One Word 365 {exhale}

ex·hale / verb / 1. to breathe out in a deliberate manner.

Furthermore, to pause.

To relax.

To let it go.

To breathe deeply, and with intention.

To start again.

To begin a conversation.

To create space.

To find a place.

To lean into the physical, the human, the most basic parts.

To root into the present.

To get one's bearings.

To take care, to sustain.

To connect. To reconnect.

To let it out.

To feel relief.

To remember:

It's all going be OK.

My other words // One Word 365

ten year bahama-versary.

For ten years, we've been returning each winter to the same vacation spot. 

There's something to be said for traditions, for familiar places. We know just what to pack, just where to go. Each year we bring back a slightly different version of ourselves, another year older, sometimes wiser. It's become the place where we close out one year and look forward to a new one.

And now, after ten trips, I love how there are memories around each corner. We point out, we retrace, we remember.

This is the place where Dylan took his first steps with a giant, impossibly blue aquarium as the backdrop. 

The place where Ella finally stopped crying after months of colic, took a look around at her warm surroundings and relaxed, I believe, for the first time in her little life. 

The place where newborn Mady first traveled, along with her exhausted mama, one week old passport picture and all.

This year, it became the place where Ella caught her first lizard by the tail, where the big kids met some dolphin-y friends, where Dylan and Daddy played an epic series of beach football with Nicko and Uncle Kyle, where Mady suddenly seemed like a big kid, no daily nap required.

Then...2005.

And now...2014.

In ten more years, Dylan will be in college, Ella will be driving, and Mady will be a teenager. And through all the changes the next decade will bring, we will have this place -- a place to rest, to pause, to take a deep breath and get ready to take on whatever's next.