Family traditions...

Those family traditions that you create. Sometimes don't turn out exactly the way you plan or would hope....no matter what I am grateful for any day that I can spend time with my children.
Running out of time to get to the pumpkin patch as Halloween is just around the corner, and if we don't go this weekend we won't get to go at all, because our schedules don't permit us to fit any outing in during the week, Cailey has football practice every day after school (she is a football manager). So after church today we get in the car and head to the pumpkin patch............OH MY GOSH, has every parent in Smyrna waited 'til today to go to the pumpkin patch....my memories of previous visits were so happy as we stroll through and take our time, enjoying seeing the baby animals, feeding the goats, the girls taking pictures in the sunflower patch, Brevin searching for his little pumpkin, going through the hay maze, corn maze, lots of great photo ops.......today just was not that day.........
Cailey did not want to be at the pumpkin patch, Alex came I think because she knows how much those little family traditions mean to me, even though this would only be the 4th year we have been, still a tradition. And Brevin was a wild man, he gets really excited in crowds, and today there was a crowd....hundreds of people trying to create those beautiful memories of their children at the pumpkin patch. I think for me the best moment was when Brevin spotted a basketball hoop and attempted to heave the pumpkin over his head towards the hoop....who could blam him, the thing is round and orange and isn't that what we throw into the hoop.....he's a genius I have known it and still know it.....
So we did not spend the time we normally would, it was chaotic and loud, and so we decided I could bring Brevin during the week when it was more peaceful...maybe I will have to adjust my traditions...Cailey is a teenager as this is not her idea of fun anymore....So it may just be Brevin and I going to the Pumpkin Patch next year...a new family tradition, but still a tradition, and how I love them.....where might I have gotten that from??? I'll never be my mother!!!

The joys of life unexpected!

If only life really worked out the way that we planned when we were little girls.....I did have those dreams of the beautiful wedding, handsome husband and a cute little house (no white picket fence) .......when I was conjuring pictures of what my life would be, all that I knew for absolute was that I wanted to be a mom.
I thought that being a mom must be the best thing in the world, because I saw my mother day in and day out being a fantastic wife and mother, and she always seemed to me as happy and contented, what more could you want in life.
To me she was so perfect always put together, could get us all off to school with a packed lunch, have my dad's white shirts ironed, all the beds made. When we came home, the house was in perfect order, all the laundry done, and somehow my brothers and I had dance lessons, music lessons, skating lessons, played sports and dinner on the table ( I now know there was some trick she has yet to share with me, because there is no way to do all of the things my mother did in one day and still look perfect) and a snack ready for us. Of course as I grew older my view of this position in life changed and I thought continually "I'll never be my mother" she was horrible, the rules, oh my gosh the rules.......I will never have so many rules for my children!!!
That is when I became what I now consider my mothers nightmare........that story for another day.....
I had one miscarriage, one adoption, one set of twins by C-section, and two natural births = five fabulous children that are the passion of my life.......and I now know that "I'll never be my mother" there is no way I could ever do the fantastic job that she did, I can only aspire to it.