Getting back to business in Minnesota after our 5 week trip in Puerto Rico was a unique learning experience.
We got home late on Wednesday Feb 13 and stayed home from school on Thursday Feb 14 to recover from our long day of traveling. We assumed the biggest adjustment would be the weather. But there were several other things that surprised us before that. First, we were startled by the silence in our house at nighttime. Obviously there were no coqui frogs or jungle crickets to sing us to sleep, but we didn’t think we had become so accustomed to those sounds. The silence was truly deafening. (the experience reminded me of feeling that way coming back from Thailand, which I completely forgot about). Luckily, while we were in PR, we recorded the nighttime sounds for us to listen to at night in our quiet house.
Next we were surprised by the space everywhere in our house. Just tons of rooms and unused space! I felt like a fish out of water- or rather a fish that had been taken from a pond to a huge ocean. I knew our home was too big, but coming back from Vereda del Mar confirmed that our house is WAY too big for our needs.
And finally, we were surprised by all of our stuff! The boys took a tour of the house to say hello to everything. We had completely forgotten about many of their toys, books, and furniture. It was kind of like Christmas morning for them to find everything again. Honeslty, it was a little overwhelming for me to see all our stuff again. I found myself thinking, “We have 4 cooking pans? And enough plates to feed 40 people at one time? Is this stuff really necessary?” And “When have we ever used all 4 of our couches at one time?” It just all seemed so excessive. The only item I found that I had truly missed was the piano. The boys were also excited to play again and plunked away for much of the afternoon. That night, we ate an early dinner and went to bed before 7pm. We didn’t do anything specifically for Valentines day, except our usual cuddles and hugs.
(I think my grey hair looks SO cool!)
The next morning was Friday, and we woke up at 4:30 am! The two-hour time difference really affected us. The boys were ready for a nap by the time the bus came to pick them up for school at 7:45, but they had a BLAST seeing all their friends and teachers again. (Fun fact, we emailed back and forth with each of their classes while we were gone). The boys came home with a big bag of goodies that their classes filled for them during their Valentine party the day before. We were so grateful that their classmates thought of our boys despite our long absence.
We all enjoyed the weekend recovering. It was good the boys had the weekend to rest from their first long day back at school. I could tell it was a lot faster paced then what we had grown accustomed to. Jet lag wore off by the end of the first week, but it took about 3 weeks to finally get our bodies into a normal wake up and bed time routine.
What about the weather? Everyone was dieing to know how we felt about being back in the cold snow! Yes, this change was the most obvious, but surprisingly, it didn’t affect us the way I was dreading! Don’t get me wrong, there was tons of snow. In fact, we were greeted in true Minnesota fashion with 6 inches of fresh snow the night we got home. And more storms came every few days until the middle of April, with record breaking snow days and snowfall. Yet, to our surprise, it didn’t bother us that much! Tanner and Dallin were very excited to play in the snow and go sledding and build snow forts. And weirdly enough, I was excited to do those things, too.
On Saturday, we took the whole family sledding with Leighsa, Aleighcia and Alainea on Knobb Hill in our neighbhood. We all had a blast! We used our blue sled and some swimming inner tubes. We did a few runs where we hooked all our sleds together to go down the hill in a train. Toward the end, Dallin got tired/hurt, so Jeremy was comforting him in the car when Cici took these pictures. Lots of giggles were had by all!
You can see that I didn’t cringe as much as I normally do when going outside to the sub-zero temperatures. It felt like the sunshine from the beach had built a reservoir of warmth inside of me that lasted the rest of the winter. (And actually, my tan lasted that amount of time, too!) I had a lot more energy and patience to withstand the obvnoxious windchills and the icey thick roads. And how could I be cold cuddling with these great friends?
People seemed to notice a visible change in us. Well, of course we were all tanner–and Tanner was brown! But it was more than that. Friends said we looked well rested, happier, and calmer. Tanner’s eyes had stopped doing the stressful blinking that persisted since November. I wasn’t as rushed to get everywhere and do everything. Someone told me I glowed!
Simply put, we didn’t have winter gloom. Seasonal depression is real, folks. I felt very fortunate to have missed the worse half of the winter. I could see in many of my friend’s eyes that the weather was wearing on them hard. I wish that I could have taken everyone from Austin to PR with me. I believe now more than ever that sunshine is critical for happiness.
Another comment I got was “SarahLynn, you look so energized!” And I was! I found myself ready for new adventures and ready to get back to the business I love most: teaching children.
