I'm under construction! Both my life and my blog. I haven't updated or written anything for a very long time. So I've decided to take different approach to life and blogging. Yes, I will show off pics of my family. Yes, I will have light and sometimes deep thoughts to share and I'm going to throw in quotes I love and live by, things that bring me joy and those that irritate the crap out of me. Read or don't read but I will continue to post because I need an outlet and a place to vent the good, bad and the ugly....and the oh, so beautiful things in my life. I hope someone is helped or touched by my life trials and wisdom and it hasn't all been for naught. If you are reading this, chances are good you've touched my life in some way. I don't think too many strangers find their way here.
So be patient...I'm working on a new look and format and I'll give you that thought to live by!
Saturday, April 5, 2014
Friday, April 1, 2011
Seeking Perfection...?
Well you haven't heard from me in a while but the process continues....what are we really looking for? I have friends who haven't married and friends who have...both are seeking perfection. Exactly what is that? I've been thinking lately how much we pressure ourselves and others in our life to be perfect. We CAN'T BE PERFECT!!!! It just isn't possible. We're going to have trials, we're going to screw up and then we're going to have growing pains and then we're going to make it right. How long you want to wallow in that is totally up to you. Because of a great gift called "Agency" you get to choose and then be responsible for the choice.
I completely admit to wanting my own way and throwing adult tantrums, however I get over it and move on. I'm committed to my marriage whether my spouse or myself is the wallower. I married a wonderful man who doesn't believe he is wonderful. He comes home and plays with his kids....something my dad never did. He makes Lisha laugh so hard she can't breath...something neither her biological father did nor mine did for me. He is a worthy partriach of the home and a loving husband...something I haven't experienced long-term in the past. The question becomes: Is he perfect?
No, he is trying the best he can with what he has. He's been given a hand that a poker player would fold on, but Gary is still in the game.
This post is not intended as a "My spouse is better than your spouse and by the way so are my kids." It is just a thought process I've recently been thru as part of a wake-up call for me. Heavenly Father sent him at the right time and he is perfect for me! I'm quite sure we've all met people and said to ourselves, "Thank goodness I'm not married to her/him," And ex's are ex's for a reason! I do not regret my past (soon I will be brave enough to share that part of my suitcase) because now I know how good I have it!
I completely admit to wanting my own way and throwing adult tantrums, however I get over it and move on. I'm committed to my marriage whether my spouse or myself is the wallower. I married a wonderful man who doesn't believe he is wonderful. He comes home and plays with his kids....something my dad never did. He makes Lisha laugh so hard she can't breath...something neither her biological father did nor mine did for me. He is a worthy partriach of the home and a loving husband...something I haven't experienced long-term in the past. The question becomes: Is he perfect?
No, he is trying the best he can with what he has. He's been given a hand that a poker player would fold on, but Gary is still in the game.
This post is not intended as a "My spouse is better than your spouse and by the way so are my kids." It is just a thought process I've recently been thru as part of a wake-up call for me. Heavenly Father sent him at the right time and he is perfect for me! I'm quite sure we've all met people and said to ourselves, "Thank goodness I'm not married to her/him," And ex's are ex's for a reason! I do not regret my past (soon I will be brave enough to share that part of my suitcase) because now I know how good I have it!
Saturday, February 5, 2011
What if someone reads this.....?
What if someone does read this? It hit me with my anxiety disorder full blast! It went up a few notches and I closed my laptop and started all the internal dialogues that has kept the laptop shut for two weeks. My husband reads and says how he couldn't be so open....I start to wonder if people want me to be so open. The silly thing is....isn't the whole point of a blog, to share whatever is on your mind and post so people will read it? I started this whole thing because I felt I had something to say.
Sometimes the fear of rejection can be so overwhelming.....it's all consuming. I'm just sitting here in my bed with my laptop and the light bulb went on over my head (it rarely does anymore...hehe) that someone in Germany or anywhere else in the world could stumble across this and wonder, "Who is this crazy lady?"
One of my favorite quotes is as follows: "Courage is not the absence of fear...it is taking action in the face of it!" So I'm taking action and a leap of faith that I have something of value to say. I worked for a Broker/Owner once and he always talked about what can you offer people that is of value to their lives. And though I'm not selling you anything, I want my words to be of value to those who choose to click and read.
