What I think might be and what actually is reality

Recently I shared my blog with a friend and told her I was thinking of starting blogging again. She encouraged me to so here I am trying to think of what I want to write about. Today the kids are off for fall break and I had all of these ideas of exploring the area and taking them on an easy hike so we could look at all of the fall colors and have them off of screens for a bit and make some wonderful memories. Last night I slept horribly. I had a nightmare and had a hard time falling asleep to begin with. It's wet and gray outside and just kind of dreary and it kind of matches my mood. So now it's 1:50 PM and I have only accomplished getting dressed and starting a load of dishes. I need to go to the store to go grocery shopping and I'll probably do that next. I wonder if others experience this and maybe this is just life. You expect things to go a certain way and then it ends up going a completely different way? I used to get really upset about it. I just wanted a nice day with the family making memories, and instead I ended up with fighting kids or a grouchy husband or whatever the case may be. I've learned to accept and know that this is real life. Real life is fighting, moods, and sometimes not timed quite well. You kind of have to learn to lower expectations and kind of roll with how the day goes. I've also learned the way that I react to situations can have a huge impact on how it impacts the rest of my family and vice versa. The boys were being silly so I went upstairs and found them both in my youngest son's bed and the oldest was tickling the youngest and he was laughing. I sat with them and talked to them about what we wanted to do today. We compared foot sizes and hand sizes. Oldest son's foot and hand are now longer than mine (yikes) while youngest isn't quite the same size as mine in terms of length. The oldest helped me load and unload the dishes without me asking him to. We laughed about me dropping a container right into the dishwasher. So although it's kind of dreary outside and the plans I had for us are now changed, I am still grateful for theses moments. Just us existing these days, and I'm okay with that.