A light dusting of snow on the walks

The kids are asleep and I'm trying to "tidy up" the family room. Sounds like an old fashioned term but it's the one we use around here. We've established, in our family, that putting away toys isn't actually cleaning anything; truly, it's rare that we ever get past the tidying phase into the cleaning one. Mainly we pick up the same toys over and over and over, every day of our lives.

I've gotten most of the junk off the floor and I'm now on to vacuuming. Yes, I am afraid of waking up the baby, but if you could see my carpet now, you would understand that it poses more of a health risk to Keller than an incomplete night of sleep. I run my hand along the carpet under the couch and find so much garbage, paper, cereal. My children are like little confetti machines, covering every inch of the house. It took me several rounds of tidying then sighing before I could get out the vacuum.

Boy, I'm sure this is exciting to read.

At the end of this day, my thoughts are: I can either feel crappy about the messy family room, or I can try to make it better. I can either curse the snow as I head out to pick up my preschooler, or put on my snow boots. I can wait until I have time to buy construction paper for the Christmas Count-down chain, or I can join my kids in coloring white paper with crayons. Life's full of bummers and redundancies, but I have choices. That's awesome.