A Picture Worth A Thousand Words

When sister Bean(aka Gina bo "bean" na) came here with her beautiful family one of the things she wanted to do was to go to theSkagit tulip festival here in WA. You don't have to ask me twice to go see a pretty field full of flowers and take pictures of these cuties.

As I started this post which originally was going to be only a picture post, I had to laugh at how many pictures it takes to get that one good picture that you want the world to see. You know the one where everyone is smiling, you don't see the wind blowing, or the runny noses because it's so cold outside, or the sibling squabbles. You just see the finished product.

Well that got me thinking, often times in these social media outlets you don't really get to see the whole story. I mean most of the time people only let you see what they want you to see. I'm not saying that I don't do this as well, because frankly if you all saw my kitchen sink right now you probably- would de-friend, or un-link, or disown, or maybe you would feel better about yourself. But, what I am trying to say is...

It's like people's Hollywood version of life is put forward, and you the reader are left wondering...

Do these people ever have a bad day?
Do they ever have a child who doesn't like to be photographed(refer to above photo, son Solomon on the left))
Do they have a sink full of dirty dishes?
Does their sh*%# stink?

I'm here to tell you that yes I have bad day's.
Day's where I feel like the worst mother on planet earth because I yelled at my kids.
Or because they went off to school with two different color socks and a crappy lunch.

I'm here to tell you that instead of doing that sink full of dishes I am sitting here blogging.
Instead of doing laundry I'm surfing the www to look at jewelry I can't afford.
And I'm here to say that yes in fact my sh*#% does indeed stink!!

But I am also here to tell you that there are moments when it all comes together. The stars all align just perfectly and you have all your sh*#% together, and you capture a snip-it in time that looks like this.

These are the captured moments that make you think all those dirty dishes are worth it.
All those early mornings, countless hours at the grocery store, taxi cab driving, never going back to pre-pregnancy body EVER, it's all worth it.

Because look... the boy who never smiles in pictures is smiling(ok so it might be forced but still)
The baby is making everyone laugh with his Kung-Fu.
The girls are looking pretty and primped and not fighting.
The Giant is like... huh what, wait why am I here again?
And life is good.
Life is beautiful.
To me that above picture is better than any polished up, edited, cropped, photo shopped picture you could ever publish because it's real life.

Because you look at those smiling happy faces and you see LIFE.
You see the older brother, making the younger brother LAUGH.
You see that despite whatever pains it took to get there, LOVE abides.
And life really is BEAUTIFUL.