I just came across this link love on my dashboard and it made me smile really big.

As my friend Kailani just shared a post on the reasons people blog it was especially fitting for me to have this link show up today. You see, one of the reasons I blog and enjoy blogging is about making my own life a masterpiece and sharing what I learn along the way. So to see my blog come up on a list like the one Jacklyn shared really makes me smile because it’s a shout out from someone else seeing why I do what I do.

Today is a good day.

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Inspiration Balance Blogging

It’s a goal. Not just a wish or a hope, an actual goal. I don’t need to own one, just have ownership in one.

Air travel continues to go downhill. It increases my desire (and hubby’s) to avoid it if possible. You could probably trace the origins of our desire back to the days when Blake took his first contract job in 1999. It made you sick to your stomach to know that even though the flight time was short, the total travel time to get from our home in Southeastern Idaho to Fort Collins, Colorado took almost the exact same 9 hours as it did to drive it. If the same travel could have been done by private jet you would have cut that time down to under two hours easy. Because we value our time, it was always on the brain.

Add to this the airline tragedy and aftermath of 9/11 and you have a melting pot for unpleasant air travel. Things weren’t fantastic before, but there was at least a focus on doing something - anything - to make the experience less painful for the traveler. Maybe even a little healthy competition for it and the revenue stream that followed. The added (and necessary) security measures put into place after that fateful day seem to have become a springboard for airline excuses for unpleasant traveling. Apparently, the vast majority involved haven’t yet figured out that what you do isn’t near as important as how you do it. You ask anyone who flies public transportation these days and you’ll find the vast majority only do it for lack of options. That’s a great premise for any business relationship. *eye roll*

So things are in a pickle. Naturally we add more to make it worse. Now we add economic strain, high gas prices and struggle for financial survival. Corners are cut which often result in more damage than salvaging. One of the biggest being outsourcing customer service calls. If you’ve seen the photo e-mails in circulation about the phone lines in India you can appreciate the irony of this. It’s the one where the telephone pole looks like Clark Griswald’s Christmas light plug nightmare of 100 plugs and cords sharing one outlet with a caption that reads “And this is where our calls for technical support go.”

Recently my husband had another experience that put the private jet ownership back on the forefront of our discussions. As it’s blog worthy and he’s not currently blogging I’ll be telling the story.

We decided earlier this year to let our daughter go to Idaho five days early to spend some one on one time with her grandma and family there. This meant buying her an airplane ticket to fly solo from Phoenix to Salt Lake City. Blake bought the ticket in April with US Airways. It was explained there was a $50 unaccompanied minor fee which was also printed on the ticket information. The only inconvenience he had with this policy was that they wouldn’t let him pay for the service with the ticket, he was told it had to be paid when he arrived at the airport.

As this is our first time doing this, he called last week to make sure we knew everything we could in preparation. He listened to the foreign accent on the other end of the line rattle off the guidelines and perked up when he heard him say something about paying the $100 unaccompanied minor fee. He corrected the man, reading from his printed ticket information the fee was $50. The man replied that the fee went up the first of May. The remainder of the call was spent trying to learn why this information wasn’t shared with the customer and why that is a problem.

I won’t bore you with the details of language barrier and lack of customer service. Suffice it to say it went the way most customer service calls go these days with an employee who can barely speak English, doesn’t like their job and doesn’t care about it or the customer they’re servicing. But the end of the conversation is worth sharing, I’m told it went something like this:

“Sorry sir, you simply don’t have any other option.” (Add in a great deal of foreign accent for the right affect.)

“Actually I do. I have the option to cancel my ticket and never fly with your airlines again.”

Now what’s really crazy about all this is that in this strained time for airlines you’d think they’d being doing all they can to keep customers not push them out the door. US Airways lost more than $50 extra dollars for a service, they lost the entire refundable ticket price as well as all our future business. It wasn’t about $50 more, it was a simple customer service principle that was violated - making changes in a contract without informing and gaining consent with the other party.

The crappy customer service continued through the process of cancellation and refunding as well. Another phone service employee with language barrier problems had to be taught how to do her job by my husband because she wasn’t sure if she was just canceling or canceling and refunding. A classic end to the experience.

The good news is that we got a better ticket rate, no additional fees and two bubbly English speaking employees at Southwest airlines to help us. There’s a lot to be said for the attitude, speaking skills and positive personality when it comes to customer service interfacing. Today Southwest wins, but I’m still looking to the best solution which is ownership in a private jet.

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Sharing Perspectives Travel

I’ve been working on a post for a few days now that’s still not finished. I can’t seem to find 5 minutes to rub together to spend at my computer this summer. When I do find a few precious moments I can’t find the motivation to do what I wanted! At any rate, shorts and funnies are fast and easy and I have another great one today. My son is the culprit again.

A few days ago we were walking out of the movie theater. As we approach the car my son pipes up and says, “Son of a brick” which brought an onslaught of laughter from mom on the drive home. Great parenting hugh?

I remember when my daughter was his age and also very susceptible to words and influences. The one I remember her sharing was the day she asked us if “bull-uh-sh**” was a bad word. I couldn’t even answer.

I’m not sure why it’s so funny but there’s just something about your little ones sharing what they hear in cuss words that’s down right hilarious. Bricks and stones may break my bones (just ask my brother who recently lost a match with a boulder) but mispronounced swear words will slay me! Bwa-ha-ha.

