Mommy Day

Today is Mommy Day.

And I have a mommy. And she seriously rocks.

She let me come home this weekend :)

My mother has put up with my antics for 18 years and for whatever reason she still loves me. Mom has raised four kids and gets compliments that her children are so well behaved (but she knows we just fool everyone because at home we are not always well behaved).

When the Keeper and I were younger, our parents were a lot more strict with us than they are with The Mechanic and DP. I am the oldest, so I got to push boundaries and test limits before anyone else had a chance to break loose :)

You see, I came along after my parents were married for three years. My dad had just had back surgery before I was born, so he took care of me for the first few months of my life. I've heard that one time my mom came home from work and I was crying so she picked me up. But I wouldn't stop crying, so she handed me off to my father where my crying conspicuously ceased. She didn't think I liked her. But now she knows that's completely untrue.

I remember when we were little Mom and we'd get sick with the stomach flu, she would lay down a sheet in front of the TV, put her Barf Bucket next to us, and let us lay in the living room all day.

I remember when I was scared, or I'd had a bad dream Mom would let me crawl in bed with her. It was always a safe place to be. Mom was always a soft place to land when the world seemed like a hard to place to live.

During this last year of college, I started out not coming home very frequently. I wanted to assert my freedom and live life out from under my parents' thumbs. I made mistakes. I fell down. But I always know that even if I'm in a heap of trouble, my mom still loves me dearly. In the second semester I started coming home more regularly, and Mom would still always tell me she was glad I came home.

I make her laugh like none of the other kids do - although they ALL have their moments, trust me. Our life could be a sitcom with the kind of jokes my brothers and sister can crack at the perfect moments.

I love hearing my mom's voice. Sometime's I'll just call her because I want to hear her talk. She has one of those voices that can just calm you down no matter what's wrong. And she always has an opinion - even if she won't tell you what to do because you're big now and need to make your own decisions. She's always got a good bit of advice to hand down. She knows her strengths and her weaknesses and she will ALWAYS do her best. She leans on the Lord for everything and used to always say bedtime prayers with us every night.

Mom never tried to get by without diciplining us when we needed it - and let me tell you, sometimes we just needed it. When she was mad at us for disobeying, we knew. And we high tailed it out of there before we made it even worse. ;)

But throughout the years my mom has been one of my heros, she's someone I look up so much and I want to be the same kind of mom to my future kids that she was to me.

My Beautiful Momma