The Luckiest No Matter What!

As I was scrolling the other day, I saw someone writing down things they wanted to remember from this pandemic time. It's obvious this time in our history will be wrote about profusely. I can't predict the future, but I have a feeling this time in my life will be monumental... something that will have definitely shaped who I become. I decided I wanted to take some time to write down some thoughts about this time in my life. To tell my own story.  What I Will Remember About the Last Two Years: The Earliest Days I remember first learning of the pandemic. It became a topic of conversation with anyone you came in contact with. I never thought it would even come to the USA. If it did, I thought it was going to be no big deal. Maybe my naïveté was a positive so that I didn't go directly to freaking out and losing my mind.... that took a few months to come.  Another big moment from the earliest days was when my kids went to school on Friday March 13th, 2020. I knew it was their la...

Have you ever booked at last-minuteish adventure?! Because Josh and I are both planners, we rarely do this. Way back in the winter, we began to think about our summer. Usually, we spend a lot of it at my parent's cottage in Canada on Lake Huron; it's my most favorite place in the entire world. However, with Covid, the border has been closed and has remained closed. It was important to us to have a trip planned somewhere in the summer just in case we were not able to go to Canada this summer. It was clear based on how little inventory there was that a lot of people were adventuring this summer, which makes complete sense. After a lot of research (of course), we had landed on a stay in Northern North Carolina by the ocean in August and were so excited about it! After making the decision to go back to classroom, I realized this trip was going to back up to when my school was starting and that made me a bit queasy. Could I really enjoy this trip to North Carolina with a new school ...

I have never considered myself to be "outdoorsy."  I love the beauty  of nature: mountains, lakes, the ocean, a tree lit afire with color in the fall, the smell of spring, all the noises of wildlife in the summer. I love to be in the presence  of nature- seeing God's glory with my eyes and taking an obsessive amount of pictures of it. There is nothing that brings me more calm and zen than being by the water. I have always liked to just stand and see nature, but I didn't really need to hang out in it for long periods of time. I didn't need to touch it or interact with it. I just wanted to be near it. Am I making any sense?  All that has held up for my entire life- liking to be near nature, but not really wanting to be all up in it. Until 2020 happened. 2020 has made me an outdoors(wo)man!  Needing to Escape When you're in the hustle and bustle of your life: taking people back and forth to practices, going to school and work, stretching yourself thin from a v...

I honestly can't believe we are nearing the end of 2020. Most of it felt so challenging, often shocking, and so pain-stakingly slow sometimes that I wasn't sure the end of the year would ever come. I'm sure this year, especially, has us all reflecting on a lot: thinking back to where we all started, how we first felt when the pandemic hit, when we were smack dab in the middle of it, and how we've adjusted to what is our new normal for the foreseeable future.  I have so much I want to leave behind and never revisit: the memories of all the time I lost my patience with my family, crying in the shower more times than I'd like to admit, the feelings of isolation and loneliness, the worrying. I chose right now, however, to focus on the bright spots of this year. It was hard, indeed, but it wasn't always  hard. Here are some of the things I'm incredibly grateful for in 2020... Starting 2020 on the Right Foot On January 2nd, 2020, I started taking care of myself. I...

Cities are near and dear to our hearts. Some of our favorite travels ever are visiting Toronto and NYC, for example. We love big buildings, the endless yummy food options, the hustle and bustle. We love cities so much that we bring four little kids to them even though cities are not always large-family friendly.  This pandemic has brought a pivot for the Hundt family. Where we'd normally research a tip to Boston, Washington DC, Charleston, or Madison. We are now looking for teeny tiny towns and a lot of land to roam free and away from people.  The need for social distance and being able to wander around together isolated and safe is what sprung our trip to Montana where we stayed in a town of less than 300 people. It was one of my favorite trips we've ever taken. A hustle/bustle travel gal always on the go go go is slowly becoming a hiker who takes her time ;) Landing on Maine Learning from home and working from home has brought a silver lining in this pandemic of having freed...

Anyone in my life knows I haven't handled this pandemic very well.  It's a perfect cocktail of the extremely high expectations I put on myself + an incredible sense of responsibility for my children's education, mental health, and well being + wanting to do everything + wanting to do everything well + being an anxious worrier + little to no alone time or break from... well... anything = a sh*t storm for me.  My mom has been on the receiving end of teary phone calls from me more times than I can count.  My group chats have been on the receiving end of many pictures of dumpster fires to describe how it's going at my house on any given day.  And I have been on the receiving end of text messages from friends checking in to see how I am doing (thank you, profusely, by the way).  I sometimes find myself, after an occasional good cry in the shower (shower cries are just the BEST aren't they?! Such a good way to let things out), thinking there HAS to hav...

On our trip out west to Montana, we ended up breaking up the drive a little on the way there and on the way home. The phrase is usually 'against our better judgement', but in this case it was 'against our worse judgement.' We had fully planned on driving straight through, about 24 hours not counting stops, to get TO Montana and ended up staying in Madison Wisconsin for a night. We stayed on Lake Monona- it was gorgeous. From what we were able to see of the city, we LOVED it and will be back for sure. Because we were trying to stay distant from people, we didn't explore much outside of the car and stayed close to our Airbnb. We then continued on our drive through Minnesota and North Dakota before getting to Montana.  Dinner with a view in Madison A little taste of Madison- we will be back! For the way home, we took a bit of a different route, this time driving a ton through Wyoming and South Dakota instead. We spent two nights in Custer, South Dakota an...