Messy in my Future

I am tired and roaming around in a post-thanksgiving daze. I ate almond bars for breakfast this morning. After all the excitement of Mike's parents coming, cleaning and cooking for days, Mike coming home with a big freshly butchered turkey; my kids sat at Thanksgiving dinner for all of two minutes. They were already full of crackers and cheese. Then after hours of clean up when I finally sat down for two minutes, they were hungry for supper.

Grant was kicked out of his room which doubles as the guest room. We've had kids sleeping all over the house: on the couch, the floor in each others rooms, in play tents in the basement. That results in sleeping bags, pillows, blankets and stuffed animals everywhere. It means late bedtimes.

Today, I am doing laundry that stacked up over the last twenty four hours, cleaning up after potty training misses and just trying to pick up the pieces in general. It kind of makes me wonder if its worth it. Maybe next year I can just buy some chicken nuggets and a bag of fries.

I usually have lofty notions and ideas of how our holidays should be. I'd like to have a fancy table set, have everyone dressed nicely and maybe have some soft music in the background as I emerge from the kitchen with my creation. This year I finally realized its time to get over that. When you have young children, the meal is chaos, there are spills, kids are wearing too small sweat pants and tank tops.

One of my new friends from a ministry group I'm in had some great wisdom for me on Facebook. She wrote that cooking and baking is part of their tradition now. Her adult kids sit in the kitchen and visit with her while she cooks and catch up around the table.

It got me thinking that all the things that are frustrating and annoying to me now are probably the very things that are going to be gold as the years go by. Kids camping out in the basement together, eating too many crackers and cheese before dinner, going outside and building a fort in the brush and staying up late watching movies and drinking hot chocolate are all things that already today are sweet memories.

I remember a snowstorm the week of Thanksgiving one year. I was bummed that we weren't at my Grandparents that day. I don't remember what my mom cooked or if the house was clean. What I do remember is going outside and playing in the snow all afternoon with my Dad and sister.

Now as an adult, whether we are at my parents or Mike's I love sitting in the kitchen talking to sisters or sister-in-laws while the meal is being prepped. Wherever our clans are gathered there is sure to be noise, chaos and a lot of messes. That's the best part of the holidays to me.

I'm going to keep cooking and baking. I want to have platefuls of yummy food as part of our celebrations. This year, I took a brisk walk with a friend before I had to start cooking. But I'm also going to embrace the things that I don't plan for.

In all the chaos of kids sleeping everywhere and hot cocoa and movies, my kids are blissfully happy. And so am I.