You take the good, you take the bad . . .

Anyone else watch some Facts of Life back in the day?

You know the theme song - "You take the good, you take the bad.  You take them all and then you have the facts of life.  The Facts of Life . . ."

Those lyrics kept running through my mind today.  But, aren't those words telling the truth?  Life is the good and the bad.

The bad:

This morning we woke up to no power.

Actually I was awakened at 5am to my girls notifying me that there was no power, "The light in our closet is off and the light in the bathroom won't turn on!"  They hollered down the stairway.  I stumbled upstairs to see what the fuss was about, tucked them back in and assured them that even though the power was out they were safe.  I was really, really wanting to get out of there as fast as I could and crawl back into my bed.

Them:  "Why?  Why, Mom, why is the power out?"

5am version of me:  "I don't know, let me wake up Daddy and ask him."

7am's wake-up brought still no electricity.

The good:

99.9% of the mornings we wake up and there IS power!  And our power company worked like champs to get the transformer issue fixed and power was back up by 11am.

The bad:

Turns out our coffee maker needs electricity to actually make coffee and the version of me who was awakened at 5am just cannot survive 4 kids in the morning without coffee.

The good:

Since being introduced to the real deal of coffee during our trip to Ethiopia, my husband has started using our French press to make Ethiopian coffee for us some over the weekends and it only needs boiling water which we were able to achieve since we have a gas stove!  Just had to light that baby with a match and we were on our way to hot coffee after all!

The good:

My entire house was clean for about 5 minutes today.  

Clean because I paid someone to clean it.  Every 2 weeks we have a housekeeper come in, just to keep the place sanitary.  Because I'm really good at making sure the kids don't leave their shoes any place besides the shoe shelf -- drives me crazy and I am on them as soon as I see that.  But, the shower?  That I could easily forget to clean for a month!  Probably noticing stuff growing in there would catch my attention but otherwise it doesn't stand a chance on my to-do list!

The bad:

My kids messed up the place in what felt like 5 minutes!  

"Why?  Why did you get all this stuff out?" I ask as if there is a logical answer!

The good:

Children who willingly do their homework without being nagged about it.

The bad:

The pile of sheets waiting to be folded in the background?

The good:

Princess Belle danced all around the house this afternoon.

 

The bad:

Backpacks that are not hung on their hooks.  Random stuff everywhere, all the time!

Life.  I'm grateful for God's gift of a beautiful, messy life.  I guess the trick is to be thankful for the good and ignore the bad?  I'm challenging myself to work harder at that!

Join us for Gratituesday at Heavenly Homemakers!