Under Water in January

I've got a bad case of the January blues. 
EVERYTHING looks so monochromatic: NO green, no leaves, no sun, no light, and my mood feels dreary.  It would be so easy right now to sink into the bleakness.  Once one thing goes, it could easily all follow right down the rabbit hole.  But I have half of a mind left; a third eye looking out for multi colors. 

We took the boys for an overnight with a group of friends yesterday.  To a mediocre hotel that had an indoor pool, a fireplace, but not much else.   Nirvana for the kids.  The boys absolutely loved it.  Running around with a pack of other kids, playing spy, hide-n-seek, swimming, playing board games, and basically feeling very in-charge.  It was a perfect hotel for this pack of kids going just a little bit wild.   We made up 80% of the overnight guests so I don't think we annoyed anyone at all.  The kids even got to make their own waffles this morning at breakfast.  

Quite honestly, the blue of the pool was the brightest color of the weekend.  The blue of the deep warm pool, with the drippy ceiling, and the cool air was the brightest blue I've seen in a long time.  Follow this with the bright green of the little pieces of fresh leaf that the leaf cutting ants carried at the science center.  Add to it the bright red, yellow, orange colors in the abstract Charlie Harper prints at the museum.  And the sweet sweet peach of my children's skin, the soft green-blue of their eyes, the blue of Anna's cast, and I think I can feel a little warmth coming back into my veins.  How about the quiet often interrupted conversations with my friends....about school, about our children, about the quirkiness of life.  

And then here we are, home again.    Our home.   It's here I get to fluff the life back in.  Add to the atmosphere of my home....make it warm, bright, and full of heart and soul.   Just so we can make it through these particularly bleak winter months - with one of us in a cast, two of us needing so much to run and play outside in the sun, and the remaining one, me, knowing it's all about how you choose to look at things- in black and white or color.  And even under water in January the blue can be quite luminescent.