It’s mid summer already. Like many things in life sometimes we wait for them to come and before we know it those moments come and go.

I have been trying to enjoy each day of summer and take the time to look at the sunsets, enjoy the scenery, and spend time outdoors with David and the kids.

What seemed like a weird few weeks coming, slowly has started to feel like months and now a year. But lately David and I have been trying to create our motto to make it through these times.

I won’t take credit for it because it is David’s motto.

“THIS YEAR WE ARE GOING TO THRIVE, NOT JUST SURVIVE.”

I love hearing it because it’s so easy to write off all of our goals and throw everything out the window when things seem to be so wrong with the world.

But the truth is the world has been broken for a very long time. And there is always something that could be holding us back.

Wars, pandemics, inequality, poverty, difficult economic times, uncertain times, crime.

It was when things were at its worst that many amazing things have always happened in history.

And why not be us the ones who do that rather than leaving those successes up to someone else.

Sometimes it’s easy to fall for the belief that we are just average people and that  there is not much of a difference to mak.  “It will be up to someone else.” we may think. Someone like Ghandi perhaps or some big influential leader.

But just because the whole world might not recognize what we have done or ever see it, it’s not a reason for us to live an average life.

I was in shock when I saw how man was sent to the moon in the middle of all the pandemic and all the protests on the streets. During those weeks it could have been easy to just sit tight and not do anything because everything was going bonkers after all.

Yet, what a symbol of hope for me it was to see something so amazing happening. Something that will have a long lasting effect on humanity and that will bring lasting changes and will be remembered forever.

For me a symbol of hope was the fact that we have the technology to go to space and come back. See space and its grandiosity. That brings me so much hope.

I love looking at space. I feel connected to God when I look up. I see how big everything is and how he is definitely in charge even when I may doubt at times, because sometimes all I do is look directly around me, and I don’t see much good happening in our direct environment.

For us this year to thrive has meant to keep going with our businesses and start a new one.

To keep on homeschooling my kids, to keep doing sports. I signed up for an interior design course because it has been a long time dream of mine.

We have kept focusing on our education this summer and our long term goals for our kids to graduate high school and college at a certain age. I have seen that happening when our older son Davide was able to skip a grade and go straight to 6th for the upcoming year. Small things that at times I wasn’t sure whether we needed to put on pause or not, but have decided that this is where we can have an impact and move forward with things, so this year we didn’t want to stop.

I don’t know if any of this may help you, but I hope that if you had a goal lately, that you won’t put it aside forever and remember that all we have is today, and to not wait for a far distant future before going after the things you dream of.

To also keep our kids entertained in the midst of it all. With us being at home so much and in those early mornings when the kids wake up and it may be tempting to just sit and watch tv…

We have been playing educational games.

One of my favorite games are the OSMO activities, and this year they have come out with two new apps.

One of them is a math game. And the other one is a shape activity.