What a day!

Last week we had "one of those days." Winters here, although fun, can get LONG when you have two small children. They get cranky, you get cranky, you run out of things to do, you get tired of the same activities day after day.

So it was a day like that, followed by Matt coming home and checking on the fire. Our wood stove downstairs heats our house and Matt usually checks on it after he's done kissing the girls and I hello when he gets home from work. I was in my room doing laundry and the girls were at the top of the stairs calling down to Daddy. When I heard Matt yell to them, THAT'S ENOUGH! I knew there was a problem. Two little known facts about Matt - he never gets angry. And he never, EVER yells. Ever. If he yells, it's a big deal. So I ran downstairs to find Matt in front of the stove. He had gone to shut it and accidentally cracked the glass.

He looked like this, only with more hair.

Matt and I are rarely BOTH in bad moods. If I'm in a bad mood, he can snap me out of it and vice versa. But here we were. Both cranky. Super. Cranky. So we stomped around the house for a while, annoyed at stepping on the toys while trying to make dinner, bitching about our "to do" lists that always seem to be getting bigger, complaining that we didn't have more money or a bigger house or both. Wishing we had more time to ourselves to be a couple. Ugg.

Then Acadia came in the kitchen for something and Matt told her not to come in because we were cooking and wanted some space. Acadia cried and ran away and I realized how our moods were influencing our kid's moods. We were setting the tone for the night. WE were cranky, not them. But we were stressing them out and making them upset.

So I had an idea. Seriously - how bad are our lives?? Pretty freakin' amazing. And honestly - were we about to ruin the night because a damn piece of glass broke? Really?? It's glass. Big deal. So we were tired, cranky and stressed about everything we had to do. At least we HAVE a house. Matt has a good job. And we have two healthy kids. Life is good. And I think in certain cases (not all) you have a choice. You can choose to be happy or miserable. You can choose to let things roll off your back or not. You can choose to let a bad day ruin your entire night. And this time, I decided to choose happiness.

So I grabbed Emma and Acadia and ran into Acadia's room. I told her to stop crying because we were about the surprise Daddy by turning into 3 beautiful princesses! Tears stopped, giggling started and we spent the next 30 minutes putting make up on each other, picking out dresses and shoes and doing our hair. Acadia picked out a dress and shoes for me and I gave her one of my purses to bring to dinner. They had matching shoes and dresses and giggled the entire time we were getting ready. Emma kept doing twirls in her dress and Acadia found toys she wanted to put in her purse for dinner.

Then we went out and showed Daddy what his 3 princesses' looked like...

And guess what? It worked.

How can you NOT be happy looking at these two beautiful girls??