Today marks the third day of summer vacation for my kids - that is the third day without holidays or special circumstances as their last day of school was actually last week. Day one was a fiasco for me. The kids had a great time but it was basically friends and playmates all day that ended in some less than stellar decisions; including throwing mud in the pool *grrrr*, attempts and skinny dipping and messing with the pool pump which really freaked mom and dad out. While these things weren’t the fault of our kids, it was a result of their friends and their actions and led for many discussions and new ground rules. *sigh* Day two went to the opposite extreme with no friends accompanied by plenty of whining (despite my new sign) and fighting. So today I started the day different with a brainstorming session on rules and consequences and calendaring out our plans and activities. It’s been a better day and I’m hoping to keep things rolling. I even scored getting in some math and problem solving with some creative games this morning. Go mom! So there’s hope that I’ll survive this summer.

Speaking of hope, there is a need for much of it for a loved one right now. This past weekend my son’s birthmother was stricken with Sepsis and she is currently battling for her life in ICU on a ventilator and dialysis machine. All that can be done is being done and the roller coaster ride is wild. She is having hours that are good and hours that are bad. This was so unexpected and so our hearts and prayers are full for her and her family right now.

Life can turn on a dime. I suppose that’s the good thing to remember on all those other manic and survival days.

Technorati Tags:
Family Parenting Sharing Emotions Motherhood

Sorry, I’m not putting up the linky wizard today as I’ve been getting more and more spam links without a way to clear them off. *frown*

Technorati Tags:
Wordless Wednesday

Well, I think I’m all caught up. I got through the e-mails and backed up blog reader today. It’s been since Friday that I had any real computer time. Here was Friday’s fun:

Birthday lunch was fun and we had a great and relaxing weekend. We got so much rain that the pool dropped 15 degrees and so there wasn’t much swimming but we did take in some good food and movies. The new Narnia and Indiana Jones were great.

I’d love to spend more time blogging today but as I’m recovering from a long weekend that will have to keep. *grin*

Technorati Tags:
Family Sharing Blogging

If I were at home with my mom today I’d be on day two of putting together flower arrangements and visiting cemeteries for deceased family. She’s done it my entire life and taught me how important it was to remember and honor my ancestors and all their sacrifices.

I’m a thousand miles away and so can’t help with the grave decorating, but I can pay tribute in my own way here on my blog.

I come from a noble heritage on all sides and I’ve always tended to take that for granted. Just this past month I’ve been reading through family history documents that I have copies of. I love history and when I read these personal accounts and stories it’s like I get a little taste of what it was like in their time. I am so grateful my husband’s grandmother gave me a copy of the family civil war letters because I dearly love reading them. I’m also supremely grateful for extended family who have compiled entire books of family history and genealogy. Without these I would not have any way to know my ancestors. I never knew my mother’s father as he died before she was married and without these histories I would have no way to connect with him or learn who he was.

I often wonder if our ancestors weep over us in our day. They gave their all for us to enjoy all the things we do today. Many of them struggled and sacrificed deeply that we might never know those same struggles and sacrifices. Thanks to them we live in a time of abundance when all we could ever want or need is readily available. We’ve become fat and lazy, feeling entitled to the instant gratification that is so plentiful today. Sometimes I think of this as a love mistake scenario. As a parent you never want your children to suffer any of the same things you did - you want them to have it all, every opportunity and every happiness. Consequently we as parents may overdo it sometimes in giving to our children and in removing painful lessons or experiences. Unfortunately, with no personal experience in painful learning and growth too many grow with ingratitude and cause their parents more pain than they thought imaginable. I hope I’m finding a balance for my children and I think often on what my self-sacrificing ancestors would have to say to me today. I hope I’m showing my gratitude and love and passing it on to my posterity. Maybe we’d do well to have a few more days a year to reflect on a picture bigger than us. There are thousands of years of history above us, ancestors that paved the way for us to be here today. Too often I find myself getting stuck in the rut of my personal here and now - thinking only on my own family that I’ve known in my life time. So just for today (and hopefully many more to come) I’ll spend some time and effort getting to know my ancestors and the heritage they’ve given me.

