Same Time, Same Place, VERY Different Experience

If you would have told me as a student at Notre Dame that, some day, I would spend St. Patrick's Day pushing a stroller around campus instead of partaking in more traditional holiday "splendor", I would have told you had one too many green beers! And yet this was the situation I found myself in yesterday with three other moms taking seven children on a tour of campus, duck feeding and picnic lunch. Impressively, all ten of us festively adorned green shirts (no pinches for us)! We laughed as we watched the college students walking by us with green beaded necklaces, crazy hats and cups full of beverages. We sat and ate lunch as Irish music belted from dorm windows. I must admit that a part of me missed those carefree days and, let’s face it, the BEER! As we sat on the blanket though, my friend commented, "This is what I pictured when I decided to stay home with my kids". I agreed with her as I looked around at the kids laughing, all of us basking in the unusually warm and sunny day, enjoying one another’s company and reveling in the fact that we actually made it out despite differing nap times, random earaches and lingering colds. Beyond that though, I was happy to have, if even for only a few minutes, a little perspective. That we are in a good place and blessed for it, blessed for the opportunity and the friendships, blessed for family. I knew that soon temper tantrums would ensue, nap times would come, dinner would need to be made and that ever present question of, "should I really have given up my career?" would resurface. For a moment though, as I watched my girls and looked around at my friends, I didn't want to be anywhere else (no, not even somewhere drinking a beer on Saint Patty's Day). So thank you to the ladies in my life (my daughters and my friends) for a truly wonderful St. Patrick’s Day. I know that this year, even more than other years, I am truly blessed with the Luck O’ the Irish!