I am a mother who cries when the weather turns cool and it is time to send the kids back to school. I cry because I love having everyone home. I love having lazy days playing in the backyard where kids can just be kids.
I love loading up towels, life jackets and snacks to take kids swimming.
I mentioned last year that I set aside one day a week for adventures with mom.
(look at last year) This year it was Thursday. Every Thursday we did something amazing. Here are a few favorites:
Art lessons under the play equipment at the park.
One Thursday the kids and I traveled to Harmony, MN to find out what life is like for Amish people. This is the home of a wonderful Amish family with 6 sons. We bought dried apples from them. Our kids stared at each other while I visited with the mother. Look at all of her laundry on the line!
(The goats are not purple but everything else is.)
Some Thursdays were spent at home and I had one on one dates with each kid. I read books, I played dolls, I played legos, I drew silly pictures, and I sewed with them.
On another Thursday we ventured back in time the birth place of Laura Ingalls Wilder in Pepin, WI. We saw the replica of the "Little House in the Big Woods." Some of us have read the book and the rest of us have listened to the book on tape. We all loved this adventure!
Most Thursdays we had a picnic. Every time we ate lunch together I would say, "Oh, I hope you look back and remember this!" . . .and as a mother I would memorize their little faces and try to somehow save the moment forever. I often remember Elder Ballard's counsel in his conference talk entitled, "Daughter's of God." I particularly appreciated his quote from Author Anna Quindlen:
She said: “The biggest mistake I made [as a parent] is the one that most of us make. … I did not live in the moment enough. This is particularly clear now that the moment is gone, captured only in photographs. There is one picture of [my three children] sitting in the grass on a quilt in the shadow of the swing set on a summer day, ages six, four, and one. And I wish I could remember what we ate, and what we talked about, and how they sounded, and how they looked when they slept that night. I wish I had not been in such a hurry to get on to the next thing: dinner, bath, book, bed. I wish I had treasured the doing a little more and the getting it done a little less” (Loud and Clear [2004], 10–11).
I want to take full advantage of the opportunity I have been given to be a mother.
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