It seems to be human nature to not truly appreciate what you have until you don’t have it. It doesn’t seem to matter so much whether you ever really had what you now want either, although if you’ve had and lost you know first hand what it was like which can certainly add to the longing. Sometimes it’s even the perception that you thought you had it, when in fact you never really did. Either way the result is the same, you simply appreciate things more if you associate a form of loss with it before.

This morning I stopped to visit with another mom at my son’s school. I have to admit that I don’t know her name or anything about her really. We’ve exchanged a few friendly smiles and hellos on the playground before school starts for our Kindergarten sons. Recently, she’s been coming in a wheelchair and with some assistance, again I don’t know what the circumstances are but I know my heart aches for her. So this morning when we met at the crosswalk on the way back to our cars I asked her how she was doing and she replied that she was hanging in there. I could hear the weight of it in her voice and I told her how seeing her reminded me of myself about 5 years ago when I too was in a wheelchair. And then the entire drive home I considered how blessed I truly am.

I pondered on three primary elements of my life where I got to experience what I’ll call the “Greater Appreciation Algorithm” or GAA for short. (How’s that for pithy?!) The first, thanks to my friend, was my health and ability to walk. This in turn leads to the greatest gift of how you view and thus live your life. Dealing with unknowns is terrifying and lonely, even when you’re surrounded by loved ones. During the three months I battled some bizarre and never defined illness, I experienced some deep soul searching and gratitude training. I learned to be grateful for pain because it meant I could still feel and was still alive. I learned to be grateful for the many years of unfettered freedom and health I’d enjoyed without notice. Consequently, I don’t view life the same way anymore, I recognize each day as the gift that it is determined to make the most of it. There are no certainties; you make the most of what you’ve got while you’ve got it or you die on a bed of regrets. Life is too short for petty offenses, too fragile for postmortems and too wonderful for despair. How grateful I am to have learned this all important lesson before I was 30.

The next thing I thought about was one of those perceived items; the ability to become a parent. Suffice it to say that control in all things parenting from becoming to being one is an illusion. The GAA part of this experience for me is the ability to be a better parent, to recognize more. One woman compared this to experiencing children more on the level of a grandparent because you have different eyes and understanding. There’s some truth in there. At any rate, I find myself being supremely grateful for these parenting eyes even though obtaining them wasn’t something I was so sure I was on board with during the trial and wait. And I am especially mindful of the blessing that the vision was granted before I had children so I could make the most of the short time I have them.

And finally I couldn’t help but consider the blessing of all things temporal. At the height of my personal health trial came the greatest financial storm of my marriage. My husband and I were so close to the edge of losing everything that to remember now still causes my heart to skip a beat. Up to this point, we felt a level of control and confidence in our temporal situation. We were putting money away in a few different retirement and savings programs, paying more than minimum on our consumer debt payments, making conservative big decisions on our home and cars, and enjoying the freedoms of being your own boss. Sounds great right? It was, right up to the point where the revenue stopped, and I do mean stopped - no trickling, no bleeding, just plain gone. Oh, and now we had a mountain of medical bills too. For six months we plugged holes, depleted resources and extended every ounce of credit waiting and hoping for a new job to be in the cards. Not surprising, the climb out of that hole was no small task. But you know what? You keep climbing. No bankruptcy was declared, bills were paid and life continued albeit a bit strained for a while. And what I learned from all of it was that there is a difference in managing your money and in really having money to manage. I learned that money is not just some means to an end, it is a blessing and a gift that enhances your life if you let it. I learned that perception is everything and I learned it before I was 40.

So you see why I consider myself thrice blessed. Each of these primary areas are major aspects of life and I can’t imagine living my life without the gifts of knowledge that are now mine. This morning I thank the sweet lady that comes to school in a wheelchair each day to see her son off. She is an important reminder of just how blessed I am and sometimes you need the reminder. Maybe there really is something to the “gaa gaa” thing. *wink*

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Family Parenting Sharing Emotions Positive Impact Potential Inspiration Perspectives Motherhood Success Deep Thoughts

I’ve been a bit reflective lately, surprising I know. *snort* I’m seeing with more and more clarity how we create our own realities, frame our own expectations and then our very lives based on those thoughts and feelings.

