I made myself a promise at the beginning of last week: don’t make any plans for the holiday.

I have a tendency to over plan. I don’t so much jam-pack things in as much as I assign so much meaning to everysingledetail that it ends up being…a little over the top. I’ve really never met a holiday I didn’t adore. But I knew that we didn’t need a weekend filled to the brim with plans or details to be excited about. We needed a weekend with…space to be excited about whatever we happened to be doing.

And it turns out, no plans were just as good as big plans. We chose every single thing we did and as a result, we loved every single thing that we did. I drank an almond milk latte at my favorite coffee shop and read the Wall Street Journal. The real, live, paper one. I saw a photo on Instagram of raviolo (aka BIG ravioli) so I spent a portion of Friday making fresh pasta, rolling it out and stuffing it with lobster and shrimp. My husband golfed. We bought the cat a harness and leash and hung out until late on our back porch. All 3 of us. We walked 12 miles, to spots across the city we like being and met up with friends for the most patriotic Cubs game ever. We napped. We grilled. There was more golf. There was wine.

It was glorious.

It meant that little patriotic details I infused in the weekend were that- details. Details that I enjoyed, that added some festivity but the real holiday was being together, enjoying our home, our city.

Oh, how I love the red, white and blue and the country is represents. Grateful for our freedoms, including the freedom to make our lives what we need them to be in order to live them fully.