What They Remember

Sometimes I have this vision of the family I feel like we should be. The one that wakes up smiling, eats breakfast together and talks about the day ahead before going our separate ways. The family that goes on grand adventures, big and small, on the weekends. Has huge weekend breakfasts and a house full of laughter.

Then I realize that I do not live inside a Pinterest board.

Our mornings are rushed no matter what time we wake up. The little one is crying because we have orange juice and not apple juice, the oldest is pouting over the lack of frozen waffles, HH can't find his keys and me? I'm just wishing the damn coffee maker would brew a little faster and that everyone would just get out so I can get 30 minutes of quiet.

Weekends are spent running errands, doing chores, schlepping the kids from place to place. Once in a great while we maybe squeeze a date night in there. This summer was particularly rough with the move mixed in and it caused a lot of mommy guilt. Guilt over not taking a real vacation, guilt over our lack of camping trips, guilt over just doing NOTHING and yet feeling like the summer disappeared in an instant.

My husband likes to remind me that sometimes (most of the time) the most memorable moments are the not so perfect ones. Like when it rained while on their boys camping trip. It's the trip that will be talked about over and over again, regardless of the other 15 camping trips with perfect weather. The summer we moved, it's not likely to be a summer they forget any time soon. I moved when I was 12 and I still remember like it was yesterday. I mean, watching your dad clean the upstairs by throwing stuff out of a second floor window is hard to forget :)

Sometimes I need to remember that it's not about being the family we think we should be...it's just about being a family. Embracing our good days and our bad days...our boring every day routines and our not so boring, not so every day adventures.