Wordful Wednesday ~ Where has the time gone?

Posted on May 15, 2012 by Jackie

Today my oldest daughter drove her first car home.

Today I smiled as she got out of her car and fondly remembered myself at the same age.

Today I wondered where the time has gone.

Where did this baby go?

Where did those chubby cheeks and baby smiles go?

How did we get to 16?

I look at this little face and wonder where the time has gone. I know that it didn’t just fly by while I was sleeping because I have so many wonderful memories, so many pictures, and so much love to have missed any of it.

My hope for her is that she knows how much I love her.

My hope is that she knows how incredibly proud I am of her and all that she has accomplished.

My hope is that every dream she has comes true.

But for all my love & pride in her I have fear.

I’m afraid of her growing up and not needing me anymore.

I’m afraid of her going away to college.

I’m afraid that I won’t be able to help her when she fails at something.

Look at her….

Isn’t she beautiful?

I think she is…. but the again I’m biased.

In my heart I know that all will work out perfectly, but sometimes it’s hard to not wish for more time with that chubby cheeked baby.

I see the boy

Posted on March 14, 2012 by Jackie

He’s growing up so quickly that I don’t know how the time has passed by me so quickly again (yes again… time flew by with the girls too). Where did my cuddly little baby go that was here yesterday and where did this little boy come from today?

I know that he’s growing up, learning new things, and changing every day but it wasn’t until the evening we were at the school for young readers group that it truly dawned on me. I sat there and watched him play with the other children, even the ones who were much older than him. He seemed to fit right in with the kids as they all ran around and played together…. even when they started rough housing. I’ll be honest… at first I was scared that he would get hurt but it became clear that he was all boy and that there was nothing to be worried about.

It was then that I fully realized that I’m a mom of a boy and that I don’t know what to do! I’ve spent the last 16 years as a mom to girls. There is such a huge difference in the way that boys and girls play… the things they do…. the things they like to play with. And here’s a confession… I don’t like playing outside and getting dirty. Not at all and it’s already evident that he loves playing outside and getting dirty doesn’t seem to bother him one bit. It looks like I’ll be stepping outside of my comfort zone this summer and learning to be the mom of a little boy.

It’s left me wondering what the future will bring and will I be able to live up to being the mom of a little boy. What I do know is that there is no need to worry about him having all sisters & no boys to play with because being a boy is totally ingrained no matter what we seem to do.

I see the boy that he is becoming so quickly. So happy, carefree, and willing to jump off of anything he can climb on to. I see a wonderful little boy who simply adores his sister, his grandparents, and most importantly….. tractors.

Today you are two

Posted on January 27, 2012 by Jackie

Today you are 2 Andrew.

Memories, milestones, and so much more has been achieved in the past year.

How do I summarize it all into one post, how do I explain all that you’ve done, all that you’ve accomplished? I don’t think that I can.

My little baby is quickly turning into a little boy.

Every day he learns something new and changes in a little ways.

Every day his smile and laughter warms my heart.

He makes everyone laugh, even his sisters who I know adore him greatly.

He’s a little sponge and seem to pick up some of the silliest things from them as well.

He is full of light and love and happiness.

As we look ahead to the next year what new thing will you learn?

What new things will you teach us?

One thing that I’m sure of is that you are a true joy to us all and we love you more than you know.

Happy Birthday, Andrew.

Wordless Wednesday ~ Fall Fun Revisited

Posted on January 10, 2012 by Jackie

Fall is my favorite time of year and one of the things that we do together as a family is go to Crossroads Village a couple of times during the year. At Halloween they decorate the entire village and have trick or treating for young and old alike…. dressed up or not! This year it happened to be over 80 degrees that day so the costumes we had picked out just weren’t going to work! We improvised though!

The maze was fun for the kids even if you could see over the top of the walls! Although I’m not sure what’s up with that look she was giving me.

As you can see she was excited for lunch!

I’m hoping that she doesn’t visit my blog all that often or else she is going to be pissed at me for posting this picture for the world to see. Although… better here than Facebook, right? And she refused to smile nice anyway.

He had so much fun running through the maze over… and over… and over again. If there wasn’t a way out I bet that we could have left him there for the rest of the afternoon to play!

Of course the highlight of the trip is riding the old steam locomotive! This train is an original that has been fully restored and is run several times a day taking riders for a 40 minute journey through Crossroads Village, past Mott Lake and by the county fairgrounds. The entire ride is narrated and complete with music as well as decorations along the way for the holiday and well worth the trip to Crossroads!

