Meet the High Traffic Home!
Why hello there, friends. Welcome to our little corner of the internet, please make yourself at home. In an effort to assure the masses that the AI bots aren’t taking over the entire world(yet), we thought we’d introduce ourselves and prove we are real human beings that can click all of the traffic lights in a nine-box photograph.
We are the Smiths. No, that’s not our witness protection program alias, we are simply a family of six out of the over six millions Smiths in the United States. As of this writing, we are J (45yo), A (45), E (13), R (11), W (9), C (8). We honest-to-goodness swear on a stack of autographed 2016 Cubs paraphernalia that we did not intentionally make the acronym of our kids CREW, but it’s a fortunate bit of serendipity.
So what? What’s all this about?
This blog came about because over the years we have had many people, friends, family, and strangers alike, ask/tell us again and again “how do you do it all?”
What is “it”? Good question.
The “it”, as we think of it, is that while we are still very fallible people, over our more than two decades of marriage and almost fourteen years of kids, we have figured out how to live busy, but fruitful, organized, and productive lives as a family. Along the way, we’ve made many mistakes, and also found a lot that works while we try to write a good story with our lives. Writing that story though has chapters about us as individuals, as a couple, as friends, and as a family. We wear many hats, and have to take them on and off a lot, which is undoubtedly familiar to many of you.
Our home is high traffic in many ways: lots of kids coming and going, us heading out to events and coming back constantly, friends and activities that we host, and A LOT of data packets coming and going through our internet cable via five TVs, four iPads, five laptops, and three cell phones. There’s a lot always coming and going here, and it takes some intentionality to make sure it runs well and we thrive as people at the same time.
In that vein, we’d like to share some of what we’ve learned along our journey, what we are still figuring out, and some of the mistakes we’ve made in order to maybe help a few other parents out there trying to figure out this amazing but insane thing called “being a parent”. The world is full of tips & tricks, lists of “7 easy things you can do to blah blah blah”, and advice on how to do things. We don’t have all the answers, but have figured out a lot along the way, and also hope to learn more as we grow.. Honesty and transparency are a big part of our lives, even when it’s not particularly fun.
Some themes to success have risen above the others: Organization, Automation, Fun & Adventure, Technology, and Rest… oh, and how we feed everyone! You will hear a lot about these topics. We hope to detail out the items, rhythms and systems that have changed the game for us and provided peace, joy and a whole lot of people in our home. Our hope is to share what we know, encourage you in your home and create a space to swap thoughts.
So with all that, welcome, glad you’re here, and let’s see if we can have some fun giving you a peek into the fun, craziness, and rhythms of our High Traffic Home.
Love,
J&A and CREW