mom rocks

i feel like i'm having a mini epiphany lately. it involves moms.

remember when you were a teenage girl (unless you were a boy, then i hope you don't remember that) and you thought your mom was so freaking annoying and dumb? remember when you looked at her clothes or shoes or hair or car and scoffed at the absurdity that was her? do you remember thinking how massively superior you were to her?

i do. i remember wondering why she had to be so embarrassing and thinking that with myself being so utterly cool, i should have had a much cooler mother so that we could match.

i wrote rude things about her in my diary. some days i was sure that my destiny would take me on a much more epic journey in life than hers had.

i was very foolish.

in the past few years, i've been realizing that my mom looks fantastic. she's fashionable and always fixed and looking good when she goes anywhere. she's thin and in shape and gets hit on by men all the time because, dang, you don't see a woman in her 60's looking like that very often.

my mom does interesting and lively things like climb trees with the grandkids and even hangs upside down from a branch from time to time. she takes mission trips around the globe because her faith is important to her and she lives it out in her life every day. she has girlfriends who she exercises, parties, and lunches with. she takes care of people who are sick or old or injured. she reads and writes and works out while still taking care of her family at home.

when i look at pictures of my mom before she had kids, i see a foxy lady. she wore super short mini skirts and even some crocheted hot pants she made for herself in her early twenties. and she didn't just wear them, she rocked them!

so where did that lady go while i was growing up? how could i not see the hot chick while i was busy considering myself to be a hot chick?

i finally realized that she was still there, but she was too busy taking care of me to take care of herself. she had four kids and a busy life filled with good things, but very few of them involved doing things for herself just because she wanted to do them. she didn't spend money to buy nice clothes for herself because she was spending it all to keep her children dressed and fed. she didn't bother much with makeup because she didn't have enough time for such things with so many other more important things on her plate.

for a few years i've been joking that my mom has a reverse aging gene going on, making her look younger as she ages. maybe that's not it though. maybe my eyes are just learning how to see her finally. maybe i'm just discovering that the phase of a mom's life where she's taking care of her young family isn't who she is. it's just a period of time, a step on her ladder of life.

mom, i'm thankful for you. you've set an amazing example for me all my life. i'm sorry for all the times i made fun of your clothes or shoes. i hope someday brooke will appreciate me as much as i appreciate you.

facebook updates that never came to be

last week, my little sister sarah got married on a beach in florida. she was born when i was ten and i've always thought of her as my little baby/toy/practice child/protege. seeing her get married was happy and exciting for me.

the day after the wedding, 26 of us from the wedding group of family and friends all piled onto a cruise ship and headed to key west, florida and cozumel, mexico for four days.

since i don't have internet on my phone and we were in the ocean or in a foreign country for several days, i had no way of getting online. i kept thinking of things that would have made good status updates, but i couldn't post them, so i decided to do a blog post where i share my great vacation through the updates that never came to be.

if we've got to do an 11 hr drive, this is the way to go about it. and why would anyone want the non-drowsy version of dramamine during a car ride? bring on the sleepies!

the hotel and beach are beautiful and will be perfect for the wedding tonight!

you know you've arrived at the beach when you've got a butt full of rocks and sand. let vacation begin!

how did i get selected to be in charge of the flowers for the wedding? so not my thing, but with my mom and sister-in-law's help, we managed to come up with some pretty things. those boutonnieres were tricky little wastards.

sarah made a beautiful bride and rich is a lucky man.

hmm, do you think she's a paid lady of the night or just some chick doing the walk of shame at the bus stop?

boarding the ship! this is all very exciting, even if brooke is starting to come apart at the seams a bit with all the crowds and chaos and line-standing.

this room is soo tiny and windowless for the three of us. anyone else feeling claustrophobic yet?

omg, we just had to wait for 45 min through the safety briefing at our muster station. no air conditioning, hundreds of people packed into one tiny, airless space, excessively loud speaker overhead, and a child who was letting her autism show.

thank God for this tiny, windowless room where we can take brooke. it's like a cocoon where she can burrow down in and get herself restarted as often as she gets overloaded. the towel animals help too.

cruises must be really great if you're traveling with no kids and lots of money.

