All You Need is Love

First thing that comes to mind: Beatles. 
http://allspirit.co.uk/allyouneed.html
I have discovered why this song was written.  Someone went shopping for a Valentines Day card and after sorting through all the sappy, cheesy, mushy cards that were out there, they still couldn't find anything that said what they wanted to say.
It sounds like I am down on Valentines Day or Love for that matter. Nope. I have a great man as my husband that bought me flowers for Valentines Day. Never mind that, he is great all year round. See, I could sing his praises for all he does, dishes, goes to work for the family, brushes kids teeth (never mind cleaning kids butts!), and numerous other things that make me appreciate him.  He also loves me, and I know it without the flowers.  So no I am not down on love or this holiday, I don't mind having a day set aside for love.  I just didn't find a card that said what I would want to say to my husband.
So I made my own. It says LOVE on the outside and "All you need is love" on the inside. Really that is all I need to say to him.  I appreciate a lot of things about him, I like a lot of the things he does, I am happy that we have a past, present and future together. Everything those cards were trying to say boils down to LOVE.
I LOVE MY HUSBAND! It's all I need.
Happy Valentines Day!

Little Things

I just received the most exuberant hug from Zorryn.  He is at the age when teeth start to loosen and fall out.  Some of his friends at school have lost a few. My kids are slow with their teeth. They don't get them until later on the timeline of teething, and it appears that they will loose teeth a bit later as well.  However, he came bounding up to me excited with the possibilities of a loose tooth.  Sure enough it looks like one is on the wiggle!  The excitement that resulted from this information resulted in the hug I received. Tight squeeze, around the neck, with a little bit up jumping involved.  Makes me smile, and I don't want to forget that feeling. EVER.

Sleep in peace

Psalm 4:8
In peace I will lie down and sleep, for you alone, LORD, make me dwell in safety.

In a strange way, one of my favorite times to be a mom is when my kids have a bad dream.  I am not happy for them that they are scared, I am concerned about why and how come the dream came about. BUT, I love that my presence helps comfort them and that they want to snuggle close to me. I love that. Makes me feel like I am doing something right if they turn to me when they have troubles.  

Last night Ryker had a bad dream. I am pretty sure it came from a movie Zorryn was watching (some Nutcracker thing that had scary rats).  He woke up crying, usually that means he lost NUK or Blue Guy, but giving him those did not calm him down last night. I climbed in bed beside him and snuggled with him, he calmed down. After a few minutes I tried to leave, but he started to cry as soon as I moved away.   I cuddled again and tried to leave again after a few minutes.  Again he was upset.  I snuggled up to him again and prayed.  

 I grew up knowing I had a guardian angel with me. I sang "Angels are watching over me" and "Jesus sends the Angels", in Sabbath School as a kid. I have been teaching my kids these things.  When Zorryn would have bad dreams we would cuddle, sing those songs and pray.  Of course I have carried that over to Ryker.  When they have bad dreams, I will pray that God send their Guardian Angel close to protect them and that Jesus would take the bad thoughts from their mind and fill it with His peace and rest.  I find that this has a 100% effect and does indeed work.  Usually within a couple minutes after I am done praying and finish with a little extra cuddle, the child is back asleep.  It worked with Ryker last night.  As soon as I was finished the prayer, he was sleeping.

I am glad that my children need me.  I am glad my presence is helpful.  I am very glad that Jesus is the ultimate peace for them and does more for them than I ever can!

Pure Joy!

Last night Zorryn's school hosted a family reading/ math night.  Troy and I had fun going to school with our son, eating supper there, reading books on the gym floor and visiting his classroom.  It gave us insight to what his day looks like.  In the classroom, the teacher gave us a quick look at what the morning activities are.  One of them is posting the weather for the day. The teacher has colored coded the thermometer and has corresponding colored boxes to place a tally mark in the box to record the days temperature.  Zorryn kept talking about "today is a purple day or a white day or green". I had no idea what he was talking about, now I do! For January we have had a record number of purple days (wonderfully warm for ND!).

The best part of the night was the drawing for the door prizes. Zorryn, like any child, really wanted to win something.  We were talking him through the drawing and telling him "sometimes we win, sometimes we don't, we have to be happy for whoever wins" etc.  His name was the last name that was called!!! From the back of the gym he goes skip - hopping, literaly clicking his heels! When he gets to the front he stops, does a Charlie Chaplin heel click and gets his gift bag of book.  I was laughing as I was watching all this, so great! But really the joy he emulated by having his name called was wonderful to see. It makes me smile thinking about it now. 
The joy a child freely shows when something pleases them is wonderful.  One of the best things on earth really. As we grow we don't show our pure joy as freely or frequently.  I know someday Zorryn will have things in life that are not as joyful. I just hope that I can provide him with the knowledge and skills to deal with those disappointments.  BUT I also want to foster the pure joy moments, in those I also receive joy.

