Day 19: Another picture + Day 20: The meaning behind our blog name

I'm doing tomorrow's post along with today's because they seem to go together nicely. The photos above demonstrate part of the reason we named our blog "in constant motion." Most of our photos are action shots. Now let me see if I can explain all of the many reasons behind this multifaceted name.

Reason #1: It started out simple enough. We are always busy doing something, we are an active, on-the-go family, so we thought the name "in constant motion" fit our family pretty well. But, the more I think about it, the more reasons I can think of why this is a great name for our blog.

2: When Jordan got off his mission, we found that we were still crazy about each other. For those of you who aren't familiar with our story, I'll give you the condensed run-on sentence version. We met in high school, started dating casually, eventually could no longer deny that we had fallen in love and got more serious, which inevitably led to us breaking up since we were just too young to take the relationship anywhere, then I got engaged to someone else somewhere in that time, Jordan told me he was still in love with me the day after I got engaged, which made me admit that I was still madly in love with him, so I broke off the engagement, Jordan left on his mission a few weeks later and we decided that when he got back we would at least give a relationship a shot. Phew. So, for two years I anticipated the day that we would "at least give a relationship a shot." When Jordan got home, he was in no hurry to do that, though. He wanted to date everyone under the sun, except for me ironically enough. I was fed up with dating everyone under the sun and only wanted to date the man I had been madly in love with for years. I had dated for two years while still loving Jordan. It just wasn't fun for me. So, I tried to date while he was out dating, and I just couldn't do it anymore. So, I sat and twiddled my thumbs and waited for him to want to date me. When I asked him why he was so hesitant to date someone he claimed to love, his response was an analogy. He told me that he knew he loved me, but our relationship was like a ball at the top of a hill. He knew that as soon as that ball started rolling, it would just keep rolling faster and faster and we wouldn't be able to stop it. He knew we'd continue to fall in love more and more, get more serious, and eventually have to get married. OH MY! That would be horrible! Ha ha ha! At the time I thought of many worse things than two people falling in love and getting married. Besides, I wasn't in a hurry to get married, so I assured him that we could just date and be together. He was wiser than I, though. It turned out he was right. When we did eventually start dating one another, we did indeed get more and more serious, and you know the rest of the story. We got married and had two babies :) That ball is still in constant motion. Life keeps moving forward and we are rolling with it, falling more and more in love, and seeing where this rolling ball will take us next.

3: Also, we seem to always be moving forward in life on to the next step with school and career and building a family, never quite falling into a set routine. We've always been students. It actually seems strange to think that one day we will be settled in a home in a town in our set careers. Life is always changing, though. That is something we can count on. Life is always in constant motion.

4: We just don't sit still. Beckham is always running and climbing and getting into something, Ava is now following in his footsteps, and I keep up with them. Once they are asleep, that is my time to catch up on everything else, so I still don't sit still. Jordan blames me for our children's inability to sit still since I am on my feet around the clock and he says they just follow my example, but he isn't much different. He works long hours as an intern, whether it's 30 hours straight or 12 hours straight, and then he comes home and will take off for a quick run, do some pushups and situps, help with the kids, clean up the dinner dishes, and only then will he finally sit still... most of the time to do some studying (because he is a nerd - and nerds are the coolest!)

5: Then there's that constantly changing mind of mine. I've never quite settled on a major over the past decade... I am afraid to close any doors to any of my options, so I am always studying something new all of the time. The more I get myself thinking about what I want to accomplish with my studies, the more the wheels get turning, and before you know it, I have four or five majors that I want to work on (simultaneously!) and just as many careers.

6: Also, I can't get my mind to hold still. I'm working on it, but this has always been a huge challenge for me. I will be teaching my Joy School class thinking about what studying I have to do later that day. I'll be studying thinking about what chores I have to get done. I'll be doing chores thinking about how I I'd rather be in a yoga class. I'll be in yoga class picturing myself running. And I'll be running thinking about anything else. All the while I'm juggling two kids and managing our household and trying to keep all the balls I'm juggling up in the air. I need to learn the art of stillness. Stillness of mind and body. Living in the moment. Yoga is very good for me in this regard. It is teaching me to live in the moment. With young children, especially, you have to learn to live in the moment because they grow up so fast. Kids have this skill down beautifully. They just intuitively know how to play, how to live, how to be. They truly live life to the fullest without any regard to all of those many other things they could be doing. I'm trying to follow their example.

7: We also relocate a lot. In the 7 years we've been married, Jordan and I have moved 9 times and have lived in 5 different states across the country, sometimes for fun, sometimes for school and career.

8: We also take a lot of random trips. We take road trips across the country, to the beach, Disney World, the zoo, the deep south, the northeast, anywhere. Last fall we took a random roadtrip across North Carolina just so we could go to an indoor waterpark in the middle of the winter in the last month of my pregnancy because we really wanted to go swimming. We like life's little adventures. Next week we are taking the train up to New York while family is in town visiting. The week after that I'm taking the kids down to North Carolina to visit some good friends we met while living in Fayetteville. It's always fun to just take off and do something different. Eventually we'll expand our travels all over the world.

9: If you read the post below about what I crave, you'll see that I actually crave constant motion and freedom - my happy place is running through a sunny field. I'm kind of neurotic and just that image of running helps to free me from the constraints and stresses I put upon myself. My mind and body are in constant motion. I cannot tell you how many times I lay awake at 4AM because I can't turn off my mind. No, I should not be diagnosed with a case of ADHD. I just have so much to think about and when it's finally still and quiet throughout the house, that's when my thoughts let loose.

10: And on a final note, once in a dance class the instructor told us to stand perfectly still, on both feet, and close our eyes. It was surprisingly difficult to hold "perfectly still." She explained that no matter how hard we try to still our bodies, we are always in motion even when we don't realize it. The earth is always in motion. One constant in this world is motion. Everything is in motion. Constant motion.

So, there you have it. We are "in constant motion."



P.S. I'm sorry if this post is long and disorganized and not written very well. I tried to start it yesterday while juggling two kids and preparing lunch, and then decided I'd better go through and edit it today so it wasn't so scatter-brained, but I think I actually made it worse! I'll just let it be. I do much better when I type these blogs in the middle of the night :)