"i thought cruises were supposed to be fun," noah, age 8.

"i had 5 ice creams, cheesecake and lucky charms for breakfast. and orange soda and chocolate milk. can i have a pizza now?" sure, kid, go get yourself a pizza. maybe this cruise is looking up for the kids after all.

we just dropped the kids off at a nightclub on the ship for a kids only dance. they say they're just going for the free soda. looks like we finally get some adult time!

while trying to decide where to go on our free evening, we were spying on brooke through the club window. we saw her walk to the door and saw a child care employee let her right out into the hallway alone, beside the casino that was filled with hundreds of adults, many of whom were drunk. holy crap, i think i'm going to puke.

after a few choice words with the kids staff, we let brooke go back in after using the restroom. but then we sat directly outside the door and didn't move until it was time to retrieve her. so much for a parents only night of fun.

if you accidentally use a family member's toothbrush, are you obligated to tell them about it or can you just let it be your own little secret?

is that really the ocean we're in or did we enter neverland and we're sailing in a sea of blue gatorade?

no matter how huge this ship seems, it's very insignificant compared to the ocean. God makes some massive stuff.

we got off the boat in cozumel and we're in a back alley with some mexican guys in hopes that they'll give us a great deal on snorkeling. fingers crossed that we don't get sold into human slavery.

no slavery, just fun. other than the multiple stings by jellyfish, my first time snorkeling was really fantastic!

how many times can i apply sunblock in one day before my skin starts boycotting it?

you know how sometimes you'll see a toilet brush hanging from the bottom of a gas station bathroom sink? well i just saw a sink that had salad tongs hanging from the bottom instead. i wish i'd had my camera handy!

you know you're home from vacation when you've got three suitcases filled with wet, nasty laundry, you're cleaning up cat puke off the rug and all you can think about is how happy you are that you're going to be able to use your own toilet again.

and with that, my friends, i bid you farewell. the laundry is calling my name and i've got to get back to the salad diet and say goodbye to the potatoes and cheese.

the valentine squirrel

every family has some traditions that make certain days extra special. there are the standards like santa and the easter bunny. or you might have an adoption day celebration of some sort. when i was growing up, my mom was really good at inventing ways to make days feel special. at one point, she decided that whenever one of our family members who didn't live in our house had a birthday, we'd have dessert for breakfast. brownies and milk before school? yes please, and happy birthday aunt joan!

another little gem she invented was the valentine squirrel. we would get an annual visit from the mysterious squirrel. at night while we were sleeping on the night before v-day, the squirrel would hide 25 hershey kisses around our bedrooms for us to find and gobble upon waking. of course, we never found them all right away. sometimes months would go by before the last one or two would be discovered and one even turned up possibly years later when we moved. by then it was mummified, dusty and covered in white spots.

there was also a treasure hunt with clues that led us to some prize at the end and a basket filled with fun little goodies. it was kind of like easter in february, but without the bunny or eggs.

i've started doing the valentine squirrel with brooke for the past several years. each year i have more fun hiding the kisses because her ability to look for them improves, so i like to give her a challenge. she decided after the first year that she couldn't properly celebrate this holiday without an actual, physical squirrel to hold and play with. but do you have any idea how hard it is to find a toy squirrel?

we searched high and low for a couple months to find this elusive squirrel and one day at walmart, brooke spotted one in a lady's cart, walking through the store. so i ran to catch up with her and asked her where she found it. in the dog toy department! why didn't i think to look there? we found it, bought it and brooke promptly named it Tiny.

one year i made a cute little pink, hearty shirt for tiny to wear on his big day, but brooke immediately ripped it off and told me that squirrels don't wear shirts. duh. i guess i won't waste any more hours making clothes for squirrels. though, in brooke's world, dogs, cats and hamsters do wear clothes. obviously.

i haven't started on the treasure hunt business yet because i just haven't felt inspired to invest that kind of time in the process. and once i've done it the first time, i'll never be able to NOT do it again without brooke feeling let down. so i just haven't done it. however, she did get a bowl filled with paint bottles and sugar this morning.