So here is the moral of this story: Don't let fear and anxiety run your life. There is something we all are afraid of so we stuff it down and sometimes self-sabotage ourselves. My goal is to let that go and be free. Freedom from fear is a wonderful thing.
My life has been far from perfect and charmed....no white picket fences for me. I have felt in my sole that all this crap can't be for nothing! I know SOMEBODY is reading this and so anxiety or not my life and adventures will continue.
Sometimes the fear of rejection can be so overwhelming.....it's all consuming. I'm just sitting here in my bed with my laptop and the light bulb went on over my head (it rarely does anymore...hehe) that someone in Germany or anywhere else in the world could stumble across this and wonder, "Who is this crazy lady?"
One of my favorite quotes is as follows: "Courage is not the absence of fear...it is taking action in the face of it!" So I'm taking action and a leap of faith that I have something of value to say. I worked for a Broker/Owner once and he always talked about what can you offer people that is of value to their lives. And though I'm not selling you anything, I want my words to be of value to those who choose to click and read.
So here is the moral of this story: Don't let fear and anxiety run your life. There is something we all are afraid of so we stuff it down and sometimes self-sabotage ourselves. My goal is to let that go and be free. Freedom from fear is a wonderful thing.
Monday, January 17, 2011
Raising the Second Half
A post a friend made about an old TV show got me thinking When Lisha, my eldest, was around 4 or 5 I had been a single mom for about 4 or 5 years. (My husband left very soon after the death of my mother and that is a completely different post.) I had moved from the safety net of my sister's home to a one bedroom apartment. We were living on the high desert in California, the cockroach capital of California. Thus our apartment had a few unwanted guests, but at least I was on my own, paying my own way.
My friend of many years, Cathy, provided daycare for Lisha, my niece plus she had two girls of her own. I remember they had a play room and those girls thrived and their imaginations blossomed. Every payday I would go to Costco and pick up a couple of $5 VHS videos and that was what Lisha knew as TV. I couldn't afford any sort of cable so Lisha became best friends with Doris Day and Rock Hudson and the original Parent Trap. It was funny to me when I realized she thought she was looking in on their lives. Lisha was the kind of kid that could make something out of nothing. We felt blessed just to have a VCR.
I commuted about an hour to work and a little more at night, but there were no cell phones. The only person I knew with a cell phone paid major bucks for any minutes and it looked like a brick. (Knowing this person is also another post....not ready to pull that out of the suitcase yet.) My point being, that in 15 years technology has come along way. The internet was a thing of the future and we were just trying to get used to CDs. No one believed that movies would one day only come in a DVD and I would have to buy a new kind of player for that! As a single mother barely making it, my child made good use of her imagination. I used to tell her I was not her entertainment committee so go find something to do.
My husband is a genius! I love him so much but I don't get his engineering brain. He has the house hot wired for entertainment of all kinds and my 5 yr old Lucy has taken to all the gadgets very nicely. When she was barely 4 she sat down at the computer and I asked her what she was doing and she said, "I'm working on an email!" She gets the Wii, we had to change the password on the computer because she knew how to log on, logging into Netflix is like simply turning on the TV. Luckily she has inherited some of her father's brain and loves a good puzzle so her skills are still being used. We had a little gadget that we could record little shows onto a memory card and it was a little mini player that Spencer loved to watch Mickey Mouse Club on. It got dropped one too many times and it was dead. I asked Gary how much to pick up something like that and I decided we really didin't need to do that for a 2 year old. So my sweet, smart husband takes the GPS out of his car and programs some apps onto it so Spencer could have his portable shows back. The only problem we found was that touch screens and 2 yr olds don't really go together.
I guess I'm just of the opinion a child doesn't need to be entertained every second of the drive to the grocery or even 30 miles down the road. See what there is to see and talk about it with your kids. They do say the most interesting things. I was having one of those talks on a drive with Lisha once and I asked her if she thought I'd been too strict as a Mom. She said, yes, in some areas but she understood why. She said she always knew she could talk to me. She said many of her friends would come to her with problems she told them they should be talking to their mother about. They indicated they could never tell talk to their mom about those things. I'm grateful and blessed that she feels she can talk to me....in fact I just got a call from the dorm room tonight. It made my heart smile! Raising this second generation of babies who come with big spirits and big attitudes I hope I'm up for being at the crossroads when the Wii is turned off and the cell phone is put down so we can talk about whatever they see out the window..
