Of course, there is a reason for that. When I look back on my day, the good parts are the ones I want to remember. I'd rather not have an eternal record of many of my struggles, day to day. Some are too private to share: some are bad memories I want to block. I'm a big believer that focusing on the positive is a key element in improving our lives.
And yet, without that balance of good and bad, is this an accurate record of my daily life? Or is this as ridiculous as Pinterest, which posts pictures of delectable and calorie-ridden deserts next to a model's Photoshopped and unrealistic body with her "exercise tips" that will have you looking like her in no time?
I think the reason that I am thinking about this today is that, quite honestly, the last week has been kinda horrid. I was being rather depressed about stupid things I can't change for a while. A main one is our house. We bought this house because my husband wanted a project to work on - something we could buy cheap when we were young and poor and slowly work on and make beautiful. But now he is rather burned out on house projects, which I can't blame him for. I would never be able to count the number of man hours he has spent hammering and painting and sweating over this house. The outside looks amazing, and I adore the laundry room he built for me, among other projects. But even beyond how burnt out he is, now he just doesn't have time. That's the real kicker. I had been slowly gearing us up to replace our kitchen, since there is no room for Jasmine to eat dinner with us once she exits the high chair, but a few extra things have crowded Christopher's off hours and there just isn't time for a kitchen reno of all things. None on the horizon either. So every day I go back and forth between telling myself to stop being a "first world problem" whiner and be grateful that I have a kitchen that functions, to looking at the holes in the cabinets, the drawers that can't close properly and the countertop that is literally peeling off on the sides and comparing it to the stupid HGTV shows I probably need to stop watching and get upset again. I'd being doing better about this if I hadn't decided years and years ago that we would have to get a new kitchen when/if we had a third baby. (The bar seats four people, not five.) I probably wouldn't be that upset about it if I hadn't been looking forward to it for so long. And yet, now that I realize no renovations are anywhere in my near future, all I see is stained bath tubs and ugly carpet and the long list of things we would replace "someday" when we first bought the house.
And then, one by one, we all got sick. None of that was too noticeable in my book until I got sick, and then everything in the house just falls apart. I am SO glad that I hit my worst part over the weekend so that Christopher was here to pick up the slack. Saturday I woke up with the fever and chills. Ugh. I always forget how bad that feels until I get the flu again and then I lay there in agony. Thankfully, that part only lasted a few hours, but with mom barely able to move for a few days, my house may take a week to look presentable again. (Please, no one come over here yet. I mean it.)
But when I looked at the pictures I took on my camera in the last week or so, all I saw was happy faces. We managed to get all of us up on the snowmobiles to our cabin before I got sick, and some friends came too. That is the bright spot about not spending much money on our house: we had enough to have a cabin. I'll that quantity over ritzy quality any day of the week.
I'm so glad that our kids get to grow up with this experience. A chance to get away from cell phones and schedules and TV and just sled down the hill or go for a hike.
Tyler got some serious distance on his sled! He told us he was sledding into the forest.
And just when I started to sick enough that I didn't leave the house much (but sat around feeling sorry for myself and my kitchen instead) a friend called and asked me for a favor. Honestly, I think she did me one. I needed a service project last week. A few minutes doing something for someone else, even as simple as a photo shoot of her beautiful daughter that I turned into invitations to her baptism, did me a lot of good.
(Sorry, the invite info is faded out on here. This is my blog, not hers: you're not invited!)
And we had fun! She was so cute.
Most of all, I'm glad I was well enough to go to Kaitlyn's gymnastics show. I love the place she takes gymnastics from! She knows what she is doing and teaches them good technique and form, but she is not pushing them for perfection. At the show, I could tell that at each level, she designed the routines not to just be things they could to perfectly to show off how good they were, but included things the class was just getting the hang of so they could push themselves for the show. It wasn't about a perfect show.
And Kaitlyn loved it.
The song that Kaitlyn danced to is called "Put on a Happy Face". And I think that was the right song for my week.
Sure, sometimes the happy face feels like a lie because you are hiding things that are really going on in your life.
But putting on a happy face and focusing on the positive is what helps us to BE positive.
And by the way, Kaitlyn was the smallest gymnast in the entire night by at least a few inches. Multiple girls and moms came up to us afterward to tell us how cute she looked up there. She didn't do all of her stuff perfectly, and in fact she even fell on her head on her handstand! But she put on a smile, kept going, and had a great time. We took a video of the performance, but I also took a video the other week at practice and posted it here.
Another mom asked me to take pictures of her daughter too that night. No problem!
These girls were really good. Especially because they flung themselves into smiling the part! So I guess that's what I'll keep doing too.
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