This sounds supremely simple, yet every day the energies and resources spent refuting the truth are insurmountable. For what I hear everyday around me are phrases like: “Well, they’re just a jerk”, “The economy is in the tank so things are bad right now”, “I have no control over that”, “I guess this is just the trial I’m suppose to be going through right now”, “It’s not my fault”, on and on and on. The words shift but the meaning is always there, responsibility is always to be found elsewhere and there’s an excuse for everything, especially when it involves work.

Can you imagine how different things would be if instead of sowing seeds of negativity, victimization and redirects we spent more energy sowing seeds of positivity, empowerment and responsibility?

Yesterday I spent a few minutes reading some of the book “All I Really Needed To Know I Learned in Kindergarten” by Robert Fulghum. I’ve always enjoyed his writings and find re-reading them gives my spirits a little boost. Specific to the thoughts I’m sharing today, the concept of “Clean up your own mess” as one of his lessons fits perfectly. The seeds that are being sown too often and the fruits they bear are those of irresponsibility. Not only do we not recognize that the pickle we’re in is most often direct result of our own making, we expend valuable energy and resources justifying why it’s not our mess to clean up instead of just digging in and getting the job done.

Another common thread I’ve observed is how easy it seems to be to find and see this truth in the lives of others while dismissing ourselves. It’s usually more subtle but it’s still there. I see it manifest in discussions where I hear someone describe a specific problem and then turn it into a spiritual matter saying that faith and prayer will solve it for them. Of course, it’s not said that directly but that’s what I hear. Sadly, people with this attitude will never understand the concept of an answered prayer. For they will not recognize any answer that doesn’t suit them just as my 5 year old fights against every “no” he receives. Hopefully he’ll learn the lesson and carry it with him, hopefully he won’t forget that just because the answer isn’t what you wanted or expected doesn’t mean the answer wasn’t given or isn’t there.

For the past 5 years my husband and I have been implementing, to the best of our ability, a life of personal responsibility, positive affirmations and hard work. We stopped finding fault with circumstances and praying for a rescue from the financial storm we steered our ship into. We stopped using the crutch of uncontrollable health issues and September 11th aftermath as the reasons for our being in the eye of the storm. It didn’t matter because we were in the storm and while these things may have hastened our arrival, our course was set before they hit. Besides that, focusing our energies there sure wouldn’t help us get out of the storm. Not surprising, the journey out of the storm was proportionate in time to our getting into it the first place. There was no single miracle that pulled us out and dropped us on a sunny beach. However, there were daily miracles and daily progress. In fact, things have been beyond good for us, especially within the past couple years and they are growing every day. It’s not free, it’s not easy, it’s not luck. We just started sowing different seeds and now we’re enjoying a very different garden full of variety and sweetness.

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Sharing Positive Impact Potential Inspiration Perspectives Balance Success Deep Thoughts

When I began blogging nearly two years ago, (yipes can it be that long already?!) I wasn’t really sure what the point or purpose was. I’d watched my hubby develop his blog and it was fun, plus he kept at my heels about joining the blogging world. But I wasn’t sure what it would be for me just that I’d probably figure it out once I got my feet wet. Which I’m happy to report I did.

The first few months were fun and addicting and I networked like crazy meeting some wonderful friends, many of whom I still blog with and correspond with today. I found that my primary purpose of converting my files and collection to digital format got lost quickly in the fun of daily articles and interaction. By year’s end I had subscribed to so many fun blogging buddy’s blogs that it took me several hours to get through reading all the new articles in my reader. I had to step back.

The next year I found myself maintaining relations, joining in fun carnivals and weekly themes, even creating some of my own projects. The growth was fun and my blog was gaining all kinds of fun comments, readers and popularity - according to rankings on sites like Technorati (who even made a personal pit stop on this post.) But pretty soon I started questioning what I was doing again and why I felt so different. I’d run a decent gamut on crash course blogging 101 from carnivals, to memes to traffic groups, and more and I frequently shared my answers as I found them.

Now, nearly two years and 500 posts later I’m reflecting on my blog’s life. I’m slowing down with my writings, letting personal projects and series slide into obscurity and caring less and less about the many awards, rankings and promotional stuff. In fact, I’m pretty much a Monday-Wednesday blogger now with rarely a post on other days. My hubby’s blog, which I really enjoyed reading, has remained nearly inactive for almost a year now. Many fun friends and their blogs have quietly disappeared. Yet at the same time many friends and family are just wading into the blogging world trying to decide between private or public blogs. And still others are in the thick of all the millions of social networking and ranking sites that crop up daily or have multiple blogs now selling things, etc. Somehow I can’t help but wonder where blogging will go in the next 2-5 years.

