. The adorable picture that will make everyone see how happy we all are. I was so excited this year. More so than usual. We were doing well. We had bought gifts in advance and there was a big pile under the tree. I knew the kids would be so excited with everything we had picked out. I even made a short road trip to get my dad, so that he could stay with us for the week. We were going to have a great, relaxed Christmas. I had activities planned - Christmas movies eve...