It all started with this picture. Do you see that big white thing? That's our hamper. Do you see the clothes next to it? Those are Husband's. This is a regular scene in our room. Yet, for some reason, on this particular day, I burst out laughing. Instead of being frustrated with the fact that he couldn't get his stuff into the hamper, I saw the joy in it. This has been going on for over 15 years. This matters because it means that my husband is around. It means that he is home with us. It means that he's alive and well. It took that one moment of appreciating this to not be frustrated with the fact that the boy can't seem to get his clothes into the hamper. Know what? I haven't been frustrated with this ever since. It just took me to look at it from a different perspective.
A shoe in the hallway. This is nothing out of the ordinary here. I can't tell you how many times I yelled at the kids to put their shoes away. I almost did just that with this one. I stopped myself right before yelling up to Sunshine to get her shoe, just one, out of the middle of hall when I realized what that shoe was there for. For about a week, we were having huge spiders in the basement. I was in the basement and I called for Sunshine. Without even asking what I needed, she immediately came to my rescue with a shoe to kill whatever spider was attacking me. In this case, there was no spider, but that didn't matter. What mattered was she was ready to save Mommy. When she ran back upstairs, she just dropped that shoe in the middle of the floor. That shoe, in the middle of the floor, made her a brave warrior princess on a quest to save Mommy from the scary spiders. That matters. She didn't hesitate, she grabbed a shoe and ran downstairs.
Sunshine has knack for never hanging up the towel when she's done. One day I walked into the bathroom and there was this. How did she even get it to stay like that? It takes talent to get a towel to stay perfect...sideways and almost upside down. I didn't fix it. I left it just how it was. After all, why not show off that kind of towel hanging talent?
A friend of mine posted a picture of her counter after her kids came home from school. I laughed and looked at my table. No joke, this is just how it is. It can be perfect and then not 5 seconds after the kids come home, this. It's the same with the counters. I don't know how they do it. And it's not just the kids. It's Husband, too. When he's out of town, my kitchen counters are perfect and I swear that instant he pulls in the drive, they magically get messy. But what this mess means is that my family is here. We are all together. When one of them is missing, things are definitely cleaner, but a part of me feels missing. My family is my heart and soul. Sometimes life gets messy, but it's nothing you can't get through with family.
Dishes, right? Normal, every day thing. Except my dishwasher was broken. It happened to break on pizza/movie night. Pizza/movie night always means more dishes since we make it all from scratch. So, when the dishwasher breaks, no need to be upset, just use it as a drying rack.
We have one bathroom for four of us. It's pretty bad now, so I can't even begin to imagine the horrors of when the kids are teenagers. There are always towels on the floor. I can't understand it. Like the hamper, the towel bar and hooks are directly above where they are throwing the towels! Every time I see this scene, I laugh. It's payback. I remember my mom complaining about how I could never hang up a towel. I laugh because I think of how in 20 years, my kids are going to be wondering how their kids can never hang up a towel.
Sunshine saw a really cute picture of marshmallows and tootsie rolls that are put together to make little "nail polish" bottles. Simple. Or not. The amount of time and clean up it took to make this mess was.....completely worth it. We all found it hysterical how totally wrong this project went. In the end, it didn't matter how they looked. Sunshine was so happy that I made them for her sleepover and they tasted just fine. I will never attempt this particular project again, but the laughs we got from it were well worth it.
See the joy in the world around you. If you look for it, it's there.