One thing I predict and have tried to sell my husband on is the bridge between the blog and book publishing. With so many great tools available today for desktop publishing and do it yourself publishing, it’s so easy to send your entire blog out and get a beautiful, bound BOOK in return. This is cool. It’s more than just a journal, more than just a scrapbook of pictures; it’s a combination of the two in a powerful and professional way. Historians, scrappers and journal writers have a gold mine here when they see the potential before them. But I want more.

I want my hubby to develop a report program of sorts. You see, I’m not content with just printing all my stuff in a book by year or some other general criteria. I want the power to enter a key word, time frame, etc. for a specific printed work. The hardest part is already done, the content already in place. I just want a tool to go extract what I want when I want it for the purpose I want it. Is that too much to ask? For example, I want to be able to print a scrapbook of just pictures and articles for our NY trip last summer but I don’t want to go sort it all myself, compile it and then send it to one of the many publishing options. I want to print my own book of just my articles on a specific topic like motherhood or life coaching, etc. Or how about taking my digital files I’ve created by category and burning them onto a CD to sell/share or put into a published book? The potential is there, it’s just untapped.

So is this where the blogging world is going? I don’t know, but it’s a trip I’d like to take. Maybe it would breathe new life back into my motivational sails and get me sharing more tips, files and fun things like I used to. Who knows? Of course, maybe I need to stop looking for excuses or magic pills too. *snort* All I know is that this blogging world is sure a wonder.

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Scrapbook Sharing Potential Blogging

This morning I was reading a friend’s blog post about common sense and how it’s gone on a “permanent vacation” (I loved those words!) Then I went out and looked at some old articles I started to write several months ago. One was titled “Back The Train Up” and I’d begun by sharing how after reading some recent parenting articles I felt robbed at the end but couldn’t place why. Today I think I figured it out and it comes back to the concept Carmi shared this morning about the loss of common sense.

Everyone seems more than able and willing to ‘research’ and write articles, books, etc. on every subject imaginable. Yet most of them seem to be playing a game justifying why a lack of common sense is acceptable. It’s easy to jump on the newest fad or popular bandwagon of rationalization, but at the end of the drive you are left feeling cheated. And heaven knows we all want what is easy.

Take my experience last night. It shows not only a lack of common sense but also the way it is fueled (literally) by a desire for the easy way out.

I was watching a pair of teens make attempts at starting a fire in a fire pit. The goal was to make smores. I walked over to see one holding a piece of paper and lighter in front of her. The other was holding a can she explained was hairspray and was trying to help her friend get a flame going by spraying it. Brilliant.

So I attempted to explain a few basics. I told them that first, there are too many things to list on the “stupidity” front for using a can of hairspray as lighter fluid but suffice it to begin with the fact that you don’t need any help getting paper to burn. Moreover, spraying it in the general direction of the one holding the paper and flame is also a bad idea. This could definitely be listed in the “stupidest stunts” top ten. Second, any fire held up in the breeze is likely going to blow out with the wind before you get it back down to the ground, not to mention the increase in risk for burning yourself, so when starting a fire you should keep the flame as close to the source as possible using the wood and surroundings to provide a protective barrier against any breeze for you. Which brought us to their prepared log formation. Great T-pee formation: of full sized logs! I asked where their kindling was and they both gave me a blank stare. I explained that you can’t start burning full size blocks of wood, you need to build to it and therefore need a pile of kindling - smaller twigs and branches of wood - to get the process going. The one holding hairspray explained that was why they had hairspray because the wood wasn’t catching on fire. *sigh* I was about to give them a full lesson in fire safety and basics of starting when another exuberant teen walked up with a can of gasoline sharing how the problem was solved. Clearly, I needed reinforcements.

At this point I walked over to the parent of the gasoline marauder and another leader informing them that the element of gasoline had just been introduced. The response from the parent was a short wave of the hand saying how glad she was she wasn’t a leader for the group. I guess parent doesn’t count? (A post for another day.)

