So This is Saturday

My entire growing up Saturdays meant work.  I was required to do everything everyone else did on the farm from gathering eggs to working cattle to digging catcus, hauling rocks, wood and everything in between.  Most of my adult life Saturdays meant being in the studio as either a dancer or a teacher.  Or, if I wasn't in the studio, in the fall it was football most of the day.  When I started teaching at the university part time and not teaching anywhere else, Saturdays meant the gym and then football or downtime while the kids napped.

But this year we have barely watched football.  Yes, we watch the Hogs and the Hokies lose, but we are not watching three or four games like in years past.  This Saturday morning, we got up and went to the land to prepare for a bonfire tomorrow.  I wore a mask and gloves.  We had the kids hauling brush and carrying wood.  Grayson loved it and keep telling us that he was a big boy and got very excited when I mentioned that they would get paid.  He loves money (must be the Smith in him).  Ruth did little things that were so helpful like getting things to help us load without being asked.  However, she did whine and cry some when we were hauling wood.

It was really wonderful being out there working as a family.  I must admit, I don't miss being in the studio.  Ballet has really taken a backseat in my life.  I still enjoy teaching my lecture classes and know that if I didn't work, I would go crazy.  But I don't have the same drive as before.  Yes, when I am there I want to change my students' lives and make a difference.  The big change is that I am no longer driven to accomplish as much, do, be, exist in the world of highly visible successful leaders and directors.  I wonder sometimes if that is wrong.  Atlanta is a town of doers and leaders.  Is it okay not to be one of them?  I think so.  But it would be easier to "blend in" and be a normal family person in a smaller, more slow paced town.

This internal struggle is what will build character, right?

But you want to see pictures of my children, the real reason you come to this blog.  Here are some pictures of the corn maze we went to on my birthday last Monday.  The card Ruth is holding in most of the pictures is the clue game that Ruth completed in the corn maze to figure out who had kidnapped Farmer Joe.  She was very proud of it.