family bloopers

Oh man. We got a CD in the mail today full of glorious family pictures taken on our farm. We have hundreds to pick from and they are awesome. Jaime Rau came and worked her magic with our family and she. is. magic. I can't wait to share more pictures here...from Ivar pulling a wagon of pumpkins, to colorful quilts under big oak trees. They're awesome.

But with hundreds of stunning pictures to choose from, my favorite pictures, the ones I keep returning to, are the pictures Jaime put in a file of bloopers. Because they feel the most true to our life. We live bloopers every day. Some of us try really hard each day to keep up appearances, but not everyone is cooperative. Though dressed adorably, they've got their finger up their nose.

But this is our every day. A mom moves about each day trying to make sure life runs smoothly because this is our job. But life doesn't run smoothly because kids by their very definition ensure life stops running smoothly. A fact that makes these blooper pictures feel so strangely affirming. I love them. I love the picture perfect ones too, but I really love the bloopers.

An awesome shift has happened in me over the past two months. It's a shift I've been praying would happen for a very long time. I couldn't force it. I wasn't able to bring the change in myself. And I don't know how to describe it much more than I feel like I'm back. Something changed so that I've started dreaming up projects again and things I want to accomplish. And then I've been getting things done. It's like I have room to be creative again and have my imagination back.

I have found a sincere joy for the season of motherhood I am smack in the middle of. It was really hard there for a while. There still are really hard moments. But my kids are good company. I love being with them. I'm better at getting away so I can come back home. I am not as resentful toward the daily tasks, and even more importantly, I am way more graceful in the way I treat myself and how I am measuring up to my intense personal expectations. I'm trying to measure my life less on how my life looks, and more on how my life feels. And my life is feeling fun.

These bloopers mean so much to me because these are the true pictures of our imperfect, multiple-chins, beautiful life.

(And just to keep it totally real, just a few minutes after this picture of me and Elsie was taken, she started throwing up with a violent case of the 12 hour stomach flu that then morphed into Hand, Foot and Mouth disease. Which would explain her not-super-smiley mood during the photo shoot. Now that's real life.)