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Family Funnies Sharing Motherhood

This afternoon my daughter had two girlfriends over to swim. One of the great advantages to my son being 5 years younger is that he doesn’t quantify friends based on age or gender so he happily joined the three in their water fun.

It wasn’t long before the request came to add some water balloons into the mix, so being the good mom that I am I dutifully filled and tied enough for each child to have two. (Don’t judge me, I’ve been filling and tying balloons for three days now. *wink*)

A few moments later I look out the window to see all three girls using theirs in their suits as boobs. I’m safely hidden behind screened windows so they don’t know I’m watching and laughing my backside off inside. But not to be outdone, my son is seen shoving one of his down his swim trunks. *eye roll, giggle, snort*

Ah the joys.

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Family Funnies Sharing Motherhood

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Wordless Wednesday Family

My friend Kelly has challenged her readers to participate in defining their view of responsibility for her Pass The Torch Tuesday project and as responsibility is huge with me I knew I couldn’t pass this up. So I’ve chosen to define what a responsible parent is to me.

I don’t have a perfect little definition paragraph for an answer. I only have my reasons for knowing it’s important, my personal experiences with it and my goals and direction as a parent.

Given that I believe that we live in a society that is largely lacking responsibility, I think the root of the problem is found at home in the way children are taught or not taught to be responsible. This means the parent must be responsible too for you cannot give that which you don’t have.

Some would say that my judgment of society is harsh. If you wonder why I think our society is largely irresponsible I ask you to look around and see how many people spend valuable time, resources and energy playing the blame game, excusing themselves or their actions, caring only about themselves or any combination of all these attitudes. We have become masters at believing there is always an escape, at believing that only ourselves matter. Just look at one simple example of the controversial topic of abortion. Look at the energy and resources spent arguing this consequence. It isn’t even viewed as a consequence of a previous action or decision, it’s disguised as an issue of choice.

I was taught that you can choose your decisions but not the consequences. That for every action and decision there was a corresponding consequence. This is at the top of my list of important elements in teaching my children what responsibility means. The world will not teach it. In fact it seems to me that society today cultivates an attitude of acquiring skills to aid them in attempted side-stepping of the consequences of their actions. Some even believe they’ve succeeded. I believe with every fiber of my being that no matter how long you may delay a consequence it cannot be erased and often the harder one works to eliminate it the longer the trail of additional offenses and consequences will follow.

Further, I was taught the the right for me to swing my fist ends where your nose begins. This is another critical principal to me as a parent to teach my kids. This means you have to think about someone other than yourself, you have to learn how to respect yourself and others in every sense.

The hardest part of all this as a parent is not just the burden of teaching your children correct principles and moral values, but more importantly how to let your children have the experience of making their own decisions to learn the consequences for themselves. Because at the end of the day, the true teacher is experience. The close shadow to this teacher is that of example and truly the lessons taught are often the ones we don’t even realize we’re teaching. Do as I say and not as I do never works. No, this as in all things has to start from within.

I don’t have a Harry Potter wand or a crystal ball to help navigate these troubled waters. But clinging to the principles that are most important to me will help me charter the course. I know that patterns of behaviors don’t correct themselves, that what you feed is what grows. I know that I want my kids to understand the most basic and fundamental principles of responsibility that I was given as a youth. So for now I can only charge ahead to the best of my ability to teach them personal accountability and basic respect. And a little positive motivation from time to time can help a great deal, now where’d I put that chocolate?

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Parenting Motherhood Intellectual

I set up my Mii account on our Wii Fitness this morning and to my delight it calculated my BMI and weight in the normal region. Yay! Now, I didn’t really need it’s balance and muscle assessment to know that I’m not in great shape and my body is weaker than it should be but who knows, maybe it will help me work on that. One thing I learned with Dance Dance Revolution is that exercise in the form of some entertainment works well for me. So I’m hopeful. I also took heart in my first rounds of yoga exercises and balance games that I placed in the top three of my family members who have been doing it for a week now. I’m also delighted that the pool season is back because I can do so much more with my joints in the pool than in other exercise settings.

In other good news today I’m happy to report that I found another solution that is helping me with my summer vacation parental strain. As my husband and I talked last week, I realized that no matter how many things we did or planned to keep our daughter busy the fundamental problem wouldn’t be addressed. My ten year old daughter has ADD and that means her brain doesn’t organize things naturally, or at least the way most of our brains do. It’s why she’s always asking to do 10 things at the same time and why she spends 5 minutes of quiet time complaining of boredom. So I decided to take my last organization attempt during the holidays a step further. I printed out calendars from my Google calendar for each of the kids. One page was a month overview and then each week broken down on a single page with the hours of 6AM-5PM each day. My thought was if I made their planning visual not only would they better understand time and feel some control over their activities, they might also see how much they really have.

I’m happy to report that so far so great. They are both working at filling in their wants on their calendar and mom helps fit in some needs (a.k.a. chores) and catching the vision. This morning we planned out this week which took about 10 minutes compared to our first attempt last week which took about 20 minutes for 2 days. Progress. I’m finding it helps me too because the time we block for academic review and games is small enough that none of us go crazy. In fact, this morning they both asked if we could do it longer so that’s a plus for mom.

Speaking of time, mine is up so that’s all for today on the blog! *giggle*

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Family Parenting Sharing Organizing Positive Impact Motherhood Balance ADHD Recreation