Luckily, I had a cool gig lined up just a few days after we got back. I was able to lead the first graders from Banfield Elementary on a field trip that I created at the Hormel Historic Home. Tanner was one of the kids that got to come! I wasn’t sure how he would react to the field trip since he comes to the HHH all the time and since he was here for a different field trip last year with me. But I designed this experience to be different from anything he or his peers had done before. (We piloted this Day in the Life field trip experience last year with previous first graders).
Tanner said he liked it a lot, especially the station where he learned how to make butter and the station where he made his own spinner toy. Tanner said he liked the tour, too, but apparently me dressed up as an Irish housemaid wasn’t as impressionable to him, haha. I took the children back in time into the house during the year 1903. I allowed the children to help me find all of young Jay Hormel’s teddy bears that he “left” throughout the house, and I taught them things about Jay and his family along the way. I’m so glad Tanner got to experience this! His class also did a field trip at the library on the same day! He came home with so many experiences to tell us about. All the children sent a cool thank you card to the HHH after the field trip.
One day after recently getting back from PR, I was driving home from a meeting and realized that for the first time in years, I had the same amount of energy as I did when I was in college and during my first couple years of teaching. I felt so alive and ready to work! I had new ideas come to me easily. I wasn’t allowing the politics of work to hold me back. I wasn’t coming home with an empty tank of energy for my family. It was such a great feeling to have myself back. The mindful resting in PR really made an emense change for me and my kids.
Now the challenge was to KEEP doing all the healthy habits we had learned to do. The morning walks on the beach had to be adapted to journeys around the house and walks in the snow. We did cosmic kids yoga every Saturday morning. We did our gospel study about 2-3 times a week during snack or in the evenings. We did our mindfulness lessons and guided relaxations about 3 times a week after our snack. We kept strong at all of this until we made the decision to move. But we are getting back into all of these habits again now that we are settled in our new place. The main point is that we are not letting the healthy activities we learned in PR become strangers to us!
As we got back into our schedules, I tried to ease my way back into things to keep from getting overwhelmed. There were my previous committments that I stuck with, like teaching a family music class at MacPhail on Monday evenings and teaching singing time with the children every Sunday at church. I started spring session with my piano students and enrolled 3 new students.
A fun opportunity came to me when some moms in the community asked me about daytime Mommy and Me Music classes. They really missed the classes I had offered in prior years and wondered if there was any way I could teach a class for them. Since this was something I had missed too, I decided I should take the chance to teach a class at my home.
So I sent out some invites for people to sign up, and within 24 hours I had enough moms to fill two classes. I moved some furniture in my living room to make a music classroom and studio. I taught the class for 7 weeks! As I took this picture, I realized this was finally fulfilling one of my visions that I had when we bought the home- using this space to teach family music classes.
Turns out the space was not only perfect for the class sizes that I created, it was also perfect for my piano lessons and for various parties that we hosted. It felt great to put our extra square footage to really good use. I also learned more about the perks of being an entrepranuer! From the prep work, to the income, to the lesson activities, to the wonderful mamas and their adorable children, this turned out to be one of my best gigs ever.
As time went on, we got busier. The boys and I would find ourselves more irritable on event-filled days. I could tell that the pace of life was getting to be too much, even though we were just doing school, work and church. I had to be more careful about what we did each day, and had to say no to certain meetings or jobs. I had to be diligent about making time for yoga and all the things that worked so well for us in PR to maintain calm.
Being busy used to be a status that I wore with a badge of honor! And I think as Americans and especially as women, many of us pride in being busy. But my burnout and poor health led me to see things differently, which is one reason I chose to take my family to the Carribean for 35 days. Now, I knew we were a busy family, but I did not fully understand the depth of HOW busy we were until we made the transition back from our trip. I was really struck by the busy-ness that so easily crept over us simply by being back home, even in the small things. The way we shop and drive so hastily, missing the things around us as we go. Our busy way of ordering food at restaurants and even in the way we talk to each other. Everything is fast and cluttered. Cluttered cars, cluttered calendars, cluttered thoughts. Not a lot of room for peace.
Dallin had the toughest time transitioning from calm beach days to activity-filled school days. He came home asleep on the bus every day, which was common all year, but he was so exhausted that he had to nap on the couch for awhile before snack time. This went on for a good 3-4 weeks before he got used to the rigorous schedule. It was actually harder for him to transition back to school at this time than it was for him to start school at the beginning of the year. I think it was because his body had grown accustomed to what is more natural and healthy for us- taking life slowly.
The full gravity of what being “too busy” meant had finally sunk in.
I definitely have not arrived at “not being too busy.” I don’t know if I ever will. But I defintely have a much deeper understanding of what “too busy” actually looks like and why it’s worth avoiding. Just another powerful life lesson from Puerto Rico.