i was awakened at 7:30 by brooke bouncing on my bed, squealing, laughing and telling me that she'd already consumed at least 30 pieces of chocolate. she woke up at 5:55 and got started right away. this is the one day of the year that i let her go buck wild with the junk food and we take a day off from school because there's no way she'd be able to concentrate with blood as thick as syrup slogging through her veins. plus, if she eats it all in one day, we can get back on track tomorrow and fondly remember the day when sugary goodness rained from the sky.

africa

i talk about my mom fairly regularly on here because she's such an interesting person. she and i have a lot of fun together and since i moved to her town 8 months ago, we get to spend a lot of time together. she helps me figure out how to do the projects i dream up and she's encouraging when i need uplifting.

a few years ago, my mom started going on short term mission trips to different countries. she's been to south america a few times and two years ago she went to china. a few weeks ago, she went to africa. she went to a tiny little country on the western side of the continent called guinea bissau.

this place was rated as the worst place on earth to be a woman. the living conditions are awful and poor and dirty. the women do all the work and have piles of babies to tend to while trying to keep their homes maintained and food in the bellies of their families. they live in mud houses with dirt floors and thatched roofs.

the purpose of my mom's trip there was to spend time with the ladies in the villages surrounding the missionaries' house giving them some pampering and showing them that they have value in God's sight. she bought and packed piles, bags and boxes full of all kinds of fun beauty, spa treatment things. nail polish, exfoliating scrubbers, foot soak, massage oil, nail clippers, moisturizers, the works. 

these ladies didn't even know what most of that stuff was and had certainly never had any kind of pampering before. there isn't even a word in their language for "spa" so they settled on calling it a "salon" because they at least knew what that was even if they'd never been to one.

my mom started a blog after she got back to tell the stories of how she got to guinea bissau and what happened happened while she was there. she includes lots of pictures and tales of how different life is in that amazing place.

you should definitely check it out. i've read all of it so far and keep going back to look at the pictures again. 

here's the link to the first post, but don't stop there. keep clicking. Where He Leads

things that take my breath away

have you ever gotten a gift that took your breath away? it doesn't have to be for christmas or your birthday. it could be any time.

i've had a few of those in my life, but it's been a long time since the last one (which was vanny, our minivan, given to us for free by chris' brother 8 years ago).

this year, for christmas, i got two such wonderful gifts.

a couple days before christmas, i got an email from my mom telling me that she was going to tell me what my present was early because she wanted to be sensitive to my feelings and didn't know if i'd want the whole family to be there when i got it.

here's the poem she wrote for the occasion.

Zits are the pits

And bumps are for frumps.

Blemishes give you

A case of the grumps.

So run to the doctor

And get your new skin, 

Cuz this is the year 

Of the new Sherilin!

i burst out in ridiculous sobs as i read that email. the idea that they're going to pay for me to go to a dermatologist and get my awful face fixed so that i won't be a slave to the concealer anymore makes me more happy than i even realized til that moment. it's hard being too poor to go to the doctor. and too poor to dress decently. and too chubby to look good in my cheap clothes. and for me, having my skin be a wreck all the time is like having to lug around something big and heavy and rotten all the time.

that was amazing gift number one. i was sure that the amazingness was done for a few years. i was satisfied and pleased and content.

then i went to my family's house on christmas eve for all our special traditions and fun and food (ohmygosh the COOKIES!) and presents. we didn't have much to give, but i was delivering the quilt i made and some other little goodies as well as a certificate for my mom for 90 minutes of massage from my magical fingers and for my dad, a declaration that i'd clean and wash his filthy old 1993 van - twice. 

i made these out of the tips of ferns that i snipped off a big pretty plant.

my youngest sister, erica, said she had to go get the gift for me and she ran down to her room. she came partway back into the room and said, "i want everyone to know this is not a rash decision. i've been thinking about it for a while now and i'm really okay with this."

this is what she pulled from around the corner.

i think the air got sucked right out of the room. no one knew what to say, least of all me. i stared at the computer, i stared at erica. i couldn't form words, but my tear ducts were working overtime.

this is a great big, 27 inch iMAC she had bought for herself and then decided she didn't need as much as she needed the money, so she was going to resell it. only, instead of waiting for it to sell, she gave it to ME! 

