And I couldn’t be happier.

The house is full to over flowing with children. Near to bursting at the seams. Four children total, but it feels like more. They are laughing and playing and generally being kids.

The boys have been out climbing the hay bales.

The girls decided to ‘cook’. They settled on poke cake. Jello poured over a cooked cake. These directions called for a whipped cream frosting. They poured my cream, carefully kept on hand for coffee, into a bowl and began to mix. I left them to it, both wanting them to have the time to themselves and needing a small break from the joyful noise.

Outside working on Halloween directions, I got a phone call. They had messed something up, could I please come back? Don’t worry, nothing was broken.

Glad nothing was broken, I was still concerned, what could they have messed up making a cake? I hurried inside.

Exuberantly mixing the whipped cream they added in some of the jello, just like the recipe called for. They talked as they mixed, hanging out and having fun. They only looked away from the bowl they were tending for a minute.

When they looked back it had separated. Curdled? It was a lumpy pink mess. They were sickened by it. I stuck a finger in and tasted. Worked a clump between my fingers and thought. It was impressive really.

They had made butter. Ooops.

Not a total loss. I scooped it out, squeezed it relatively dry and put the pink butter ball in the fridge. We’ll have it on muffins in the morning.

This sort of day is exhausting to me, but at the same time it doesn’t get any better. Children laughing and happy, experimenting and getting dirty. One of my favorite podcast was saying today as I listened between talking to children that they make life harder, but better. The two aren’t mutually exclusive, we need both the hard and the better.

After cooking and climbing the two groups joined together again and carved some pumpkins. More messes were made, outside this time. Without those loud, messy days life wouldn’t be near as fun.