Lately I have been in quite the rut. Nothing has gone right, whenever I have attempted to complete anything, even down to getting online! My internet connection keeps going down, and tomorrow I am going to have either my husband, or my genius teenager take a look at everything and see if they can rectify whatever the problem is, so I can stop getting frustrated, and start getting online every time I attempt to sign in!

With nothing going right, and everything being such a chore to get done, I have resigned myself to hiding in the house. With yet another snow storm hitting the area, school was closed for two days this week, as well as my husband having to take a day off from work, meaning the house is in absolute disarray from everyone being home and couped up indoors. At this point I believe that I have surpassed cabin fever, and gone more towards cabin raging inferno.

In order to keep up with work from his missed day, my husband ended up staying up all night last night, so once he was able to get home from work today, the first thing that he headed for was the bed, which is where he stayed, completely worn out from his day. I was still left with two kids who were tired of being in the house, and I too was tired of staring at the same four walls. Just after dinner, the kids, who had been good to each other all day long to my utter and grateful surprise were beginning to get on one and others nerves. I couldn’t really blame them, as I too was tired of the same old, same old.

Suddenly my adopted stepson piped up, and asked if we could go to the mall, so that he could spend his gift certificate for the local bookstore. While it sounded like a good idea, since both boys actually had a gift certificate for the same store, I had seemingly lost the ability to just get up and go. I began thinking of the hassle it would be to get everyone ready, if we would really have enough time to adequately shop around at the store before it closed since it was already late in the day, and every other negative thought that could possibly go through one’s mind.

Yet the children were persistent, and ganged up on me, and with two sets of big brown eyes saying please, with hopeful faces, and giddy feet barely able to stand in place with anticipation, I relented and said fine. I was still doubtful that things would actually go well, given the track record as of late when it comes to outings, but as we quietly shut the door, so as not to wake daddy who was sleeping away, I figured that I would give it my all. After all this would get everyone out of the house, relieving our cabin fever, as well as leaving the house nice and quiet for my husband to get some much needed sleep.

It turned out that with not planning the trip, and simply going out for an outing on the fly, so to speak was a great idea! With no plans in place, there was really nothing to go wrong, and no expectations to either meet or break. We all ended up having a great time, we picked out books for each of the boys, as well as a birthday present for daddy since it is just around the corner. Going out gave us all a chance to reconnect with one and other and just have some relaxing time together. Dropping everything for a fun time out did wonders for all of us. While it can become easy to get stuck in the every day rut of life, if we take the time to just change up our behavior and do something that we normally wouldn’t do (and I am quite the planner) then it can be just as easy to break up the day to day monotony of life!

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