i couldn't believe she did that. but then again, erica is a girl with the biggest, most generous heart of anyone i know. she is giving with everything within herself and she proved it yet again last week. 

my family amazes me. they bestow love and gifts and friendship on me, more than i could ever deserve or dream for. they remind me to be thankful even when other pieces of life feel difficult or frustrating. i'm very blessed.

here's one more picture from that day. it's my brother, parents and myself. the sisters weren't around for this one.

the fiasco of '87

i posted this right after thanksgiving last year, but i think i had all of 30 followers then, so i thought i'd repost since it's the story of my most memorable childhood christmas.

all through our growing up years, my brother and i almost always knew where our parents stashed our christmas presents. they'd told us the real deal on santa when we were only 4 and 5, so it only went to reason that if there was no santa, then the gifts must be stashed somewhere nearby. it wasn't long before our parents wised up to our snooping and put a padlock on the basement cupboard where the goodies were being stored. that shut us down for a few years... until we moved into a new house that didn't come equipped with such a conveniently lockable storage space.

it didn't take us long to start up our snooping ways afresh when we moved and realized that the hiding options were limited. we figured that the most secure location in the house was probably our parents' bedroom, so we took a divide and conquer approach and it wasn't long before we hit pay dirt. we found stuff in the dresser drawers and a bonus batch of loot in the bottom of their closet.

we kept up the digging and sneaking each time my parents were expected to be out of the house for at least half an hour. it seemed like that left us enough of a buffer to check for any newly acquired goodies and still get out without being caught. we'd keep each other informed if we found gifts clearly intended for the other so that there would be no surprises come christmas morning. if we only had limited time, we'd hit the closet first because that's where mom kept the good stuff. the dresser was mostly the piddly stocking stuff like gum, cheapie toys and maybe some bags of rubber bands (we loved to shoot each other with them).

by this time we were probably 11 and 12 and we'd done the sneaky spying for at least 2 years, undiscovered. our parents had laid down the law at some point and made it perfectly clear that if they ever found out we'd been peeking at our presents, those very presents would be returned to the store and we would not get them.

we thought we were master spies. we thought we'd never get caught. we thought wrong.

i clearly remember being deep into the pile on mom's side of the closet, admiring the cute new clothes i'd be getting in just a few days. chris was digging through his own future belongings...when we heard a noise. we both froze for a moment before starting to frantically stuff things back into the spaces where we'd found them. we usually tried to be precise about putting them away, but this time it was more about speed so we wouldn't get caught with our heads tangled in mom's dresses and our fingers in the proverbial cookie jar.

we weren't fast enough. in less time than we'd have dreamed possible, mom had made it up the stairs and into her bedroom and caught us in the act of spying. there was no way to deny it. the evidence was plain as day for all of us to see. and i've got to give my mom credit for thinking on her feet because she separated us right away and gave us paper and pens and told us to write down everything we'd found. since we'd made sure to keep each other informed about every scrap we came across, we couldn't plead ignorance about anything, even if we hadn't laid eyes on it ourselves. and since we were separated and didn't know what the other would write, we had to put it all down there, on paper, to damn ourselves or risk even further punishment for trying to lie by omission. HO-LY CRAP!

she compared our lists and consulted with dad; all the while we tried to hide away where we wouldn't be seen and might possibly be forgotten about altogether rather than face the dire consequences that we knew were coming our way. i don't remember any yelling, just that eery silence that should never exist in a happy home with 4 lively kids. silence...

it seemed like it would never end. we whispered together about whether or not they'd actually go through with their threats. they were usually pretty solid about sticking to what they'd said, but in this case, surely they wouldn't take away our whole christmas! surely they loved us enough to have pity on our souls. if there was any love in the world, they would have to change their minds and let us have all those beautiful presents in their sullied stash.

a couple days later, it was christmas eve. it was a saturday. dad didn't have to go to work that day, so it was decided that it was time for the presents to all be returned. my dad and brother drove around town and took back all the gifts that we'd thought we would be getting. i stayed home and helped mom cook and bake the festive food. i wasn't mad at my parents because in my heart, i knew that i'd broken the rules. i knew that i wasn't exempt from the rules and that there were repercussions for my actions. i was sad, but i'd learned a valuable lesson that i knew would stick with me for my whole life. if mom and dad said it, i could be darn sure they meant business, even in the things that hurt them too.

