Enjoying

Spring in the middle of winter. Basketball tournaments. Family cookie bake offs. Tru TV's Impractical Jokers. Lazy Sundays. Wallyball. Get togethers. Wrestling meets. Sunshine. Good books you can't put down. Harry Potter marathons. The satisfaction of seeing thousands of colors organized into different compartments. Middle of the week dates with my husband. Houses that stay clean for more than five minutes. Nerf gun wars. Listening to my boys giggle and get along. Being the last to let go of a hug. Littles that cuddle up next to me on the couch. Listening to my kids make up ideas for things we can do as a family. Snow days....I mean ice days. Board games. Puzzles. Making plans for winter so that you have something to look forward to. Googling vacation homes to dream up plans for summer. Thursday nights with my girls. Fireplaces. Finding enough change in the nooks and crannies of my car to get a peppermint mocha from the McDonald's drive through. Declaring Sunday nights- Appetizer Sundays. Watching play off games and cheering for a team that's not yours because yours didn't make it. Listening to my middle little talk football with his dad and realizing just how much knowledge about the subject he has. Watching my daughter turn into a lady. Fresh from the dryer laundry. Initiating my baby into the "Four Eyes Club". Realizing January is more than half over.

Making good on my goals of taking care of myself. Definitely taking it in baby steps. I'm starting with being grateful. Loving my tribe. Giving myself grace. Finding happy moments in stressful situations. One of my best friends, whom I love and adore and very much trust more than most people, introduced me to a few supplements that she thought would target/help with my depression and anxiety. I've been taking them for about three and a half weeks now, and I'm already noticing so much. My anxiety is decreasing. I'm feeling a lot more of my emotions as opposed to shutting down. I have more energy to get through the day. No more falling asleep at 7:00 when I'm relaxing with my family. I'm sleeping better. I don't feel like I'm retaining much water. I used to be hungry all.the.time. Now I feel satisfied during the majority of the day and usually only eat when it's time for a meal. Weekends are difficult still, but overall I'm noticing a lot of positive changes which have trickled into other parts of my life more than I thought it would.

This time of the year is hard. My regular anxiety and depression usually get compounded by Seasonal Depression, but I'm not noticing the sting so badly. I guess the biggest thing I notice is that life is more colorful again. That may seem like a weird observation, but if you are one that has suffered from any form of depression, you will understand that in the darkest parts of this disease, life just loses its color. Everything seems dark and dreary and gray. When that weight is lifted a bit, color starts to seep in through the cracks. I've missed that.

Obviously, it's nowhere near perfect, but I'm taking all that I can and running with it. These are my happies, and the fact that I can see them clearly--and in the middle of January nonetheless, is more than I could ask for.

Happy Thursday friends! One more day til the weekend. Woot Woot!!