My friend of many years, Cathy, provided daycare for Lisha, my niece plus she had two girls of her own. I remember they had a play room and those girls thrived and their imaginations blossomed. Every payday I would go to Costco and pick up a couple of $5 VHS videos and that was what Lisha knew as TV. I couldn't afford any sort of cable so Lisha became best friends with Doris Day and Rock Hudson and the original Parent Trap. It was funny to me when I realized she thought she was looking in on their lives. Lisha was the kind of kid that could make something out of nothing. We felt blessed just to have a VCR.
I commuted about an hour to work and a little more at night, but there were no cell phones. The only person I knew with a cell phone paid major bucks for any minutes and it looked like a brick. (Knowing this person is also another post....not ready to pull that out of the suitcase yet.) My point being, that in 15 years technology has come along way. The internet was a thing of the future and we were just trying to get used to CDs. No one believed that movies would one day only come in a DVD and I would have to buy a new kind of player for that! As a single mother barely making it, my child made good use of her imagination. I used to tell her I was not her entertainment committee so go find something to do.
My husband is a genius! I love him so much but I don't get his engineering brain. He has the house hot wired for entertainment of all kinds and my 5 yr old Lucy has taken to all the gadgets very nicely. When she was barely 4 she sat down at the computer and I asked her what she was doing and she said, "I'm working on an email!" She gets the Wii, we had to change the password on the computer because she knew how to log on, logging into Netflix is like simply turning on the TV. Luckily she has inherited some of her father's brain and loves a good puzzle so her skills are still being used. We had a little gadget that we could record little shows onto a memory card and it was a little mini player that Spencer loved to watch Mickey Mouse Club on. It got dropped one too many times and it was dead. I asked Gary how much to pick up something like that and I decided we really didin't need to do that for a 2 year old. So my sweet, smart husband takes the GPS out of his car and programs some apps onto it so Spencer could have his portable shows back. The only problem we found was that touch screens and 2 yr olds don't really go together.
I guess I'm just of the opinion a child doesn't need to be entertained every second of the drive to the grocery or even 30 miles down the road. See what there is to see and talk about it with your kids. They do say the most interesting things. I was having one of those talks on a drive with Lisha once and I asked her if she thought I'd been too strict as a Mom. She said, yes, in some areas but she understood why. She said she always knew she could talk to me. She said many of her friends would come to her with problems she told them they should be talking to their mother about. They indicated they could never tell talk to their mom about those things. I'm grateful and blessed that she feels she can talk to me....in fact I just got a call from the dorm room tonight. It made my heart smile! Raising this second generation of babies who come with big spirits and big attitudes I hope I'm up for being at the crossroads when the Wii is turned off and the cell phone is put down so we can talk about whatever they see out the window..
Sunday, January 16, 2011
Turning 45
I remember when my mother was in her 40's. I don't think that was a super happy time in her life, especially when my father gave her a can opener for her birthday. So I have instructed my husband he can't give me can openers or flashdrives for my computer for Christmas or my Birthday. However, my sweet family invited some good friends over for ice cream and cake and I got a BIG family birthday breakfast.Even though I enjoyed my pedicure with great delight I see my mortality staring me right in my face. My mother was only 54 when she left this world and sometimes I feel like I'm in a race to make sure my children have all they need to make it in this cruel world because the clock is ticking, My little surprise caboose is sitting here next to me and I think about all the life he needs out of me to make him the young man God intends for him to be.
My strong willed, I do it myself, eldest daughter still has some advice yet to get, from her strong willed mother. I think it best to wait for her to come and ask for it. She astounds me with her insight so she will figure out that I may have something to say that might help her out.
My life is not what I planned and for those of you who may decide to follow out of curiosity I am willing to discuss all....my life is not without scars or baggage. Let's open up the suitcase and see what's inside. I know I didn't live, love and love again for nothing! So though I know my mortality is not up to me, it's probably not the race I think it is.
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