This Beautiful Mess

If you wonder where I've been the last couple of days....we were moving AGAIN! I took a couple days off of schooling to pack (well throw things in boxes) and to unpack. It's amazing how much you can acquire with four kids. I never thought we would ever be done.
Thank you to everyone that helped us:)
When moving into a new house I look at it as a fresh start. A time get organized again and vow to stay that way. (At least for a year!) till we move again..Just kidding! I started out the school day by going through "different" rules. New house, new rules. Telling the kids I don't want to see toys all over the living room, crayons on the tables or handprints on the walls.
The last couple of days I have been trying to decorate the house I was lost in Pottery Barn catalogs and dreaming of my house looking like the ones on the pages.
When going through the mail I ran across a Focus on the Family magazine and happened to stop and read a article that read: Stop struggling to maintain a picture-perfect home. Was God trying to tell me something? In Home Comforts, a book about how a home works, not how it looks, Cheryl Mendelson writes, "When you keep house, you use your head, your heart and your hands together to create a home-the place where you live the most important parts of your life." And when your kids are little, the most important parts have a lot to do with making messes. Stephen Curtis Chapman captures this idea in his song "Signs of Life" I've got crayons rolling around in the floorboard of my car, Bicycles all over my driveway, bats and balls all over my yard, And there's a plastic man from outer space sitting in my chair, The signs of life are everywhere.
I had to stop and think as much as I want a picture perfect home, I am raising kids and my goals for our home no longer need to include maintaining the look of a decorating magazine. Our home wasn't built to be a showroom. Loving my husband and children, having babies, teaching children to know and love God is far too important to be diminished by such low aims......even if it means having to work my way through a cushion fort to finish the dishes!