Technorati Tags:
Family Sharing Emotions Perspectives Holidays

Check out the new Wordless Wednesday HQ!!
View More Wordless Wednesday Participants

Technorati Tags:
Wordless Wednesday

Influence is a powerful force. So many times we make decisions in our lives based on influence whether we recognize it or not. Many blindly give all power to influence blaming it for “making” them do or say things, or not. I have a real hangup with responsibility so that doesn’t fly with me, but even knowing each of us has the control and power to make our own decisions I readily recognize how powerful influence is.

A few weeks ago I was reading a book that described a powerful scene where influence played a nasty hand. It made me think on my own life and how many times I may or may not have done something that wasn’t me but that I felt pressured to do for appearances or acceptance of peers. In the book, it was a traitorous blow from one brother to another and the consequences were devastating. In fact, neither ever truly recovered from that split decision that was made more for the friends present than for the one making it.

Sometimes you know when you have a profound influence on another person, sometimes you don’t. I think I prefer the ones where I don’t know because you don’t have any reason to ask the ‘what if’ questions. Take my youngest sister for example. I knew the influence I had in her life and consequently I frequently wonder how things might have been different if I had been around longer for her. You see, I was ten when she was born. Having a ten year old daughter now is a stark reminder of how baby crazy girls can be at that age. All my daughter wants to do is babysit for people and hold babies. So it was with me and the timing was perfect to have a new baby sister. I treated my baby sister like my own china doll and she received it very well. In fact, it used to infuriate my older sister because she’d always choose me over her; a personal triumph for me that I secretly relished. Moreover, because she was so much younger than me I don’t remember any sibling struggles or frustrations like I do with those closer to me in age. Our relationship was always different, bordering on parent like for me. I was her protector, her nourisher and a lot of the time her care giver. And then I moved a thousand miles away to begin my new life as a wife. She was only ten and I can’t help but catch myself in thought sometimes about how my influence may have helped her if I’d been around a little longer, especially have a ten year old daughter now.

When I think about my own life and people who have influenced me, my feelings and decisions I find myself smiling. Some have added needed drops in my confidence bucket even though they never knew it. It makes me happy to remember those unseen and unknown influences and even happier to think I may have done the same for someone else sometime. I hope I have.

There’s the famous saying that you may not mean the world to everyone but to someone you may mean the world. I think that’s a good thing to remember when thinking on the intricate web of influence. I think it’s important enough to stop and think about once and while, to take inventory of the type of influence I am on those around me and to work on being the best one I can be, to be a lifter instead of a leaner.

Technorati Tags:
Family Parenting Sharing Emotions Relationships Motherhood Potential

Google launched a new gadget today. It’s linked on their main page on walking for a cause. If you click on the link “Go for Good” it takes you to a page that describes and shows the gadget. And why am I telling you this? Because I happen to know the programmer who built it. *grin*

Congratulations Blake - front page Google…pretty cool. I think your friends at Squidoo have you pegged correctly:

Technorati Tags:
Sharing Blogging

And it’s not even 10:30 AM yet.

Sometimes sayings and quotes take root in my heart and plant themselves. Sometimes they’re meaningful, sometimes they’re silly, sometimes they’re even misquoted but none the less when something strikes me they become permanent fixtures in my thought garden. One of these includes the advise that when you truly love something you must let it go. If it comes back to you it’s yours to hold and love forever. If it doesn’t, well the opposite holds true. I don’t remember when or where I heard it but something about it stuck. If you ask my husband today, he’ll tell you it stuck with him too because I hit him over the head with it over 16 years ago. *wink*

It was Christmas Eve of 1991 and we were sitting in his car in my parent’s driveway. I wouldn’t look him in the eye, didn’t want my tears to betray me. I’d made it through the entire anguished evening with his family; endured all the little jokes about future grandchildren and how promising things looked for it with fake smiles and quiet nods, not one tear or indication of how hard it had been to sit there. I’d have been smiling with them under different circumstances - I’d have been smiling if it’d been only a few weeks earlier.

