As you may have noticed, I took a week off. I went to Hilton Head with my kids and my mom-and-sister-in-law. It was an all-girls-plus-my-son week as The Man was away on a youth trip.

I didn’t work all week. I didn’t make one list. I didn’t write even one sentence on my manuscript. I barely did laundry. I happily ate way too much here. I read this book. We watched this movie. And this one. And this one, too.

The ocean water was freezing, but it didn’t keep them out. The pool water was colder, and even I got in. I didn’t see the ocean until I was 12. I’m so glad they are growing up with it.

It is rare to get even a Saturday with nothing planned to do, let alone an entire week. Still, it is good to be home. And now on this anti-Saturday, the challenge will be to find the bliss in the midst of the ordinary chaos. When you find yours, write about it and come back to unwrap it with us tomorrow.

He wakes up first, makes breakfast and coffee. I choose outfits, settle hairband drama, and make their lunches. He walks them to school while the smallest one and I snuggle up to cartoons until he gets back. I could sleepwalk through our morning routine. It never changes and feels like home. But a year ago in March, I couldn’t have imagined everyday school, early early mornings, lunch without them at my table.

Things feel as though they will always be the way they are now and will never change. Until they do. And then that becomes normal for a while. Until it isn’t anymore.

Maybe you are leaning heavy against the door of change, grasping for familiar furniture to push up strong against that door. Maybe you are in the middle of a field of change, spinning in circles to find your bearings. Maybe you are stuck in your fear of change so much that you have traded in living for hopes of a risk-free existence. Still, change comes. And we get to choose what we’ll do with it.

Edie writes about change with the house that found her.

Melissa writes of making plans on her financial journey, but of things not going exactly as she thought.

A trip down memory lane helps Emily and her husband see the good side of change.

Lysa writes about an opportunity for a different kind of change, the kind that calls you out from behind your predictable routine and gently asks you to listen to that dream you’ve always had.

I love and hate change. I long for it and resist it, I welcome it and push it away, I dread it then forget it when the next change looms. How do you feel about change?

The wall’s not crooked, the candle plate with the f on it is. But I didn’t want the shot with the foreground wrong, so I changed reality a little. I tend to do that. I like for the thing up front and here now to be right and hope that the thing later in the background works itself out. Sometimes it does. Other times, I regret my neglect of the crooked walls.