Sometimes I am happily reminded of the benefits of unplugging for a little while. No cell phones. No email. No blogging. Just a bit of peace and quiet in a little patch of nature.
We just returned from a wonderful week off. We packed up the kids, and all their accessories, and went out to Virginia to visit some friends. And we spent a few days off the grid.
Our trip was centered around the generosity of our friends' invitation to join them at their house on a lake in Northern Virginia. At no time was there less than six kids and four adults, and for the most part there were a couple more of each at any given moment as more friends came and went, dipping their toes in the lake and visiting for a little good cheer.
And yet it was still a very quiet week.
Sure there were plenty of screams. Usually cries of joy as one of the kids discovered a turtle swimming in the lake or went for a running-start jump off the dock into the water. At times the cries were of a more tragic nature when there was "play date overload". But besides the boat motors and the kids, the loudest things around were the birds and crickets.
You just gotta love nature. It forces you to observe and listen, stealing our attention away from our technology-induced stupors and stressors. Instead we focus on the most important things in our lives that all too often get put aside for a "little" time on the computer.
You know it happens to all of us. "I'll just be a few minutes on email/internet/bill-paying and then we can play that game." Before you know it an hour has passed and then it's time to do something else, like make dinner, change a diaper, or keep a child from bodily harm at the hands of his or her siblings. And that little person that so patiently waited for you gets bubkus.
Not so when you are on vacation. Everyone gets your full attention the whole time, which is a pretty amazing thing. Take away your daily routine and you take away your worries and excuses. Unplug from the craziness of this world we live in and just be.
Watching your kids discover new passions is priceless. And unfortunately, it doesn't happen often enough in our internet-driven, inflation-ridden, information-overloaded world.
I'm so grateful to our friends for opening their home to us. And I'm even more grateful to my family for filling my senses with giggles, hand-holding, water-splashing and finger-licking-good smores.
Last week I definitely found my happy place.
