I can’t put my finger on it. Sure, I am busy. Yeah, I am a bit overwhelmed. But that doesn’t explain it. My emotions are all over the place. I feel like a bottle of soda that has been put in a paint shaker. Can you hear the machine, “Shake! Shake! Shake!” I am exhausted and on the verge of drenching myself and everything near me with my liquid emotions. As I ruminate on life like a cow chewing on cud I try to get to the bottom of this lull. Meanwhile, Bah Humbug.

I tend to be an all or nothing kind of person. Either I do things one hundred percent or I don’t do them at all. The reason isn’t solely because I want to excel. Although I do put things off until I can do them the ‘right’ way. It turns out this usually means I get overwhelmed with the final goal. An example is my singing lessons. Hmmm…. practice an hour a day. Warm up, cover technique and repertoire. Be ready next week to show off the results. Finding an hour of uninterrupted time to cover a dozen songs and perfect everything along the way is impossible. Not possible means I feel like failure is imminent so I do nothing.

The solution: Break it down. Baby steps. By small and simple things are great things brought to pass. I need little goals. To press forward I must set up manageable tasks to survive. Novel idea? No. But sometimes we need to remind ourselves of the obvious.

Back in August we went for a hot air balloon ride. It was rescheduled from an earlier day (that’s another story). John, Renee, Jordy, Jason, Ellery, and our family all met up in Park City early in the morning. We drove out to the Heber City airport and were the first balloon in the air. We got to see all the rest fill up and take off from up above. It was a beautiful morning and the Heber Valley and the mouth to Provo canyon were spectacular.

The kids did pretty well considering they were exhausted. Alden threw his pacifier overboard and the two kids spent most of the ride down by our feet in the basket. The fire for the balloon was loud and very hot and that incentive for Eden to stay clear.

After a slow process of trying to find a suitable landing pad that wouldn’t get us run over by highway drivers or shot by local farmers, Daren Wilde (our pilot) shared some ballooning history with us. Among that was the following Balloonist’s Prayer:

The winds have welcomed you with softness.
The sun has touched you with his warm hands.
You have flown so high and so well,
that God has joined you in your laughter,
and set you gently back
into the loving arms of mother earth.