Welcome...

...to my house. Yes, there's dog hair on the floor, the couch cushions, and most likely all over your clothes by the time you leave. There are dog nose smears on the windows and sliding glass doors. There are bird feathers, bird seed, and, yes, some spots of bird poop on the floor and curtains that I haven't gotten around to cleaning just yet. There's a stack of art toys and books on the coffee table and stashes of more books, markers, pens, rulers, scissors, pencils, crayons, paints, brushes, sketchbooks and watercolor tablets, etc, etc, etc, pretty much wherever I can hide/lay them down/pile them up/hoard them. There are violets and dandelions scattered all over the lawn. There's grass and leaves and twigs and what-have-you smooshed in the stove vent where our sparrow family has taken up residence. There is a boy with his face glued to the computer in the office. There is a man puttering around somewhere, either cutting the lawn, playing with tools, or maybe making birdhouses for this woman who loves birds.

It's a crazy house. It's not the neatest, fanciest, cleanest, most current technology-est, house. But it's our house. And we love it here. There's a whole lotta love in this crazy place we call home. Yeah, I'll run the vacuum and wipe up that spot of bird poop, and five minutes later dog hair will cover where I just vacuumed and one of the birds will take a bath in its water dish or toss bird seed all over the floor again, molted feathers fluttering in a cloud in the corner. As soon as I clean the sliding glass doors, Tucker and Pea will smoosh their noses up on it and leave more smears for me to clean again next week. Ruby just leaves clumps of white fluff wherever she lays. I chase after forgotten socks and straw wrappers and watch sparrows bring more bits and bobs to tuck into their nest...It's home. It's us.

Life is good.