Unplanned Beauty

So this morning, as I do every morning, I was scrolling through my "On This Day" section of my Facebook profile.

I got to see lots of great pictures of my son playing with his friends, I got to see my 37 week belly from my pregnancy with my daughter, and then I got to see the posts from before having children.

This one hit me the most and got me thinking a bunch today:

If you know me, you know that I love having a good plan. Having a good budget too, but plans are my favorite.

I mean, I plan out our meals for the week so I can go grocery shopping. I even plan home improvement projects way in advance so that I can save up money for them while also looking for sales.

And planning isn't all bad. I mean, it has saved us a ton of money in the past, I'm sure.

But I realized the other day, just how much people expect me to be planning things.

A friend posted a status that went something like this: "Comment ME in the comments and I will tell you what I love most about you." So many of the responses were about how great a friend the person was, how loving they were to their family, or how inspiring they were. My comment was that I'm a good budgeter and saver.

And it hit me like a ton of bricks. And it hurt a little bit.

I don't want to just be known as the person writing the lists or making a budget. I will still do those things, but I want to be known as more than that.

So this morning when I saw this post from 9 years ago, I thought back about all the good things that have happened that weren't planned in advance.

I had a beautiful son before I planned to. The timing felt all wrong when we found out about our wonderful surprise, but the timing has turned out to be perfect and I can't imagine my life without my son.

We bought a vehicle that my husband absolutely loves. If you don't know about our Bronco, here's a little back story. We went out for breakfast one day while we were living in Virginia. On the way home, my husband noticed that the car dealership had two Broncos sitting in their lot so he asked to stop by and "look" at them. My son also happens to love cars (and always has) so I said okay. We stopped and looked, made a silly offer, and went home. A couple days later, we were back at that dealership writing a large check to buy my husband's prized Bronco seen here:

This Bronco has brought so many good memories to our family that I am glad we (okay, mostly my husband) just decided to buy it spur of the moment. (Someone remind me of this statement in a couple months when we pay for some repairs on it....again).

We also had to unexpectedly find a new place to live in Virginia, when our landlord suddenly decided the house we were renting should cost way more than we were paying. It turned out to be an awesome blessing. We were able to find a house with a huge yard, garage and great neighbors. It was also a blessing for our new landlords because they needed to have someone rent their house while they moved to their new duty station a bit earlier than they had originally planned. We made so many friends and memories in that house that I was sad to leave when we got orders.

I could spend all day talking about great times that just happened and weren't planned, but I have other fun things to do (laundry, dishes, etc) so I'll stop here.

Thinking back on these moments and actually typing them all out has really reminded me to just live in the moment a bit more.

You'll still see me talking about planning things (especially when we are talking about big projects and budgets), but I hope that you will also see me do more things that are spur of the moment decisions.

And I hope to make myself known as more than "the girl who budgets well" or "the girl constantly making lists."