Tears on a new pair of pants

 I think there is a reason some words are homographs, like the tears, and tears.  Often the tears we have are from tears of the heart.  In this case, the tears are from missing my mother.
My mom has been gone for 2.5 years. She died from a ATV accident on the farm.The ATV rolled and it crushed her liver. She died in the hospital after they were unable to stop the bleeding. I miss her more than words can say. Time doesn't heal but time does allow less crushing grief.  Most days I think of her at some point.  I don't cry every day, but some time the events from the day will bring the tears on. Usually the events these events are really a small event. Yes, I miss her on birthdays and holidays, I miss her for "important" things. I cried hysterically when I gave birth to my daughter, so much that the Dr. asked if I was okay. My mom will never meet Cadence Louise (my mom's name was Louise), on this earth. What often brings on the tears are the seemingly minute day to day events.  Those moments are what make me miss her the most.
A couple years ago, when I turned 30, I froze corn on my birthday. I cried that day, not because I missed my mom on my 30th birthday, but because I couldn't call her and tell her I had froze over 100 cups of corn. I know how to do this because she taught me.
Yesterday I cried over a pair of pants.  My oldest son, Zorryn, has recently hit a growth spurt. He needs new pants, but he is still skinny. All the pants I can buy that are longer, are also too large in the waist and just fall down.  He doesn't want to wear jeans, which have the adjustable waist, but only wants "comfy pants".  To solve this problem I resorted to a skill that I haven't used since high school. I am sewing him pants.  I took home-ec in high school so the skills have been learned and I still sew quilts, but I have not sewn clothing in many years.  The vital piece of information in this post, is that my mother was an excellent sew-er. She taught home - ec and taught me how to sew. Growing up, many of my own cloths were lovingly made by my mother. My graduation dress from Grade 12 was made by her. 
As I started this project for my son, I was wishing I could call my mom. Ask her so many questions; would this pattern work for this fabric? How do you finish the edge? Can I make them a small but with the length of a medium? AND the most important question; If what I make doesn't turn out, could you make some pants for your grandson? Of course I could not ask these questions and no pants would be showing up in the mail. I HAD TO DO THIS AND SUCCEED!
Long story short, I pinned, I cut, I sewed, I tried them on the boy, he liked them and wore them to school today. He was happy and proud of me. I was sad and proud of me.  Now that the project was finished and I had succeeded, I wanted to call my mom and hear her say "good job, I knew you could do it. Aren't you glad I made you learn how to sew".   And so, in a round about way, my son got a pair of pants from his grandmother, and because of that there were tears on the new pair of pants.

The jingle of two generations

When I was a baby I was given a Happy Apple toy.  Fisher Price still makes them too! I think the story goes that I was sick and in the hospital. My brother, Kelly,  and my dad were coming in to see me and stopped at the hardware store and Kelly picked out this apple to bring to me.  I think I was 18 months or something like that.I must have liked it because the eye has been partially scraped off by my teeth and the stem of the apple is about half of what it was because I did chew it off!
It also survived a house fire! My mom would sort our toys into bins and would store some of them in the outside shed, rotating the boxes so we would get a new batch of toys every so often and not get bored with the toys and start fighting with each other. In 1990 our trailer house burned down.  Many things were lost but no one was hurt. Things can be replaced, people can't.  We did have some things that were saved, all the photo albums, some family heirlooms that my dad grabbed for my mom, my moms mending basket (the albums we grabbed because of our fire plan, everything else was random). We also had the toys and items stored in the shed.  This apple was out there, probably because all of us were too old to play with it anymore.
 
When I had my own kids it was given back to me so my own kids could play with it.  Yes, this apple is at least 30 years old, depending on how old I was when I first received it! Inside the apple it has one of those Chinese hand exercise balls that rings a pleasant note when it is rolled. My two boys didn't really play with it as babies, but my daughter has taken to playing with it (smile)! Something little and silly, but it gives me a warm fuzzy feeling to see her playing with something that was mine.  I hear the jingle as she plays with it and smile when I hear her talking to the face of the apple. It also makes me dream "maybe someday we (my daughter and I) will pass the Happy Apple onto her children and continue the generational jingle.

Cadence with the Happy Apple, see my teeth marks on the eye!