I look back over to see a blazing fire burning…for about 30 seconds. One of the youth is sent to look for more gasoline. Thankfully, by this point another leader (who later shares how a family member received 3rd degree burns after a lighter fluid can burst in his hands while lighting a fire in a fireplace) steps in to help me bring a close to the gasoline fix. The parent now joined the scene with instructions on where a Duraflame log is and it is retrieved. As it is placed under the full size log T-pee and slowly begins to burn with a small flame on one end. Several minutes pass as the group sit around the tiny flame which moments later turns into a raring blaze after a surprise attack of…you guessed, a cup of gasoline.

I could add another entire chapter on how roasting marshmallows in new flame is missing the point of cooking and roasting in a campfire; how the point is to let the fire burn good and hot long enough to produce coals for that purpose, or even how flinging a marshmallow on fire back and forth isn’t the best way to put the flame out, but I’ll let your imagines finish that part of the story. Perhaps I’ll come back later and tie in the greater lessons we could learn from that but for now let’s move on to the real point of sharing this.

I shared this story because it’s so chuck full of possibilities to explore and fits in nicely with the permanent vacation of common sense. But at a more general level, it typifies life today in a nut shell. Everyone is in such a hurry to find the easy way that it matters not what is sacrificed along the way, common sense being one of the greater causalities, not to mention unhealthy and life threatening hazards. Our “Duraflame” logs may take on different forms, but they still represent a cheating element - the concept that you can replace beginning and foundational steps by cutting a few corners. That it’s as easy as running to the store for what you need, that someone will always be there to provide you an easy out. Even egotism is fed by this growing epidemic, nourishing the belief that nothing but your selfish desires matter and whatever you do to obtain them will be inconsequential. We’ve spent so much time trimming the fat that we never noticed we’ve been whittling away at the meat for so long there’s almost nothing left.

I for one say it’s time to back the train up. Everyone needs to call back common sense from its extended vacation. Everyone needs to step up to the plate and help repair and rebuild critical foundation elements in every aspect of our lives that have been replaced with laziness, instant gratification and debt. Our children need to know and understand how to do things for themselves the right way, what the dangers and hazards are of the easy way and how important this knowledge is. We need to be better teachers and examples. We’re the current engineers and conductors of the train, but we’ll be passing it on to a new generation and we’ll still be on that train for the ride. It’s time to think about that and make some positive changes now so the future journey won’t be disastrous.

Stepping off my soapbox. Thanks for letting me vent.

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Parenting Sharing Positive Impact Potential Inspiration Perspectives Deep Thoughts Intellectual

One of my good blogging friends started a weekly writing project for Tuesdays called “Pass the Torch Tuesday” in which we take a moment to pause and share something our kids did while we caught them being good.

Well, in a world full of filth and good being called evil I have a great deal of anxiety about raising kids with strong morals and personal convictions. I want them to be strong enough to stand on their own feet and not be tossed with the trends and pressure of the masses. I know how strong that pressure is and it’s especially hard for teens and young adults. Worse, is that too often when they do stand strong they receive nothing but ridicule and contempt. So when I saw the following video clip about this American Idol audition, I wanted to pass the torch to Brooke so I’m sharing it here. This is the type of kid I want to raise and I applaud her for standing firm even in the face of ridicule.

For the record, I don’t believe being “a bit worthy” is a bad thing and I disagree most strongly that a person has to bend to the views and decisions of the world for acceptance and success. You go Brooke, I just hope my kids want to be like you when they grow up!

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Parenting Positive Impact Potential Inspiration Motherhood

Change has always been an inspiring concept to me. On the one hand it’s what most of us cry for day after day, yet when change comes most of us fight it with all we’re worth. Yet, if ever there was a constant in the universe it has to be change.

This time of year seems prone to many changes for many people. I know in my marriage experience most of the big or significant changes seem to come about this time of year. Historically for us it’s the time of every significant job change and is even when we made the decision to adopt and started the process so many years ago. I think we must have learned how to really channel and siphon the energy of a new year. This year was no exception.

Today my husband is announcing his acceptance of a new job at his current employment. He’s going to work for Seth on his Squidoo site and to say he is excited would be a gross understatement. He returned from an impromptu trip to NY for the interview just this past weekend and I think we’re both feeling like we’ve packed a few weeks worth of news and activities within just a few days but it’s a wonderful kind of exhausted.

