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Mommy and Me

Some things change...some things stay the same

My dear friend Katrina is the friend I've had the longest...since Kindergarten. She's the first friend whose house I hung out at...almost non-stop. Her parents would call us "space cadets" cuz we would "go into orbit" and find various things to occupy ourselves with inside and outside her house ALL DAY LONG!

This is the friend with whom I played barbies, house and learned to play monopoly for the first time. We would pretend her swingset was a jungle in which we would swing from branch to branch. "Don't let go or else the crocodiles in the swamp down below will eat you!" Or somedays it was a ship sailing on the high seas. There were countless nights I would spend the night and we'd be up giggling until we got in trouble. I can still remember the way the moon would shine through the sheer drapes at her window. I can still see the way Katrina would sleep...with the covers up around her ears cuz she was throughly convinced this would protect her from the boogyman.

We would also pretend that we were roommates in College who were dating and would eventually marry two guys who were also roommates. And most of this little scenario actually came true. We did become roommates at college in Utah (and yes, she still sleeps with those covers around her ears! Hee hee!) and one night we even went out on a double date with our then fiances (who were not roommates. I know, way to ruin the story!). I remember turning around in the passenger's seat and saying to Katrina, "Look! We used to pretend this very thing!" Imagination or did we already know our own destinies at 6 years of age? Maybe both...

Living far apart we have managed to keep in touch mostly once a year through Christmas cards, but recently I kept trying to remember a poem her mother had in a framed cross stitch hanging in their hallway in that house I spent most of my lower-grade years in. I could only remember the last couple lines and I wanted so desperately to remember the whole thing because it has had an impact on me ever since and with the birth of my 3rd child, now more than ever I feel the need to enjoy every second of Ari as a baby. It is so evident to me now how fast kids really grow.

So as we have tried to keep in better touch with one another she was able to give me the whole poem. She says she receits it to herself daily and now that I have it I will to. It comes in handy when your sink is full of dishes!

Cleaning and scrubing
can wait til tomorrow
For babies grow up
we've learned to our sorrow
So quiet down cobwebs
Dust go to sleep
I'm rocking my baby
and babies don't keep

Katrina says her mom, after all these years and several moves, still has it hanging in one of her hallways. I love that! That feeling of consistency in an ever-changing world...something from childhood that you find out is still the same today. It's like the prize that still comes in the Cracker Jack box. :)

Britten

I Wonder Where She Got Her Smile?

2 wide-mouth frogs!

Daddy's Little Angel

I love this picture. It was taken on Ari's blessing day. Kind of out of order with all the rest, but I found it and just had to post it. 

The Land of the Free?

Trooper and Kaiya wearing their Liberty Tax Service hats. Land of the Free? I think not! Taxes stink! Actually, we still get a considerable amount back every year, but the Tax Service fees can really bite the big one!

We took a little excursion to Wild Water Adventures last night to see the Star Spangled Review held there every year. We thought with it only being the 3rd of July it wouldn't be so crowded...heh heh. After walking over someones lost pair of chonies and sitting through an Elvis impersonator sing his 15th song and cracking jokes in between that would give Bob Saget a run for his money, I suddenly remembered why I never went to the Star Spangled Review FOR FREE when I worked at WWA for 4 years in row. Actually, last night didn't cost that much since the kids and I have season passes and if you come on a SSR night after 7pm, regular tickets are only $10. So Andy was only $10. But after the picnic dinner we brought, the snow cone, the cotton candy and the glowing thing-a-ma-jigs the kids had to have, it was no longer as cheap a night as I anticipated.

And even though the freaks, baring more skin than should be allowed, come out of the woodwork and flock to major theme parks around the holidays, and even though I watched my children like a mother bear to her cubs the whole night, I was still very touched by the music, lazers and bombs bursting in the air. It never fails... every firework show always gets me a little vaklempt when I think of this great country that we live in and the freedoms we enjoy. This time it was the country song "An American Child" that got me going. Partly because I know that our kids have it so good compared to other countries where you have, for instance, little girls being sold into prostitution by their own families or little boys taking up arms and killing entire villages. At least in America our children can hold on to their innocence a little longer and play all day and take piano lessons, go to soccer practice and become primadonna dancers by age 5. But another part of me was sad to think that I enjoyed so many more freedoms than my children ever will with regards to just being able to walk or ride my bike and explore town with my friends. These days with all the pedifiles living in our own neighborhoods no mother in her right mind would let her children, be they 6 or 16, out of her sight to go roaming the streets alone or with a few friends.

Is it really worse now or are we just more afraid? When do we start becoming slaves to our own fears and when will men stop becoming slaves to their passions for child pornography and the like?

As Satan's grasp takes hold of more and more lives, Freedom slowly dies...it is such a delicate thing. Satan smiles when our free agency is lost by the enslavement of bad choices. May we always make the right choices...to remain free.

Freedom... may we cherish it, fight for it and give thanks for it every day and never let is slip away from us.

And may we keep keep flocking to those annual firework shows that stir our hearts and souls and remind us of the great country we are a part of...where you can walk around in a bikini no matter what you weigh and show more than ANYONE wants to see, leave your wet, grass-stained underwear on the ground where everyone has to walk over them or fulfill your life-long dream and become an Elvis impersonator.

AND, last but not least, where you can watch your children's eyes light up with wonder at the sparkling, colorful, freedom-ringing fireworks in the sky and become overwhelmed with joy in your heart for your own little American Family.

Happy 4th everyone!

-Britten

Girls in Ribbons

Okay....I must say it's official...I make the best bows ever! If you have any requests, send them my way...

That Random Darth

He's always showing up unexpectedly. Ari looks like she's cracking up at him!

Playing House

Kaiya got this little stroller at Toys R Us for her birthday and said one day, "To heck with those babydolls, I got the real thing!" I turned around from the computer one morning and there was Ari all slouched over in the all-too-tiny stroller...she didn't seem to mind though.

Anyone recognize the shirt Kaiya has on? That's what you do with that part of your wardrobe from high school that is so out of style, but so nostalgic you just have to hang on to it. Makes great dress-up clothes!

-Britten

Trooper's Secret Message

I let Trooper play with some of my Star Wars Buddies the other day. After about an hour or so, and after he had left to go play with something else, I walked over and found this. I think he is trying to tell me something...