Family is Everything!

I am NOT a fan of yard work!

Although I love being outside, I do not find peace and joy through working and planting in the dirt. However, since I do love happy colored flowers and a lush green lawn, out into the dreaded yard I go.

Planted my front porch flower pots today. The back deck flowers will have to wait until the deck is completed. So for now, I think I'll sit on my delightful front porch and sip a diet coke and read a book! If only I didn't have to water all of these every day for the next four or five months life would really be great!

He's at it again!

Growing, that is!

Chelsea is quaking in her boots -- I think it is already too late for her.  Melanie thinks it will never happen to her, either.  I bet it will take about a week.  Maybe I'll quit feeding the kid!

Musings on Motherhood

I've been trying to compose this post for a full 48 hours now and have struggled with the how and what of it all.  Motherhood is one of the most sacred, as well as one of the most difficult and annoying, callings I have yet received in my 46 1/2 years of living. 

I've been pondering quite a lot lately on whether or not I have raised my children with the appropriate sense of self and the ability to stand firmly alone in their own knowledge of truth.  When I hear a mother say, "My daughters (or sons, or children) are my best friends, I just don't know what I would do without them,"  I wonder if I have done something wrong.  Have I missed the boat?  

I don't know what I would do without my children.  All of them.  They are my greatest blessings.  But they are not my best friends.  And they are not my best friends because I have taught them to look elsewhere for that gift.  I hope, too, that I have taught them to BE that gift for someone else.  A real friend.  A true friend.  A best friend.  Those are hard to find.  And sometimes hard to be.  We, my children and I, do not share that gift.  We share a gift that has more value.  We share the bond of mother and child.  It is eternal.  And although I am my children's greatest advocate and fan, and although I would lay down my own life to protect any one of them, I am not their best friend.  And I am o.k. with that.  Because I am their mother. 

    

Sixty Seconds of Joy

I answered the telephone this morning.

Me: "Hello."

Caller: "Hello?"

Me: "Hello?"

Caller: "Mom?"

Me: "Chase?"

Chase: "Hi Mom!"

We quickly set up the time for our Mother's Day phone call.

Sunday, at 2PM, mountain standard time.

The exchange took no more than one minute.

Sixty seconds.

And my cup hath been running over all day, right out of my eyes!

The sun is shining ... the grass is green ...

And I'm sure if I had orange trees and palm trees in my yard, they'd be swaying!

Instead, this is what I've got in my yard:

They have torn up my luscious green grass. My deck is unsafe. And there is heavy equipment where the trampoline should be.

I'm not even sure anymore what they are doing out there.  Stimulating the economy?  I sure hope so.

Success

You know how some folks have quotes that are automatically added as a post script at the end of an e-mail? My daughter's friend, DeeAura, has this quote as her "signature." 

"To share often and much...to know even one life has breathed easier because you have lived. This is to have succeeded." - Ralph Waldo Emerson

I figure that since I gave "the breath of life" to five people in this world, meaning they have definitely breathed easier, then I have succeeded! 

Whew!  That's a load off my mind!

D&C 84:97

"And plagues shall go forth, and they shall not be taken from the earth until I have completed my work."

Swine flu?

Just the tip of the iceberg.

Breath in.  Breath out.

And prepare.

Blog Blockage

I've determined that my recent lack of blog postings is not due to the fact that my life has no blog-worthy events occurring. It's facebook. I blame it all on the fact that on facebook one needs only a short, even half in length, witty sentence to post. Blogging requires thought.  It requires at least a paragraph of wit and/or wisdom. Most days I am truly merely half-witted, thus the new connection with facebook. But my posterity will never have the opportunity to look back and see all of those cutely short, half-witted comments I've made on facebook. My blog will endure. So here I am, still only half-witted, trying to overcome some serious blog blockage. ... Maybe something will come to me ... later ... ?