It had been anything but a typical courtship covering a thousand miles, hours of phone calls and daily mail. This was the second time in two months when he expressed feelings of uncertainty. My heart was done with the yo-yo. There had been so many confirmations of this being what he wanted and yet there was this nagging concern that caused him to keep his distance just before he’d see me again, his conviction giving way to fear and uncertainty. Commitment can do that to even the best of men. Now the pattern was repeating from the Thanksgiving holiday, but in my heart I knew if I handled it the same way it would end on the same happy note and we’d be right back here again just a few more months down the road. No, I was done.

I’d played those words over and over in my head all day, ever since he shared his returning doubts. I knew in my heart it was the only thing to do, to force myself to do. Keeping my head down, I weakly said that I’d heard once that if you really loved something you had to let it go, that if it came back it was yours and you loved it with all your heart forever, if it didn’t it wasn’t meant to be. Silence. I took a deep breath and told him I was letting him go. I choked back a sob and waited for a reaction. It felt like several hours passed before I heard anything.

“But I’ll still get to see you and spend time with you while I’m home on Christmas break right?”

“No.”

I could feel the shock register with him even though my face was turned to the window the tears running freely down my cheeks now. He confirmed at least once more that this was it, that I didn’t want to see him again. I said not until he’d made a decision about us, I couldn’t keep doing this. Then I got out of the car and walked alone to the door. I never turned around.

It’s been 16 years since he made his decision. He told me that after a lot of speeding, emotions and self-talk he’d decided it all came down to whether he could picture a life without me in it and if that was what he wanted. I guess sometimes we all need to be pushed out of our comfort zones to find answers for ourselves, or at least learn which questions to ask.

I’m not sure where the time has gone. I can’t figure out how it changed the innocent and childish faces in the wedding photos to the now middle aged parents that stare back in recent photos. Those early faces were so carefree, so young, so unable to comprehend what marriage and family really meant. The faces that look back at me now have some wrinkles of worry, a glimmer of wisdom, and smiles of true joy. Time is a magical thing.

So to my Blake, I tell you on this wedding anniversary how truly grateful I am that you choose to come back to me. Letting you go then was the hardest thing I’ve ever had to do. We’ve been through many things together that were equally difficult since, but at least we’ve been through those times together. Thanks for coming back. You can rest assured I’ve still got a firm grip and I’ll keep holding on tight.

Other related articles:

To My Sweetheart
15 Years Ago Today
Secrets of a Happy Marriage
The Best Christmas Gift
Why Marriage is Like Computers
What Made Me Fall For Him

Technorati Tags:
Family Emotions Relationships Marriage

Sometimes I feel that I could write endlessly about the experience of having no TV in our home. It’s amazing to me how much I’ve noticed, the little changes and big ones all from one decision. One of the things that I learned a long time ago is that you can’t simply remove things, they require replacement if you want success. It doesn’t matter if it’s thoughts, habits or tangible uses of time the rule is the same. So when we talked as a family about not paying any more for any TV to come to our home we also talked about the other things we could spend that money on. So today I share some of our tangible replacements and their enthusiastic reception.

Behold my last order from Oriental Trading: A full box of summer fun:

I splurged on the hoppity horse style bouncers. I remember these as a kid and my 5 year old begged and pleaded. But the delight was well worth it and we’ve all had hours of fun since their arrival. The kids were blown away that mom still knows how to bounce on them and even challenged a race.

They couldn’t wait for school to be out to dig into one of the activities, so I let it buy my Sunday afternoon Mother’s Day nap. It was a little rock and gem set. The kit included a brick with rocks and gems trapped inside the plaster brick. They had to chip away until they could remove the rocks and then could examine them with the little magnifier and identify them based on the poster that came with the set.

I love that my kids are enjoying spending their time doing things that are fun and educational and not just watching hours of TV programming that dulls their senses and whittles away at their morals. Another post for another day. *wink* Meanwhile, the suspense and anticipation of all the surprises in this box are treasured by this mom - almost as much fun as Christmas.

Technorati Tags:
Parenting Sharing Motherhood Success