Best Laid Plans?

Some days, nothing goes right despite your best planning efforts.  As with anything else in life, your reaction to the situation you find yourself in is more important than the circumstances.  Those who can roll with the punches are able to enjoy life more, even if some of them are quite heavy blows.

All this rain we have been having lately led to the basement flooding tonight at my brother's townhome.  Truly this is nothing compared to the loss of homes and lives that has happened as a result of these storms, but it is a big deal for him as this is the first home he has ever owned.  It also interrupted our plans for a family game night (to celebrate my birthday) this evening, which is even less important in the grand scheme of things.

Now reflecting back on my statement above about a person's reaction to these kinds of situations, I found it very interesting how certain people reacted and what it told me about their personalities.  Some reacted with anger; anger at anyone and anything.  Some dropped everything else to immediately help.  Some seemed to want to pretend nothing was going on and wanted others to do the same.  And others just smiled and went to work.

I believe we all lose our sense of priority sometimes, and we allow little things to seem much bigger and more important than they actually are.  But then life is made up of hundreds of those little things so it is important also to remember to look for patterns so you can reasonably plan for the future.


Song Of The Day:
I was inspired by the efforts of some of my family members who were quick to offer help when this situation arose.  In their honor, reflect on the words in the song "Umbrella" by Rihanna.  It is nice to know that there are always those who will share their umbrella with us when life is raining.

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Can A Change If Plans Turn Out Better Than The Originals ?

Yesterday had some vacation 'challenges' to say the least.  Best laid plans had little chance of success because ... it just takes longer when you're preparing, transporting, and sight-seeing with 20 people!

But, after some good open dialogue (the right kind of communication always makes things better, thanks Kevin A for suggesting it), the second half of the day went quite well.  Kids were super happy (beach time, morning hikes, pizza and movie night).  Adults got to do things they wanted to (beach, exercising, eating delicious homemade pizza, playing board games).  For me anyway, the day was darn near perfection for a vacation experience.

So it got me to wondering ... do we sometimes over plan things?  And would life be much better and/or easier if we only made partial plans and let the rest of life just fall into place wherever it may? I am a meticulous planner by nature, but there was something liberating about choosing to modify all of our afternevening plans yesterday.

I am positive my 13-year old son will not speak to me for
weeks after posting this picture.  The things boys will do
for attention from cute girls!  Josh Jr took it like a man!  :)

Song of the Day:
Sometimes inside jokes are the best kind of humor.  And in honor of that, today's song is "Something To Talk About" by Bonnie Raitt.  And the inside joke has to do with exercising ... and that should be enough to remember the hilarity that ensued yesterday as plans changed and laughter resolved conflict.
Beautiful humor.

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