Tuesday marks the first day of school for both J & O.

I have a dining room table full of school supplies that are mismatched and disorganized as neither of my two attempts at brick-&-mortar shopping nor my attempted Amazon prime deliveries yielded the full list of requested supplies and donations for their classrooms. Things need to be divided, labeled, bagged up.

I have a long grocery list of dinner and packed lunch supplies to pick up tomorrow, now complicated by a weekend email that indicated our intended entree for O (PB&J) as well as the preferred fruit (strawberries) are associated with severe allergies for children in his class, and therefore barred from entry.

Until just a few nights ago, I had a stack of papers still left over from J’s end of Kindergarten events, which warranted being reviewed, tossed, or saved in the filing folder system I’m hoping will be somewhat sustainable as the boys age and accrue what I can only assume will be exorbitant amounts of priceless and sentimental intellectual property (says their mother).

And then there is this looming dread of operating by a new set of logistics. Even summer mornings are a bit much, and now we will have 2 that have to be walking out to the bus at 7:43am. They will need to be picked up from the after care program at school on the south side of town before 6pm. A and C have daycare on the east side of town, flexible in start time but also needing a pickup by 6pm. I drive by the daycare on my way to the highway and on my way home, but my meetings start no later than 9am, which means I could take the littles in if I can get there by 7:45 to be on the road by 8, but then I miss the bus stop, which is a 10 minute window of my morning that I genuinely love. Either way, Dave and I need to predetermine who takes what car and picks up which set of boys each day as the car seat configuration is anything but flexible. We are 30 hours out from go-time and have yet to devote the brain space to figure this out.

So when Dave asked me if I wanted to steal away for the long weekend up north, I said ‘no.’ Too much to do, and there was no chance I’d be in a good head space Monday night if I was behind the 8 ball just prior to the first day of 1st grade and Junior Kindergarten. No. No, thank you, but no.

He made his case simply: “the boys are about to start school again. We won’t have that many occasions when we can all get away together for the next many months. If we can make it work, I feel like we should.”

Partially because Dave asks next to nothing of me and therefore I try to oblige when he does, and partially because I knew he was objectively right, I agreed. We went up north.

But as I’ve observed many times before yet clearly not fully internalized, it is not simply about a change of scenery. Rather, it’s about the active choice to step away from the to do list and obligations that otherwise spur many of the decisions of how we spend our time. In the list of things we did, none of them are unique to being away from home. In fact, this entire list could have been written in a regular weekend less than 10 minutes from home. During this weekend, we:

• – Did a grocery run.
• – Played hide and seek at a playground and among the trees.
• – Went bowling.
• – Moderated brotherly squabbles roughly 30x/day.
• – Let the older bros stay up too late with the acknowledgment we will pay for this during the coming school week.

Because we were “away” (physically, but also mentally from the mental ticker tape of things we should be dividing in order to conquer), however, both Dave & I experienced these commonplace things like this:

• – Grocery run – the first time the boys visited a store with the kid-sized carts and how unbelievably excited they were to help! We ended up with 3 versions of granola bars when every boy insisted on picking their own flavor.
• – Hide and Seek – A is still evidently unclear on rules and – when you announce ‘ready or not, here I come!’ – he will pop out from his hiding spot behind a tree, shrieking “I FOUND YOU!” It made me laugh every. single. time. Plus we meandered over to the nearby skate park, only to realize it was overrun with kids no older than 12 who were zipping around on their scooters. J watched, mesmerized, and a new hobby was born (radiologists all over the country are now shuddering as another little boy increases his odds of needing an X-ray).
• – Bowling – our first time with the boys, and we had no idea how fun this would be when you throw in bumpers and the ramp tools they have ready for kids — to say nothing of the “glow” environment even at 12pm. We had a delicious lunch of greasy bar food, I only barely won (yes, also utilizing bumpers), and the boys were asking to go back the very next day.
• – Brotherly squabbles – no romanticizing this; it’s just the nature of the beast in our home.
• – Staying up late – because who is going to call it a night when their children are animatedly running down the beach trying to find the best stones to skip, or finally getting the hang of a game of Frisbee with their dad, or laughing raucously at whatever 3 x small children find so funny long after lights-out at bedtime?

It shouldn’t require physical space to get to this point of mental clarity and appreciation for how beautiful the every day can be, but for me, it certainly helps.

I know this to be true: routine is huge for me at this stage in life. Routine allows me to operate on auto-pilot while my mind is trying to track 3 steps ahead of whatever we all need. Routine allows me to delegate effectively when I need to tap out or ask for help. Routine allows me to compartmentalize and keep the train in motion — for my self, and for my family. I love — I mean, love — a solid, predictable, effective routine.

But routines are not memorable. Memories stem from the stand-out moments, whether those are truly extraordinary moments, or moments within the realm of the ordinary, but with extra attention paid. This weekend was all about the latter: ordinary moments with extraordinary attention paid.

I’m still behind on back-to-school prep, but I have a feeling when I look back, I’ll remember J’s first strike bowling, and not the fact that I didn’t have his spare gym shoes ready and labeled before his first day.

Related: the trick to quality time that I picked up from my mom // the bus stop: my parental focus group