Reality: Behind the Blog Facade

Smiling kids, gourmet treats, clever stories of cute moments in my kid's lives. Those are the posts of my blog each week. Ah, and don't we all smile and think what a cute family?

But you know, we are a cute family-a cute, sometimes rude, almost always dirty, frequently frazzled, wild and crazy, three boys family. So today, I am giving you a glimpse behind the "blog facade."

This is what my house looked like Monday afternoon (and looks like most afternoons):
And this is what Dal's face looked like: (Josh came home and said "Dal, what's all over your face? And Dal replied "meatballs is soooo yummy!")
and this is what my day was like:
Dal started the day off for me by getting himself a frozen waffle and, while still frozen, pouring syrup on it himself by removing the lid of the syrup container and dumping it...mostly on the kitchen floor. Then he ate it, still frozen and then walked over to my desk, took the container of blank CD's that was sitting on it, touched each and every one with his sticky hands and dumped them on the floor.

Next, he proceeded out to the van where, with his still sticky hands, he "drove" the van. Meaning my steering wheel was now sticky.

Where you might ask, was I? I don't know. I was either in the middle of telling Nathan that he couldn't go to school nude from the waist down or to find his shoes or else he had to wear his church shoes to school or something like that.

The rest of the day included things like Dallen jamming 3 or more CDs into the van's CD player, thus jamming it and ruining several CDs (you'd think I wouldn't let him into the van), Dal dumping bits and pieces of his previously mentioned "meatballs" all over my desk and shipping scale while I scrambled to try to get things packaged up to ship at FedEx (for business) which meant loading everyone into the car for a quick FedEx run (and is the reason I never got around to washing Dal's face. Well, that and I thought it was cute.)

Also Jack, standing on the plastic container that we keep the train tracks in, ignoring me when I said "don't jump on that or it will break" only moments before he jumped on it and it, yes-broke. Or someone breaking several more of the blinds on our window.

Oh, and me, trying to keep up with business which is always tricky on a Monday because I don't work on Sundays and because Mondays are always my busiest day. Packaging, answering phone calls and emails, processing orders, angry customers, the works.

Jack sitting on the floor leaving a confetti of green and purple paper as he practiced his cutting skills while Nathan did his homework and Dal did whatever it is that Dal does. Oh, that might have been the moment he climbed on the counter and reached on top of the fridge and grabbed my old camera and tossed it to the floor.

And all this amidst the toy scattering we had created earlier in the day while we were babysitting a friend and had to play with every single toy in the toy closet. By the way, Uncle Tim, when you come to visit YOU get to clean up each and every little green man that you so lovingly sent our children. :)

Of course I could go on and on, and on and on and on. And so could all of you. I know it. Life is crazy no matter what we portray on our blogs or on our smiling faces each day. The Blog Facade.

But isn't life wonderful? And aren't we glad that we smile and see the good in life? Yesterday was a great day. I had a blast playing hide and seek for an hour with my kiddos, the sun was shining, the grass was green, the orange and palm trees swayed. I don't even mind that my house looked like an explosion because the boys did a great job helping clean it up before dinner and I like being the kind of mom who lets my kids be kids.

And this is the view out my backyard:

Who wouldn't be happy when their backyard looks out on that? :)

And THAT was a really, really long post.