When it all goes wrong (And why I still love to share ideas)

Sometimes no matter how hard you work to make things perfect, no matter how pretty you dress them up, no matter what you do to paint the perfect facade, it just all goes wrong. You know, it's like last summer when I got my kids all dressed up for adorable beach photos. After taking about 120 shots, I got about 10 perfectly precious keepers which are hanging on our wall today. But there are always a few like this one. Eventually, it all falls apart. (And sometimes from the beginning it falls apart. After all this shot was at the beginning of the photo shoot!) And maybe the trick is to see the humor in the fall. Even more it's to see the redemptive nature of our falls. But sometimes the humor is the best place to start. After all, this picture has become one of my favorites of that summer . . . along with this one.

Good memories. Two-year-olds sometimes lose it. And everyone gets sick of posing after a while. And we all know, moms sometimes lose it, too!

One evening recently as I prepared dinner, my kids were listening to a CD of Judith Viorst stories. You remember, the author of Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day? They got to the story My Mama Says There Aren't Any Zombies, Ghosts, Vampires, Creatures, Demons, Monsters, Fiends, Goblins, or Things in which the refrain is, "Sometimes even mamas make mistakes." I stopped and asked my boys, "Do you think that's right? Sometimes even mamas make mistakes?"

My then 7yo promptly said, "Oh yeah, it's definitely right. Especially our mama! She makes a lot of mistakes!"

I was a little surprised and sheepishly said, "You think so?"

"Well yeah," he replied. "You say it yourself all the time. Anyway, I think it runs in your family."

There you have it. Perhaps I've been a little too candid with my kids about my insufficiencies. But probably not. Honestly is probably best, right?

The danger of blogging is that we can make our lives seem to good, too clean, too idyllic. After all, who wants to write about the bad? It's more fun to write about the curriculum that you love, the recipe that is easy and delicious, the project that worked perfectly, the wonderful family that you love.

I like to read blogs for that kind of encouragement. I like to get great ideas from others. I view blogs as a treasure chest of ideas from which I can choose. And that's my goal with my blogs. I love to throw out ideas for others and from others. I love for people to send me their ideas to share here. Most of what I know and do I learned from my mom, from my dad, from other great adults and aunts and uncles who helped to raise me, from my siblings, from my husband, from wonderful friends, and from things I've read from others in books, on email lists (back in the dark ages of the 1990s and early 2000s) and blogs.

So, I write this blog just to share ideas. Some are good, some are fair and some might just not work. I hope those who read will enjoy them for what they are: ideas. And I hope those who don't like them, will just exercise the will to not read. I do that with plenty of blogs myself.

Thanks for reading along and for sharing your ideas with me!