Some days seem like weeks, some weeks like months. A Friday after a week of long days is both a respite and form of torture.

A Friday like this calls for the raising of the white flag. The wave, the surrender. The gesture that means you will do anything in your power to get through the next few hours until the husband who works long hours can take over. When it’s nice out, that means spending an afternoon on the swingset or digging in the sandbox, playing Popcorn on the trampoline. When it’s not, when it’s the cold or the rain or the ice that means you’ve got another day confined within the walls of your home, there’s coloring, or building, or extra long baths.

It means an extra cup of coffee, an extra hour of Disney Jr. It means sending the kids to another room when the fighting gets to be too much, and scrambling to find something to fix for dinner at 5:45.

On the worst of Fridays, it means making dinner and going to a quiet room to finish the meal by yourself while the rest of your family eats together. On the best of Fridays, it means relinquishing control of the menu, making the easiest of kid-approved meals, and surrendering the parenting to a kids’ movie you’ve all seen before.

Friday means a few hours of listening to chatter, snuggling the child that refused a nap and ends the day refusing to stop crying, watching the others dress up and run around and forget that bed time is settling down time, until the sweet sound of silence and the warm embrace of your own bed fill your mind and heart.

Through The Lens Thursday is a self-improvement photography project that Alison of Writing, Wishing and I are doing this year. 

Don’t forget to join our Flickr group or share your own posts if you’d like to follow along and work on your own photography! And use the hashtag #throughthelensthursday to connect with others working on it, too.

Next week’s prompt is FLOWER.