the next day, the space under the tree was pretty sparse. mostly just gifts for my little sisters and the ones that chris and i were giving to the family. we didn't wake up at 3am ready to pounce on our stockings. we got some sleep for a change and we woke up calm rather than hyper. we actually remembered the true meaning of christmas for once because we weren't distracted by all the presents we hoped for or got.

as it turned out, we got a few little stocking things each. they must have been hidden somewhere else where we hadn't discovered them yet. i got the fake nails that i'd been dreaming of. i'd always had crappy nails and wanted to have long, luxurious nails to tap constantly on any hard surface, but my parents had never thought i was old enough for them. this was my lucky fingernail year. and i also got the jean jacket from the gap that i'd been coveting for so many months. it was one of the things that i'd been so excited to find in the closet and was heart sick knowing it was going back to the gap to be owned by some other girl who'd be cooler than me.

i was shocked and amazed to find this most precious item wrapped up under the tree because i was sure it went back to the mall with everything else. my brother also got his most desired item. my parents told us that even though we'd broken the rules and we didn't deserve to receive these gifts, they were having mercy on us. like Jesus had mercy on the world by dying on the cross for all of us who didn't deserve his love and forgiveness.

that's a lesson that i'll never forget.

women behaving oddly

i've been inspired by the post from a few days ago where there were people standing on toilets.  we thought it might be fun to work up some opportunities where we could get my mom, brooke and myself into some pics together for some three generational charm. but simply smiling for a camera in front of a picturesque backdrop isn't enough for us. oh no, we can't be that vanilla. when the wackiness is planned ahead of time, very strange things can occur.

we're the red jacket club. our motto is "red... or dead."

where i belong

do you ever hang out with your family members and suddenly feel like you really belong? they say or do something and it just confirms that you belong to each other, peas in a pod, wackies in the quack shack. i get to see way more of my parents now than i have in years and it continues to amuse me how we just fit together.

when my dad suddenly takes a big, deep breath and then lets it out in a huge sigh and it's as if his spine just evaporated because suddenly his posture goes straight in the crapper and his chin is resting on his chest - that makes me love him even more because i have my own similar version of detoxing out the day and letting myself melt to the point where it's visible to bystanders.

when my mom is watching the video where the "double dream hands" guy is teaching some really hokey choreography and she suddenly starts trying to do the moves, i see myself in her. there she is, jumping around, spastically kicking her legs and waving her arms around while laughing herself silly, and i know that i belong because that's exactly how badly i'd do it too if i'd gotten the wild urge to participate.

we went to see a matinee a few days ago and because we all seem to suffer from SBS (shrinking bladder syndrome) we stopped in the bathroom before finding seats. we were the only ones in there and it was a big bathroom, so it was entertaining to make funny noises to test out the accoustics. we also noticed a long line of open stalls which looked interesting because you don't usually get to observe that many toilets in a row. of course i had to take a picture because you never know when a blog post might need a picture of toilets.

but that wasn't enough for us. nope. we needed to push it a little further, so we shucked our coats off onto a bench and my mom and brooke scampered into a couple stalls while i snapped pictures.

i'm only sorry there was no one else around to take the pic so i could have been standing on that toilet on the other side of my mom. because i think that's where i belong.

the silly chair

when you're a kid and you have siblings close to your age, you find things to do to keep yourselves amused. you make up games and songs and stupid stuff to do when you're on long trips or when your toys get old or you're grounded at the same time.

my brother and i are only 17 months apart and we did a lot of that while we were growing up. he was kind of my hero when i was really little and there were also moments when he seemed like my nemesis. we got along better than most kids our age by the time we made it to high school & we shared a lot of the same friends.

at some point, a couple years after my family adopted our sisters, chris (my brother. and yes, also my husband's name) started playing a goofy little game with the little sisters. he'd pick them up and swing them around a little bit and call it the silly chair. it was called the silly chair because they were facing away from him and his hands were under their knees so that when they were scooped up in the air, they were sort of in an awkward sitting position. the little girls thought this was great fun & would beg for turns doing the silly chair. he'd swoop them around, making swooshing, flying sounds to make them giggle.

