Life Is Good. And Far From Perfect.

Four of my kids are serious swimmers. But all five of them love to swim.

With pools being closed for 70+ days, they have been dying to get their butts in our pool.

The weather here in CT hasn’t been all that great so far this spring, so that kind of slowed down the pool opening process.

Then we had three lines with leaks in them.

My dad and I dug up my backyard last week so the pool guys could replace the lines.

We did a lot of digging.

We had a couple issues along the way and it took a couple visits from the pool guys before everything was up and running.

In the fall we also replaced our septic system and our little fire pit got destroyed in the process.

The kids have been begging for a new fire pit.

Yesterday my dad and Number 5, 6, and 7 rebuilt the fire pit.

My dad is awesome.

The kids were very happy.

They sat out there around the new fire pit for like an hour, just shooting the shit.

Then they made some s’mores.

It was a nice night.

The kids got along pretty well.

Today the pool was finally clean enough for the kids to swim in.

I didn’t get it perfectly clear yet, but it was good enough.

And the water is only 68°.

But the kids didn’t care and neither did I.

They spent the whole day either in the pool or near it.

Tonight I was up on the deck on the back of the house making some burgers and dogs on the grill and looking out over the backyard.

I had made another fire in the firepit, and the kids were hanging out down there waiting for dinner to be ready.

I had to take a picture because this was the day and night the kids have been waiting for for a long time.

How great does that look?

It looks perfect, right?

Well, honestly, this was one of like ten pictures.

Because as I was taking them one kid hit another kid and knocked their chair over backwards with the kid in it and then there were some tears and the chair cracked and then there were more tears.

Then one kid dared another kid to flip the bird to the camera and that dare was accepted happily.

Life is good.

I was super thankful to be able to look out over my back yard with my new little fire pit and a pool that is running and my kids all hanging out together and my yard no longer all dug up.

But that perfection only lasted for a second before things unraveled just a little bit.

And then a little bit more.

So this is your friendly reminder that most of those pictures you see of people doing super awesome family things together, the ones where you are questioning your parenting skills, well, those perfect pictures were probably sandwiched between a few pictures of some not-so-perfect moments.

But you get to choose which moments you focus on.

So I’m gonna stick with this one.

Because life is rarely perfect.

But when you focus on the right things, it’s still pretty freaking good.