In a couple of weeks he’ll start working from home. I’ve been a little surprised at how many condolences I’ve received on this news because we are both very excited about it. He will no longer be driving 2 hours each day to and from work and as crazy as it may sound we actually like being and working together. It’s not the first time in our marriage when he will be in a more independent work environment, but we’re excited that this time we come into it with so much more experience that can spur success. The office upstairs will finally get some use and heaven knows I need all the help I can get to keep that room uncluttered!

We’re jumping into 2008 with smiles on our faces and high goals for all we want to accomplish this year. Every day I’m learning more and more how we get out of life exactly what we expect.

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Sharing Potential Inspiration Relationships

We’ve been having a discussion at my house lately about the many ways we spend our time. My husband has been listening to a lot of audio books on his commute and he mentioned something that hit him hard about his most recent of how the man he was learning about didn’t waste a lot of time. The man was Andrew Carnegie, the richest man in the world. I would add possibly the most generous man too.

So we’ve been reviewing how we spend our time at my house. We’ve been pretty careful about TV consumption. My husband and I record a few of our favorite series and watch them after the kids have gone to bed. We learned when our daughter was not quite two that we quickly became bad parents with no patience and raised voices if we tried to watch something we wanted while she was awake and needing mom and dad. We’ve also monitored more of what comes into the home by recording shows for the kids to watch nearly eliminating live TV. Not only does this help us filter what comes in, it also helps us track the time spent. So on the level of what we watch and how, I feel great. But even with all this I can’t deny that we still spend a lot of free time watching TV. With new series beginning the fall we picked up Bionic Woman and Journeyman to our Heroes and Office line up. So we just doubled the time we’ll spend watching TV after the kids have gone to bed. And the TV is such a great babysitter for mom to get some work done that the kids spend far too much time in front of it. It’s not that what we’re doing with our time is bad…given the shows and time spent together you could even classify it as good. But it’s undeniably not the better or best use of our precious time.

So we’re contemplating shutting off the TV service. We’d still have movies and some of the kid’s shows on DVD so it wouldn’t be like removing TV entirely but it certainly would make a dent in our use of it.

My husband said something that struck me last night. He reminded me of our early days of trying to conceive and how we’d used the logic that we’d never want to look back and be able to say “what if” we had tried something. What if taking a simple pill would have resulted in a pregnancy? Could we live with that haunting unknown? Now we can look back with peace of mind, now we know. He used the same logic for our current discussion saying how much worse it will be if years down the road we look back and say “What if” we had spent more time doing “x” instead of watching TV. There will be a much greater ache if there are things that could have been achieved, morals that could have been strengthened, character that could have been defined and knowledge that could have been gained with a little more effort on our part to spend more time with meaningful activities and recreation. Although I might initially miss the characters and story lines of some of my favorite shows, they won’t miss me. In fact, they won’t even notice my absence. Isn’t that saying something?

I don’t want to look back on my life and see a lot of good decisions but multiple missed opportunities because they weren’t the better or best decisions. Your thoughts?

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Family Positive Impact Potential Balance TV Talk

I was told in school many years ago that whether you think you can or can’t, you’re right. You know, there’s a lot of powerful truth in that simple observation. We truly can talk ourselves into anything. So why is it that we’re always more concerned about what other people think? Why would we try to give our greatest power away to someone else?

Peer pressure is an amazing thing to me. You often hear stories of how it is used as a negative influence, especially among teens; how stupidity grows in numbers. While this may be true it’s nice to think about this power working in reverse. Last week while driving my son to school he was watching the movie his sister had picked out over the weekend. On picture day I didn’t want him to mess up his hair with the headphones so I set the audio to the speakers. I listened to the scene of “13 Going On 30″ (and I must point out there’s a bit of coincidence in that title and my daughter’s personality) where the party is bombing out and Jenna has the DJ put on “Thriller.” It was interesting to hear this part of the movie instead of being able to see it. You hear the first reactions of the crowd and can taste the unkind judgements going on around the room. Then I heard Matt’s initial protests of utter embarrassment as she desperately tries to lure him onto the floor to do the thriller dance moves with her. He puts up several protests but then everyone starts pushing him to join her. That extra push results in him joining her although he’s not really into it. But Jenna is totally unreserved, giving it her all and it’s contagious - almost as if she’s giving out individual permission slips for others to join in. It takes a few minutes but you hear the crowd move from quiet murmuring to encouragement to all out engagement in the activity and by the end of the song everyone is having fun doing the dance moves and the party is saved.