Okay…. so much for wordless, huh? Good thing that I’m linking up with Seven Clown Circus and Parenting by Dummies for WordFUL Wednesday!

The year in pictures

Posted on December 29, 2011 by Jackie

While going through my reader the other day (Yes, I do go through it on occasion) I happened upon a post from Ashley from My Front Porch Swing and then the same one from Jessica over at Four Plus an Angel and decided to play along! I mean 12 pictures or my favorite posts from the year… how much easier can it get?

January brought Andrew’s first birthday! It seems so long ago but it was only a year…. and what a difference a year makes.

February brings Valentine’s Day… need I say more?

March and my little girl turned 9 and brought Flat Lauren to the party!

April at my parents house for Easter and the girls were on a scavenger hunt that their grandma puts together every year for them.

May! And my first ever blogging conference! I made the trip…. all2 hrous of it to Holland Michigan for Gleek Retreat where I met some incredible women all from Michigan! That’s me along with Elena from Mommy’s in Timeout and Katie from Sluiter Nation!

In June all three of my girls took part in one of the parades that take place every year during the Curwood Festival. I was a proud mama watching all of them march!

The heat of July is only intensified by sitting by the ball field while you watch your kids play for what seems like hours on end.

August brought another conference for me and this time it was Bloggy Bootcamp. If you ever have a chance to go to one of these GO! Seriously it was incredible! Here I am with so great friends from Michigan! Dutch Being Me, Mommy is in Time Out, Daily Dribbles, and Buried with Children.

First day of school for September of course.

October was warm… on occasion and the day we carved pumpkins the kids all made their way outside and spent the afternoon playing together and carving pumpkins.

Every year in November the high school marching band puts on one final performance of the marching season indoors. Yes, indoors! Where it’s warm & we can enjoy it. It is truly one of the best events during the year.

And that brings us to December. And with it being the holidays and all I bet you’re tired of seeing all those happy holiday type pictures so instead of that I’ve decided to grace you with the Pimp of Greek Town. Now, I have no idea what his name is or if he really is a pimp but I HAD to take a picture of this. We took a trip to Detroit for my daughter’s 16th birthday and I have to say that this was probably the highlight of the day!

So there you have it folks…12 pictures from the past year. I do have to say that I loved going through all the pictures from the year and seeing how the kids have changed and grown, the places we’ve been, and all the fun we had. Picking just one picture for each month was hard because I wanted to share so much more with you all.

How was your year? Have you had time to sit and look back at all your pictures yet?

One to remember

Posted on December 8, 2011 by Jackie

Every year I hope to get one perfect picture of my kids together during the holidays. It’s the one time of the year that I can almost guarantee that they’ll all be dressed up and some what coordinating…. Yes, I know I can try other times of the year but I have teens so that should be enough explanation, ok?

Anyway, this past weekend we had our first holiday gathering and I brought my camera along and snapped pictures here and there and when the kids were standing near each other I took that opportunity to take a couple of them together.

Is this the one to remember? Nope. It was missing their brother who is in a constant state of motion unless he is asleep.

Oh look!! Two of them are smiling nicely! Andrew obviously didn’t want his picture taken and I think Natalie was talking to someone near me. So, this one isn’t the one to remember.

After the last picture I gave up. One day I will but until then I have all these cute and silly pictures of my kids that remind me of exactly who they are. They sweet, smart, fun loving, honest, and most all … they’re mine. I love them all more than they’ll ever know. So while I may never get that one perfect picture the ones I have are all ones to remember.

I am linking up with Allison and Galit for some great fun and fond memories that we’ve all captured. It took me all week to get to it but I finally did it!

Mom Fail?

Posted on October 12, 2011 by Jackie

Lately conversations with my oldest have been strained…. tense… or whatever you want to call it. But today I feel like today was a total mom fail (again).

My beautiful Cait

My oldest, Caitlin, is an incredibly smart, talented, and beautiful child. And I’m not just saying this because I am her mom… it’s proven by the grades she gets (her current GPA is a 4.50), the awards she has gotten for band & choir competitions, and through conversations with teachers. She’s well behaved, doesn’t get into trouble at home or at school and does what she’s supposed to. Almost sounds like the perfect child, right?

This is what’s bothering me. She is very focused, very driven, and wants to excel academically. That’s good. But it seems to come at the expense of everything else. And by everything I mean that she doesn’t go out with her friends ever, she doesn’t go to school events (like the homecoming dance), she doesn’t take part in all the fun things that make high school a little more enjoyable and make it more than just education.

I feel that one day she is going to look back at her time in high school and regret not having enjoyed the time she had. The time when responsibility was next to nothing, the time when you can just have fun with friends.

