Back to the grind.. Homeschooling after the New year

SOO... I know that many people see my facebook and think we have this "amazing" life.  Well, yes, we do.  But what you don't see is the day-to-day hot mess that our family can be.  The days I sip my hot chocolate and think, "Wow, we have this perfect life"... somewhere in the back of my head anyway.  And then my amazing children give me a wake up call to remind me we are all a hot mess, and that's okay.   You don't see the tears.  You don't see the week of laundry I keep forgetting to fold.  You don't see the schoolwork I'm procrastinating. You don't see the days I watched movies because I didn't want to cope with anything else. 

You just see the "perfect" moments I share on social media.

One of my favorite things to do is look back on my last few January's of blog posts.  Yes, I took a six month hiatus this year as I struggled with very deep depression and other life issues, but today I look back at my posts.  The ones where I went back to working out, the ones where I minimized and de scheduled, and the ones where I focused on self-care.

January is hard.

The post-Christmas, adrenal crash is so very real.  We have Vacation, Christmas, company, New Years, and then Sam's birthday!  So yes... we had three weeks of no real schedule, and tons of TV and video games, and board games, and junk food... and now we have to hit the reset back to "real life."

This morning I had plans for a beautiful breakfast, a good "kick off to school" again fun day!  And then my glorious pinterest-perfect plans went cattywompus when my "perfect" kids brought me back to reality.

I woke up to a sleep-deprived me (because the dogs had to go outside ten times last night), and my five year old decided that the ONLY acceptable breakfast was sugar, instead of like REAL delicious pancakes and eggs.  The my seven year old started crying because he didn't want to do school he only wanted to play video games all day.  To top if off my nine year old decided he has never seen anything we learned all semester and life is hard, which turned into hour of crying over school. 

No, mornings don't go as planned.  Yes, there was some hard core crying, fussing, whining, and putting our house back together.  At the end of the day, Yes, we are a hot mess.  No, my life isn't perfect.  Do we have perfect moments??  Oh yes.  Do we have a perfect life?? Oh no. 

Not dwelling on what I think expectations should be, but just embracing our family.  The good, the bad, and the ugly.  Photograph the sweet moments because you'll need them in the rough moments.  Remember the days of sugar swapping, media detoxing, and eyeball crying is all worth it for the days where they love and support each other, learn to read together, and grow as a family.

Embrace the moments, live the chaos, and remember it all goes by in a flash.

Learn to slow down.  Learn to be okay when it's not perfect. 

I've learned more than anything this past year that life is hard.  Emotions are hard.  Raising happy kids is hard.  What's not hard is showing them unconditional love, and show them it's okay to be a mess.  We all are a mess.  No one is perfect and that's okay.  Embrace who THEY are, and grow them into the amazing humans they are becoming.  Don't expect perfection, and love them through the mess.