There’s a lesson in there, I’m sure of it. Maybe we all need to take a step back and look around us once and while - dig down into our own thoughts and care more about what we think of ourselves and the good we can do. Can you imagine the difference we could make if everyone took that challenge for just one day?

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Potential Inspiration Perspectives Blogging Deep Thoughts

I’m just returning from a meeting and all the way home I’m having an all too familiar conversation in my head. It’s where I review what I just experienced, how disappointed I am and what I would have done differently.

I seriously don’t know if I have way over the top expectations for everything in life or if there really is a growing increase of mediocrity in the world, but I find that I am continually disappointed nine times out of ten. Naturally, instead of going to bed I’m going to sit here and blog my feelings!

Let’s start at the top. When it comes to meetings, you need to make the meeting worth your people’s time. Here’s a few thoughts from my expectation and personal “how-to” book:

Streamline, maximize and throw every efficiency curve ball at your disposal. This means:

Start on time.

• If people know you’re waiting to start, then you’re teaching them to make you wait. Starting on time says I value my time and yours and I’m not wasting any of it.

Keep it short and simple.

• My dad always used the guideline of women’s skirt length for topics and talks: “Long enough to cover the subject yet short enough to be interesting.” Very redneck and crude but very easy to remember and always true! The average adult attention span maxes out at 45 minutes. No matter how fantastic your material is if you go over that mark your effectiveness is going to take a hit.

Clearly define your agenda.

• Remove frustrating mystery. Tell them exactly what to expect, what you will cover and what they will get out of it. The right start will do more to dissuade frustration and disappointment than every other tool at your disposal.

DO NOT under any circumstances read handout materials or slide information word for word.

• It’s an insult to the intelligence of those present when you waste their time reading what they can read for themselves. If you’re presenting your job is to do just that - you clearly and simply present your materials and leave the details and repeats of information for handouts and literature.

Look the part.

• If you’re spearheading a meeting or presentation you need to look the part. Professional appearance is an absolute must and the lack of it can be devastating.

Act the part.

• Speak clearly, without slang, with authority and conviction. I don’t care if you don’t know what you’re talking about as long as you make me believe you do. And if you don’t, it doesn’t matter what else you try.

Leave time to mingle.

• This is so critical and yet is so often overlooked. Chances are the people you’re meeting with have something to do with your success. If you make time to visit with them, get to know them, answers their questions and give them some one on one time you’ll do more to project your success than you can imagine. People respond well to learning that you’re a person too; that you are approachable. In my experience, leaving some time at the end of a meeting for this very purpose always brings more positive results than any other aspect of the meeting.

You only get one chance at a first impression. Suffice it to say that all of these elements were lacking in my experience tonight and thus my first impression wasn’t good. There were some moments that were so painful it took every ounce of self control I had to keep my backside in my seat. All I could do was shake my head and leave before the meeting was wrapped up. And you know what? I don’t feel one bit bad about that!

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Positive Impact Potential Success Blogging

A few things have happened in the past couple of days that have inspired me to think about the person I am and the person I am becoming.

Earlier this week I met with two of the staff at my son’s new school. I was immediately impressed with their sense of genuine caring for others and equally impressed with their ability to be so calm under pressure. At the time I interacted with both of these women there was a great deal of responsibility, potential chaos and distractions taking place. Yet both seemed to make the world stop for a moment while they visited with me or my son, made us both feel important and cared for. There was no rush, no hurry and no feeling that you were a burden, in fact they were the great calming influence for all those around them. This struck me because I’ve been to a lot of first days at various schools and I’ve never felt anything quite like this, at least not this strongly. It got me to thinking about how much I want to be like that. How much I want for people to instantly feel relaxed, comfortable, safe and cared for in my presence. The world is full of busy, stressed and self-important people. You run into them almost daily and you can feel the vibes that come from them, they leave you feeling unsettled at best. It was such a pleasant experience to feel just the opposite in a matter of mere moments. I was so impressed that I wrote e-mails to both of them expressing my thoughts and both responded with resounding warmth and enthusiasm for caring. They both said that in their experience kids learn far more and better when they enjoy coming to school and their goal is to help kids want to be there. It worked for me…I didn’t want to leave! *laugh* At any rate, I determined yesterday that this is the feeling I want to share with others and in my home. I want my kids to WANT to be here and to feel that same peace, safe and loving influence. The trick is what every parent out there already knows…this is far easier said than done.
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