On My Fridge?!

My friend, Becky, did something fun on her blog today and asked others to join in. You know me, I'm a joiner.

First, I just want to say that I am a very neat person. I like things in their place and I like things organized.

But something happened to me when I had kids. The part of me that likes things tidy and organized? Damaged beyond recovery. No. That's not quite right. It's still fine...I still like things neat. But my ability to actually make things that way? Now THAT'S the part of me that's beyond gone.

Do I care? I'd love to say "no". I do care. But for now, while my kids are little, it's just one of those things. One of those things that I've written off. Sorta like having windows without hand and nose prints...a vehicle without a pile of shoes, snack wrappers, and McDonald's toys on the floor...an office without a tonka truck, 14 playing cards, one sock, a comic book, and an old mac & cheese box that my kids are mysteriously attached to lying around. I've given up on a tidy life, at least for now.

And (most of the time) I do so joyfully because this outrageous mess is evidence of the life and joy and fun in this home. It's evidence of my four miracles.

SO...now that you know that I like things to be much neater than they are around here, I can show you a picture of my fridge. For all you neat freaks out there (Mom)? Please love me anyway...

This drawing is a picture of each member of our family with their names over their heads, two different types of birds, and one tall and skinny tree. It's held up with a "As For Me And My House..." magnet.



And then I have pictures of each of my kids. The ones of Ben and Clara are about 2 1/2 years old, but they're so sweet that I can't seem to take them down. The picture of Sammy is from Easter last year, when I was able to put her hair in pig-tails for the first time. And the shot of Thomas is of him when he first started to grin.



Below the pictures of my kids, there are pictures of "the cousins". They're mostly terribly outdated, but they serve their purpose (Sammy loves to point to and name each person).



On the bottom half of our fridge, there's this green butterfly with pipe cleaners and beads for antennae that Benjamin made. He's very proud of this sweet butterfly :) And on the white piece of paper is the alphabet, written by Clara. She sat down *all by herself* one day, sang the alphabet at least 20 times, and sounded out the letters as she went. She wrote the entire alphabet! Where did my baby go?


And then there's the side of my fridge. It's cluttered beyond belief because there's a ton of stuff there, but mostly because we have to keep shoving the stuff higher and higher to keep it out of Thomas' reach. There's a rainbow drawn by Clara. A tiger by Ben. A painting of ?? by Sammy. There are pictures of some of our wonderful friends. And there's my brain. I mean my calendar. I really don't know what we did without this calendar!



And as long as I'm confessing, I might as well show you the top. That's the radio on the left, because I can't stand doing dishes and good music seems to make it a little easier. There's a book and some dishes left here by friends and family...waiting to go back home. There's a stack of cups that I'll put out the next time we host Bible study (or we run out of cups because I haven't done the dishes).

And then there's this bowl. This is the bowl that I keep dumping M&M's into in small quantities. For some reason, if I eat them out of a pretty bowl in small quantities, I can convince myself that I didn't actually eat a 3 pound bag of M&M's all by myself. I really need to stop buying M&M's.

There you have it, that's my fridge. It's messy and cluttered and busy. But until my kids are past painting me butterflies and rainbows (and until we buy that one really sleek looking fridge I've had my eye on)...this is just the way it's gonna be. And I (mostly) wouldn't want it any other way :)