one day he decided to see if he could put me in the silly chair and swirl me around like the little kids. i was about 14 at the time & certainly not a little girl to be easily scooped or swung about. but he was pretty strong and he did manage to get me up in the air, though he swung me around less vigorously than he did the 3 year old.

he thought it was funny to do that every once in a while, probably because i yelled a lot, but couldn't really do anything to escape that wouldn't also hurt me in the process. so one day his girlfriend and my boyfriend were over at the house and he decided that it would be entertaining to scoop me up into a silly chair & give me a great shake around the room. i was screaming & flailing my arms. i couldn't really move my legs much other than some stupid little kicks which hurt me more than chris, so i just started laughing.

i drew a picture, in case you couldn't picture it.
take special note of his mullet and my perm.

our friends were watching and laughing which only encouraged him even more & served to embarrass me to no end. that made me laugh even harder, causing pressure on my bladder, which of course, ended with me wetting my pants. but chris didn't know i had wet my pants. i was incapable of coherent speech by that point and our friends were laughing hysterically and pointing at the spreading wet stain on my light gray stretch pants. chris thought they were thoroughly enjoying his great show of strength and comedy, not having any idea that whole thing had just gone to a whole new level of mortification for me.


eventually i got too heavy & squirmy for him so he plunked me down on the floor, from where i scrambled up like a scalded cat & hauled it out of the room as fast as my wet legs could carry me.

to this day, i can't see gray stretch pants or think of that boy without my face turning a little bit red & splotchy. and we never played silly chair again.

living the island life

last week i went on vacation with my family to a little island a few hours from here called kiawah. it's close to charleston, sc. chris couldn't go cuz he was busy being a good employee, but i had a blast with my family. my 3 siblings were there along with all three of brooke's cousins on my side of the family. with all of our schedules being super busy and us living in different states, it's rare that we get to all hang out for more than just a few hours at christmas some years. my parents rented a huge, gorgeous house for the week, including a nice in-ground pool out back & a yard that dropped into a lagoon.




i felt like we were spending a week inside the lifestyles of the rich & the famous, only we were driving a 12 passenger van rather than a rolls royce.

one of the most exciting parts of the trip was all the alligators that live on the island. and there aren't any fences, just open spaces with marshes, swamps, lagoons and ponds where the gators are free to roam about as they wish. there aren't any restaurants or shops on the island, and you can't get in without overnight accommodations, so if you're there, it's probably mainly to go to the beach or lay around in your big ritzy house. the main mode of transportation is bike, so we rode our bikes everywhere, including into the ocean on the beach.

on our first morning i stopped to take this picture and moments after that, i resumed my little ride along the path that went right between 2 lagoons. as i was passing through, i saw a line of bubbles approaching the shore only a few feet away from me. brooke was ahead & my mom was behind me when suddenly there was a huge growling roar coming from the water right where i'd just seen the bubbles. the roar came three times as we zoomed along the path & raced for home & since there was no place for machinery or other large things that could have made the noise, we could only conclude that it was a gator growing at us for getting too close to its space. it was pretty intense.


we saw several swimming through waterways and under bridges we were standing on & i was able to get a couple decent pictures. thankfully we didn't have any bad encounters with the gators, even riding through alligator alley beside our house every day.





we also had some pretty fun encounters with crabs. there were lots of different types of crabs to watch & play with, the biggest being a horseshoe crab. my brother was the crab harasser & he kept chasing & catching lives ones so we could get good looks at them. the kids spent about an hour with one horseshoe crab giving it sand massages, singing it songs & rolling it over to watch how it's stomach muscles flapped around when it moved.

the beach was huge and clean and mostly empty. there were tons of things to see and collect and examine. the waves weren't too rough and no one got too hurt. all in all, it was about a perfect vacation.

it was a little bit sad to come home and get back to real life after a wonderful week soaking up sun, laughing with kids, riding bikes down interestingly murky paths, and eating wonderful food. but at least i can look back at my pictures and remember it all with a smile.