faking it til' I make it!

I am reusing this picture because these days, I need the reminder. You see me smile, but if my eyes aren't smiling, you're being duped. You hear my jolly tone, but if you notice, it's canned. Fake it til' you make it mode is in full effect right now. 

It's just the time of year- warm weather is gone, chilly weather is settling in, bye bye camper, bye bye lazy summer days. Halloween is over, so everyone will go straight to Christmas and bypass my favorite holiday- Thanksgiving! Thanksgiving with no gifts, lots of food, family, fun and football. My favorite holiday!

I am grateful. I am blessed. I am making plans to beat the upcoming winter blues. We are going to do all the things and gave all the fun. But dang. I am tired. 

Tired of feeling like I have to be perfect every second of the day. Tired of running at 100 miles an hour. Tired of feeling all the emotions of everyone 24/7 and putting mine last. Just tired. I took two naps last weekend and avoided electronics and I STILL felt exhaustion.

I deleted apps, friends on social media, cleaned out emails, cleaned the junk drawers, made donation bags and still... I don't think I need to be cleaning the little things to feel better. This is bigger than that. I gotta dig deep. Better days are coming. The smiles will become genuine once again. I will lower my bar of excellence just enough to catch a breath and recharge.

I will be grateful. I will be aware of my blessings. I will pause to enjoy the little things. I will see the light ahead. I will enjoy each moment. And I will realize that this tough patch will pass just like the others and I will bounce back even stronger than before :)

flower mazes are the best

Has anyone noticed that their phone might be listening in? I KNOW I am not the only one. We heard about a sunflower maze that was fun and by dinner three different Facebook posts for sunflower mazes popped up and I saw two ads in my emails. Oh, they're listening, all right. And if I am that entertaining, then carry on. I will turn the volume up :)

On to the sunflowers, though. Hebron, Illinois has a maze with a petting zoo and we heard it was fun. We were also going to tack on an afternoon of swimming because I have a friend who lives 10 minutes from there. What are the odds? Well, Sunday a storm blew through and it wasn't good. We changed plans Monday morning right at go time.

We ended up at Skelly's in Janesville, WI. Now, as a local girl, I should be up on local activities and such. I honestly only just heard of this place recently and visiting has never really come up. We figured we would give it a go. It had a cute farm feel that was very reminiscent of Edward's West. The maze had 2 options and the one we chose had a free sunflower (you choose it and clip it) plus a free donut in the shop. What more could these girls ask for?!?

We had an apple cider donut sundae and coffee cookies n cream ice cream. It was heaven! Smelling the various wax melts wasn't the easiest with a mask, but we picked a citrus sage scent to finish off summer break nicely. Everyone was pleasant and it was better than I could have expected. My only regret was not buying the tea towels with the funny, kitschy sayings.

It's almost August, which means it is almost back to school. We are still smiling. We are still grateful for all the extra family and bonding time we have been able to have. We have enjoyed summer. And we can all agree that sunflowers are happy flowers, so every time we walk past our new bouquet, we have more reasons to smile than ever.