Top of Turkey Mountain

What are you thankful for?  Why of course family, friends, Jesus, the cross, health, stabilty...But what about the other side of the coin?  As I reflect on my life journey, I do not regret the poor decisions I have made, the heartache, the trials, the other side of the coin.  I am a whole, complete person that has traveled roads that I know were not designed for me in a perfect world but I live in this world.  A world of mistakes, pain and sin.  As a parent I want to save my children from anything painful.  Yet I know that through fire comes character, strength and faith.  I could not dream of a better life, better family, husband, children than I am blessed with today.  All this brings me back to being thankful for lessons learned, the heartache, the trails and the rocks in my road of life. I live by the motto: Put it in 4 Wheel drive and keep going!  See you at the top.

Sisterly Love

Seriously, I have a pretty amazing husband. He can fix practically anything. Even if he doesn't know how he will try. He repaired the sprayer at the top of the dishwasher last year. He has replaced both top and bottom burners in the oven. After much tinkering on the 11 year old lawn mower he did give in and buy a new one. Now he is wondering why he didn't do that 3 years ago! Sometimes you do not realize something has ended its useful life until you get a new one.


That same dishwasher he worked on last year is at it again. Mind you this thing is not even 4 years old. We bought as part of our kitchen remodel before Bradford's 1st birthday party. Remember that insanity I embarked on 2 weeks prior to the party? This would also be the dishwasher that Brandon picked. I wanted the Bosch and he was pushing for the Kitchen Aid. When we debated the two he won just like the washer/dryer where he was gunning for the Maytag. He tends to argue "performance/durability" better than I argue "eye appeal/brand loyalty"!

Back to the dishwasher that has given us more problems in 4 years than the old one gave us in 7+, it went out Friday night. Completely. After googling possible culprits, we quickly determined this was beyond our pay scale. Come Monday we are calling a repair guy or going to Lowes for that Bosch.

Meanwhile, the whole point of this blog is talk about my weekend full of hand washing the dishes. I did not grow up with an automatic dishwasher. Neither of my parents did either nor did my grandparents have one at their homes. When you get a handful of competitive sisters together to wash dishes EVERY night you can always bet on some kitchen drama. I mean there are rules to dish washing! First of all it's a given it has to be done every night. So the person that gets in there first to run the dish water gets to be the "Washer". While on the surface this may like look the lesser of the jobs, believe me it's the better. The "Rinser" has to rinse and dry and put away! How do you like them apples? Although there is one trump card Rinser has. That is you can send anything back to the wash sink claiming it is not clean enough. (Careful to not abuse this or Mom does get called) As a Washer who takes much pride it this job nothing will infuriate you more. To which the competiveness may lead to some cattiness which then could cause a little too much soap to be left on the dishes as they are passed to the rinse sink. In case you are unaware of dishwashing protocol please note: there is also a proper order in which dishes must be washed. Glasses, plastic ware, bowls, plates, silverware, knives, cooking utensils and THEN pans.

Poor Brandon. Even after 14 years around my family he still has more to learn. The one thing he did instinctively know was to claim himself "Washer" and a little too fast for my taste. After the first few items hit my rinse water with way too much soap I got my own dishcloth and politely took the dishes from him and squeezed clean water over them into his sink before I allowed them into my near perfect, clean and clear water. I think I almost tasted blood inside my mouth as I pushed my big sister voice deep down and refrained from enlightening him on his erroneous washing ways. I mean really, silverware first?

I can say it was about 3/4 of the way thru the whole experience before I passed my first dish back because there was still something on it. I turned around as I actually did laugh to myself. I know it was an evil big sister smile on my face!
Later in day he asked, "Did ya'll hand wash dishes all the time when you were growing up?"
Uhh yes!

Lesson Learned

A Mom


A Wife

Antiques Dealer

Child Psychologist

Restore an historic home

Make it on "This Old House"

Clothing Designer

Handbag Designer

Interior Designer

An Athlete

Real Estate Developer

Lawyer

Stock Broker

Yoga Instructor

Commercial Real Estate Broker

Author

Artist

Travel the country in an Airstream

Live on a Ranch--even though the country scares me...

The list goes on and on and on.... I always said I would be the kind of person that had many careers--I was NOT going to do just one thing! I can say I have been a raging success at this goal. I love what I do now. But there is always more to check off my bucket list. You see the things I choose to do are things I LOVE--not just jobs. Now I also have said many other crazy things in my life that thank God, I failed miserably. Life is a journey and a constant learning lesson. Some lessons are more painful than others, like...



1) You won’t always be there EVERY time your baby falls--literally or figuratively. You can’t kiss everything and make it all better every single time. There will be times that your kids will get hurt. And it WILL break your heart. Great thing is no one takes away your mommy-card.



2) You teach people how to treat you! I learned this one a long time ago thankfully. You allow or don’t allow for people to walk all over you. It's your choice. You learn to set boundaries and these boundaries are mostly in equal proportion to your own self-respect. Recently I have realized that we teach people how to treat us in EVERY relationship we have from childhood on.... I have been teaching my son this lesson with his little brother. If he wants his brother to respect his toys he has to teach him that. We have had our fair share of pushing and "MINE" goings on but ultimately do unto others as we would have them do unto us in really a GOLDEN RULE!



3) My all time hardest lesson in life is you will walk it till you learn it! Courtesy of an Oprah show in college, I heard a lady talk about women that always seem to gravitate towards the same type of guy. You hear them say "Every guy I date is always the same" when in reality you are the one that is the same. And until you learn the lesson God has for you, YES you will continue to make the same mistake over and over again. So listen up: no matter if it’s the same brand of guy wearing different jeans or the same type boss or same kind of friend, THE SAME SITUATION EVERYTIME rest assured you can kick it! It is not everyone else. It is YOU. So dig deep, figure out what you need to learn here and then you can move on with life and life more abundantly!! Trust me, life is full of lessons. We can learn them now and we get to learn new ones. Personally I would rather get to learn lots of life lessons instead of sticking too long on the same one.



As you can see above, I have lots of other things to accomplish in life too...

 

So here we are....

June 1996: Sitting by a camp fire looking up at thousands of stars in Yosemite National Park, I started thinking I could so fall in love with this guy!  Not sure if I was ready for that or not.  And honestly it was over a year and half before I ever spoke those words out loud. 
March 18, 1998: I will never forget these words, " You have made me the happiest person in the world.  And I want to spend the rest of my life making you happy!  I Love You.  Will you marry me?" 

So there we were, young, in love and completely confused about how to make one another happy.  What a path we had to travel.  But the journey has been amazing, surreal, an experience I would do all over again to learn the lesson and live this life.  When you learn to stop depending on another person to MAKE you happy, you find true unity.  Then you discover what two shall become one actually means.  Everything in my life has led me to this life we live.  And live to the fullest, we do!   We joke sometimes about Holy Cow, what if we had a baby in our 20's!  Let me tell you we had a lot of growing up to do but even more so we had a lot of getting to know one another to do.  The great thing is neither of us sees ourselves as a "Grown up" and we look forward every day to what else we need to learn...Looking forward to the next decade or two and what life has to teach us, together. 

                                                        Fall 2004