Picture Perfect

I used to have this vague picture in my mind of what my home would look like when I grew up. Clean floors, for one. Walls without scrapes and dents and broken corners. Those things weren't in my picture. My picture looked something like the inside of a magazine.

White everything? Not in MY house, not now with kiddies around!

It's taken me awhile, but I've come around. I've grown up. Opened my eyes a little more to the pictures around me, in real life. Not in a magazine.

Before kids, we NEVER had anything on our fridge. Pictures belong in frames. Mail put away somewhere. Nothing stuck to the fridge with magnets.

Before kids, we didn't have gouges in our walls.

We didn't have love notes everywhere we turned.

We didn't have new drawings of hearts and stick people families every single day.

And now, we're daily presented with little love notes from our kids to us. I find them from one kid to another. Stuffed in corners of the furniture, stuck to any wall that will accept masking tape, attached to any surface within reach. Drawings big and small placed in front of me on my desk as I try to get a little more office work accomplished but am derailed by red-crayon-drawings of balloons and hearts.

My idea of a picture-perfect home has changed a bit. The fine art on the walls is no longer something I'd find in a store or a magazine. Its already here, in every room of our home, carefully and lovingly created. And without ever planning the design, our home has ended up picture perfect after all.