Random

Random thoughts for today. 

• I'm tired (what mom isn't?)
• Why is it a pair of underwear? Last time I knew, it was all one piece.
• Would John Boy Walton be considered a blogger? What about Laura Ingalls Wilder?
• What is the definition of blogger? (I'll have to Google that later)
• When did Google become a verb?
• How do other families keep their house clean?
• Could I have survived in the 19th century, or am I too much of a wuss?
• My daughter is nearing puberty. How did I get this old?
• Why am I embarrassed to say I hate Mother's day?

Because I'm tired (see the first random thought above) I will only take the time to elaborate on the fact that I despise Mother's day. I love my mom and I love my kids. I have wanted to be a mother all my life and I am living the dream of many women because at this point, I am able to stay home with my children. So why this grumpiness? Pressure. It's too much pressure to have a 'nice' Mother's day. I have to come up with a genuine complement for every little piece of artwork, trinket or mangled dandelion that the kids bring me or I would crush their egos therefore setting them up for a lifetime of seeking out approval from the wrong sources resulting in a downward spiral and them moving to the other side of the planet and never speaking to me again.  Then I have to say thank you 62 times a day when they all tell me 'Happy Mother's Day.' And after all this exhausting work (which is all occurring on the day set aside for me) I have to answer the question " Did you have a nice Mother's day?" from miscellaneous friends, families, or store clerks. I have a hard time lying and so I will rarely say I'm 'fine' or 'good.' The truth is, this Mother's Day was a complete wreck. Not wanting the children to fret over me not having a special gift to open, I suggested the only gift I wanted was to go camping. It sounded like a relaxing weekend and since my parents were camping in the site next ours, it covered a 'gift' for my mom, too! So what went wrong? Our two oldest children went missing from our camp site for more than three hours. Missing. As in we could not find them with seven people looking for them and we finally had to enlist the park rangers for assistance. Having to give a description of your children and what they were wearing and who the last person to see them was and which way they were headed does not a Mother's day gift make. Amazingly we found them and they were uninjured physically, but shaken up. Our son does seem to think of it as an adventure he can tell his friends about, but our daughter is not so optimistic and was honestly afraid they would never find their way back. As the old saying goes ,you need to get right back on the horse, so the next day we took our oldest and our youngest daughters back up the trail they were found on to retrieve a bicycle seat that was lost by their companion. How a bicycle seat gets lost in the middle of the forest is beyond me. We found the missing seat about a mile up the muddy trail and start to head back and almost immediately it thundered and begins to rain. Then it downpoured. Then the wind blew with enormous force. The lightning bolt was so close I nearly peed my pants (after three kids and one c-section I have minimal bladder control. It's not fun). Then we realized we were in pain and the precipitation was not just raindrops, but hail as well. Pea size hail causes more discomfort than I thought it would. Long story short: we made it down off the mountain sopping wet and traumatized, but uninjured. I wish the same could be said for our camper, and several around us. Although we didn't hear of anyone being hurt, there was a very high number of damaged or destroyed awnings as well as a fallen tree. It seemed almost like a war zone as I carried my sobbing little girl back to the camper with her very disgusted sister who kept saying "Do you see now why I didn't want to go back up on the trail?"
Borrowing the attitude from her, do you see now why I don't like Mother's Day?

~Children are a heritage from the Lord, offspring a reward from him.~ Psalm 127:3