Bad Days

On Wednesday at a church activity, a friend caught me very off guard asking “do you ever even have a bad day?!” I was completely stunned at her mere thinking that I don’t have bad days ALL THE TIME! Of course I do- we all do! My response was “girl if you only knew what my day to day looked like!” But now I’m self concious and afraid that my natural instinct to look at the positive in things and make lemonade out of lemons is making me look completely not real or down to earth! For one thing it is my authentic nature to look for the silver linings of life and to count my blessings. None of that is fake. But I also thought I was already sharing that I definitely have bad days and that this life is HARD, real hard. 

The ironic part of our conversation was that 30 minutes later I got a panicked call from my mom that Riley wasn’t feeling well and Keagan and I had to leave Young Women’s early and rush home. That led to a long night of coughing and not a lot of sleeping for the next several nights, which I never handle very well. I’m just a beast when I don’t get sleep. On Thursday Riley tested  positive for strep and was diagnosed with an ear infection. Not only was my baby suffering and miserable, wanting to be held all day but I had to call in sick to work on Friday which makes me feel SO guilty, I missed my work Christmas party Friday night which I helped plan and was really looking forward to, AND we missed our Ward Christmas party last night. Add that to the financial strain and mile long to do list of Christmas plus my typical everyday life that is beautiful but yes very stressful, and I wish I could invite my friend over to see...YES I absolutely have bad days! 

Every day life is typically hard, very hard. I am a single mom. I have a special needs child. I have LOTS to worry about and LOTS to do! Of course I have bad days! I have grumpy days, days where I complain, am short with my kids, days where I pout or unfortunately even yell. I wake up almost every morning wishing I could just go back to sleep and forget the million responsibilities I have that day. But...here it comes....then I find beauty in my day, a lot of it. And it is at the very center of who I am to focus on that, especially in retrospect. So that is me being real. Yes I have bad days, but I don’t have a bad life! Despite all the hard, it is quite beautiful in fact! 

That very nature helps me not be so sad I missed two Christmas parties this weekend but instead be happy about the weekend we did have almost entirely in our jammies and with the people we love most! We had so much fun at the Fosters Friday night. We laughed so hard over a giant box of breadsticks from Olive Garden (they take a request for extra breadsticks extremely seriously) and the girls opened gifts from the Santa Box which is Sa’s traditional 12 days of Christmas for them. Saturday night we had an impromptu appetizer fiesta at the French’s and laughed til our stomachs hurt over slo motion videos of ourselves and Keagan casually commenting that sometimes my breath smells like salami. 

And before Riley got sick there was a whole lot of beauty in our week! Monday was a HUGE day for Riley who went on her class field trip to the Houston Children’s Museum! I was so thankful to be able to go with her! She had never been on a school bus before so just that alone was a treat. And the museum itself was full of excitement! Her favorites were definitely the play grocery store, the therapy dogs, the rocket launch and all the pay phones! We played and explored so hard that we tired her out! I absolutely love this comparison! Here is the before shot. Her and Travis on the bus headed to the museum full of excitement! 

And here is the after! Exhausted from all that fun! 

So much fun! 

On Tuesday night Mrs Hatley gave us tickets again this year to attend the special needs night for the incredible Christmas Spectacular at Champions Forest Baptist Church! Keagan was able to invite Lauren and we had the most wonderful time soaking up this incredible show and seeing several friends perform! This year we made it all the way thru the 2nd act which is the most important part as it is a live nativity. I wish I could say it was because all the girls were so excited to see Jesus’s birth but Im pretty certain they wanted to see Jackie the ginormous elephant which one of the wise men rides in on! And I have to admit so was pretty amazing! The whole night was! 

And there were lots of other beautiful things this week. Keagan made lots of chocolate covered strawberries, the trail of treats and secret Santa at work, decorating Pakkas grave for Christmas and Elmer’s antics. Today we unfortunately stayed home from church to let Riley rest and we all did but then went a fun Christmas light hunt tonight.  

So we’ve had lots of beauty and lots of fun this past week. But like always, there was lots of hard and lots of stressed mixed in. And I say that because I am real, and I hope I always will be! So yes I have bad days! We all do. But I pray we all have really beautiful lives too!