The Good, The Bad, and the Ugly

Some days at our house are great! Some days are not that great. And some are downright awful. Yesterday was one of the awful ones. The kids were fighting and bickering ALL DAY LONG! I felt at times like I couldn't keep up with it all. I was busy dealing with one problem and another would be presented to me, and in the midst of it, I was trying to help someone with their schoolwork. Daddy stopped in for lunch and tried to help with disastrous results. Children melting down, everyone frustrated, some angry. Then I went to make pizza dough in the breadmaker, and got to the last ingredient when I realized that I didn't have any yeast! How on earth could I make dough without the yeast? Well, I ended up borrowing some from our neighbour (and getting a quick lesson on how to activate the non-instant kind of yeast). Then it was time to turn on the bread machine, at which point I discovered that our bread machine is not working! Thankfully I was able to borrow one from Mom (Nancy) upstairs. By this time I was realizing that the chances of this being ready on time to have pizza for supper was getting slim. So I start frantically pushing buttons to start the bread machine and I pushed the 'bake' button instead of the dough button. The bread machine started heating up, NOOOO! How do I turn this thing off!! Where's the instruction book!! Ahhhh!! Ok, calm down. Found the instructions, held down the cancel button for a few seconds. Waited for bread machine to cool down. Okay, now it's ready to go. I guess we'll have pizza tomorrow instead. Then off to the church for Girl's Club and Boy's Hockey which went pretty smoothly until right at the end. I was just about to tell the kids that it was time to go when Joshua was suddenly in tears saying Christine had shoved him and Christine when confronted melted into tears of embarrassment. Then she stubbed her toe and Oh boy! I was ready for this day to end! Do you ever have days like that?
Same home, different day. Peace, quiet, everyone working together. Well it's not quite that perfect, but certainly a good day. We are all on track and schoolwork is done early. I'm in the kitchen working on a project and Caleb is quietly painting a picture, when he observes "Mommy, I like listening to the sounds the birds make outside, it's so pretty", then a few seconds later "Mommy, look at the beautiful colour I made by mixing green and blue!" Just a quiet moment of appreciation shared between Mother and son, and my heart melts and I feel like it's all worth it.
Would you believe these two days happened in the same week? God's 'good' day reminder to balance out the 'bad' day frustrations. This is real life at our house, in our home. Our sin mixed with God's grace, and we continue, sometimes with joy, sometimes wishing the day would be over, but always in the palm of His hand.