Friends, Romans, Countrymen

Today it rained and rained and I wish I could show you a picture titled, "Flustered Mother Entering Car with Umbrella" for your laughter and enjoyment. Unfortunately, I was the flustered mother and was unable to capture the wet moment in all its door-rebounding, umbrella mashing, soaked glory.
You know the funny thing about having three children? (Besides pretending that you've gone deaf when they whine?) Time disappears. Like I said before, this motherhood thing is really sinking its teeth into me and I'm finding less and less time to spend on the computer.

One of the ways that I excuse all the time I spend on the blog/computer is that I tell myself, "This is my family journal." This half-lie is nice and all but here's me reading this blog to Kenzie:
"And we [edit out sarcasm] to the park. [Scan next four paragraphs, edit them out] Boy it was fun."
If I'm going to continue to cultivate my saintly image of Mother of the Year with my girls, I'm going to have to develop a family blog more along the lines of "Everything is Fabulous and We Always Wear Matching Clothes and Have a Loaf of Bread baking in the Oven." Because I'm pretty sure a lovely write-up of our lives will trump our actual memories. So if I pretend that we are perfect, we will be. :) Right? Right.

So, blah, blah, the point of all this is, that the family portion of this blog has gone private. I'm maintaining this particular blog as my personal journey to Sainthood, so go ahead and keep me on your blog roll, or in google reader, or follow me, or whatever it is that you do, but I'm not sure what I'm going to write about, or how often I'm going to write. (It's been pretty sporadic since Ellie was born. Sorry.)

I should come up with a new name for this blog like, "Mother of the Year"  or "The Saintly Mother"  or "How to Raise Children Without Slashing Your Wrists"  all wonderful titles, but I bet they're all taken.

I wish I could make some sort of commitment to you my readers (she says bowing to the imaginary crowd), but I'm not at the point where I can do that right now.

If you like my writing you can always catch me on the Sports page in the Standard-Examiner or in a bi-monthly column in the utahrunning.com magazine.

And if you really want to read sappy (not snappy, sappy) write-ups about our perfect family trips and wonderful life you're going to have to be my Grandma. Okay, okay, if you really care about Ellie's height and weight and want to hear all about Kenzie's brilliance and how Hannah has the best sense of humor ever, then you can email me for an invite. But it's going to be sappy and oozing with cheesy family love. I promise.

P.S. Dear Reader who asked me what size PVC pipe is in the bunkbed tent- I'm sorry I can't find your comment to reply, so I hope you are reading this. It's 1/2" pipe with 1/2" T-joints. Does that make sense?





 

Mother's Day

For years I drove the route past the tree. Its bone-branches scratched the sky--a solitary giant in a barren field. For years I drove by and never stopped, always thinking, "How beautiful. How lovely. I should take a picture." Sometimes I even had a camera in the car as I drove by, but I was always in a hurry, or afraid I would look stupid standing on a busy street pointing my camera at a lone tree in a farmer's field.

One day I drove past the tree and it was gone. A long, burned branch snaked across the ground in its place. I felt as empty as the sky, regretful of missed opportunities.  

Today, I vow to miss less opportunities to love my girls. I vow to make good the sacrifices and service that my mother gave to me. I vow to continue to link the love of my mom, my grandma, my great-grandma, to the mothers of tomorrow that I am raising. I vow to appreciate the people in my life now, not when they are gone. I vow be who I want to be today, not tomorrow.

Mom, I love you! Thank you.

My sister-in-law, Sherrie, took this picture before the tree burned down and she shared it with me when I told her how sad I was that it burned down. Isn't it beautiful?

Hannah's Farm Day

We weren't sure if Farm Day would be rained out, but lucky for us the rain held off and it was just cold. Melissa's dad owns the dairy farm and they bring in a whole bunch of animals for Farm day, and we were lucky enough to get to take our little Joyschool group to see them. Hannah kept asking me if there would be three little pigs. (Yes dear and they will each build a house.)

Kate, Mialee and Hannah on the road to the farm. I must have grabbed my camera by the lens (doesn't everyone do that?) because there is a smudgy look to each picture that exactly correlates with my thumb print. I was thinking that my camera was fritzing, but really it was just me. Typical.

Cows! Hannah said, "It smells worse than stinky socks." We gave her the lowdown on manure.

In front of the baby cows.

Oh, little bunnies. Hannah wanted very badly to hold a bunny, but everytime one got near her, she freaked out if they moved at all. This one was calm enough that she finally got it in her arms. She loved it, but was still fairly terrified if it moved at all. There were bunnies, hamsters, a lamb, horses (a colt too), and the much-anticipated pigs.

After Hannah worked up her courage she held another bunny and showed it to Ellie. Ellie wanted to grab handfuls of fur and eat the bunny, but don't worry we didn't let her.  

This is how Ellie feels about real cow noises.  On the other hand, we have a song by Sandra Boyton, called "Cows," that without fail stops Ellie's crying. I swear it works 100% of the time. I know this song so well by now, that if I were tortured and lost my mind, I'm sure that I would walk around quoting the To Be Or Not To Be speech from Hamlet, interspersed with lyrics from this song. I might occasionally break into a mad tap dance routine as well. I guess that wouldn't be much different from now.

Thanks Melissa's family and Melissa for the tour.