Then I learned something. Something that shouldn’t really shock me since it happened when I was in school. Drinking… lots and lots of underage drinking.

She told me that all kids do is go out and party and drink. They’ve come to band camp practices still drunk or hung over this summer. Really? Is this all there is to do around here? What the hell!

I’ve been trying to push her to do things with her friends but she pushes back and doesn’t do anything with them. I get the normal excuses… there’s nothing to do, what are we supposed to do, and so on.

I thought about it for a minute and there isn’t a lot to do around here where I live for teens but you can still make your own fun. Go to the movies, rent a movie, hang out at each others houses, or go to the park and play (Yes, teens can play at the park too!). All of these ideas were scoffed at.

She’ll go to the movies with her boyfriend or watch movies at his house or ours. But other than that she is at home with us.

She’s to grown up. Having fun & being silly doesn’t seem to be part of who she is anymore.

This is where the mom fail part comes in. Is this my fault? Did I push to hard for her to do well in school when she was younger? Did I not give her enough opportunity to have fun, play, and do things with friends?

The answer is I simply don’t know.

What I do know is that I feel bad for pushing her to do things with friends. I want her to know that I love her and want the best for her but also that she needs to have fun, enjoy life, enjoy school, enjoy friends, and everything that goes along with that. I want her to do well in school and life after school. But most of all I don’t want her to look back with any sort of regret. I don’t want her to miss out on anything.

Do I let it go or do I try to get her to do things with her friends? I don’t know anymore.

Kitchen Dance Party

Posted on May 18, 2011 by Jackie

I was going to grace you all with the traditional Wordless Wednesday post full of pictures but I decided to do something different instead and all of my pictures are still on my camera (I keep meaning to transfer them). Besides Natalie was “looking at pictures” on my laptop last night so I’m sure that there are a ton of new pictures in Photo Booth for me to browse through and share with you all another time.

It’s a rare occurrence when all four of my kids are getting along and having fun together. Well one of those rare moments happened the other day after dinner in the kitchen (they were supposed to be doing the dishes). I had to come out and see what was going on… it was a kitchen dance party! I sat down and pretended to be doing something on my phone and managed to get a video of this rare moment.

I think that they had fun… What do you think?

She’s growing up

Posted on March 28, 2011 by Jackie

The first years pass so quickly and you find yourself saying we’ll do this and that and suddenly you feel like you’ve lost a few years and haven’t done any of those things.

Today my youngest daughter is 9! There are times I look at her and wonder where those precious years have gone and if I’ve missed something special. I know that I haven’t though.

My happy 2 yr old

Today she is a bright, lovable, and fun little girl. I don’t know if I could love her anymore than the day I had her.

She's also silly!

My hope is that she grows up knowing how much we all love and adore her.

My hope is that nobody ever tells her that she can’t do something she really wants to try.

My hope is that she is always happy.

My hope is that she enjoys her childhood to the fullest extent.

My hope is that her life is always filled with friends and family who love her.

At Meijer Gardens

She’s a beautiful little girl and I love her dearly! Happy birthday!

A Snack with Grandpa

Posted on March 15, 2011 by Jackie

Plums with some glaucous coating visible

Image via Wikipedia

Write about your favorite fresh fruit or vegetable. Share a memory of when you first tasted it, where it came from, when you last had it, a favorite way to prepare it, and such.

I never had a plum until I stayed at my grandparents house one summer. They looked weird and I thought that they would be really gross…. of course this thought was that of a small child.

My grandpa always ate plums and was able to finally get me to try one while I was there.

He handed me the plum was heavy in my hand and a deep purple, almost black color with a sheen to it’s skin. It took me some time before I finally decided to bite into it because I was so sure that I would not like it. It sort of reminded me of olives which I hated.

I gave in. My teeth sunk into it with a small snap of the skin and then into the soft flesh of the plum. It was ripe. And to my surprise very delicious.

The juices of it burst with sweetness as they dripped down my chin with each bite. I was surprised how much I liked it and it was nothing like what I had expected.

To this day I love fresh plums especially the dark purple ones and always make it a point to get some when I find them at the store. I will leave them on the counter to fully ripen before I eat them otherwise the flavor just isn’t the same. I love the sweet, juiciness of them. There is nothing that compares to it… well maybe a ripe white flesh nectarine!

I would like to try some recipes with plums, crisps, tarts, and things like that. Or even grilled… it seems that the Food Network shows grill lots of various fruit with success!

My grandpa was right, plums are good.

With Just a Bit of Magic

Category Archives: Childhood