Not too long ago we sat in a restaurant as a family eating dinner. It was one of those times where the stars aligned just right & everyone was happy, smiling & well behaved for the entire dinner. It was bliss. We had a steady stream of people complimenting our children & looking over at our family with sweet smiles. But for every wonderful experience like that, there's a handful of those nightmarish experiences where someone throws a fit, or I forgot to pack something important in the diaper bag, or a certain toddler is talking about poop to a random stranger while I desperately try to redirect. And any one of these experiences is just a snapshot into our lives with none of them being the full picture. In reality this thing we call family is wonderful & difficult & fulfilling & humbling & really every contradictory combination of words I can think of. I'm a perfectionist by nature, & sometimes I try to create this perfect world for myself & my family but I always come up short. And slowly but surely I'm learning that it doesn't have to be perfect to be beautiful. Maybe so much of the beauty comes from all of the messy imperfections & all of us just loving each other anyways. Because the real snapshot of our family is this: we really, really love each other & we're really, really lucky to have each other.
