I will treasure the doing more

Christmas is coming and my mind feels like a pinball machine filled with hundreds of balls bouncing this way and that in the form of "TO DO's" "TO BUY's" and "TO MAKE's." HELP!! Well, I just read this quote on a cousins blog (thanks Alissa) and must say how timely it was.

“The biggest mistake I made [as a parent] is the one that most of us make. . . . I did not live in the moment enough. This is particularly clear now that the moment is gone, captured only in photographs. There is one picture of [my three children] sitting in the grass on a quilt in the shadow of the swing set on a summer day, ages six, four, and one. And I wish I could remember what we ate, and what we talked about, and how they sounded, and how they looked when they slept that night. I wish I had not been in such a hurry to get on to the next thing: dinner, bath, book, bed. I wish I had treasured the doing a little more and the getting it done a little less”(Loud and Clear [2004], 10–11)

Now it's time to: 1. deposit half those ideas and worries in the trash
2. write the other half down on my list
3. quickly and simply take care of the necessities
4. all while I enjoy, treasure, read to, cherish, love, sing to, talk to, snuggle, laugh with, listen to, sit with, teach, hug, and play with
our children.