Sorry, Mrs. Stark!

I recently found my personal and school journals from the year I was seven.  The personal one is a blog entry (or nine) for another time.  My childhood was nutso and the journal was quite enlightening.  So was the school journal.  I happened to read it cover to cover on a day when homeschooling was wearing on me and the kids both, and I wondered if they were the most unmotivated students ever, and if I was the most exasperated teacher of all time.

Not so.  I would like to introduce you to seven year old, second grade me: Tory.  And my long-suffering teacher, Mrs. Stark (who I loved SO much).

So here it is.  My mea culpa.  I open myself up for flogging and offer forgiveness, patience and grace to my children.  They come by it honestly.

The task was to write an answer to a question she would write on the board, or a story based on a prompt.  There were rules about how much you had to write.  I apparently didn't know the rules or didn't care, because my writing was just THAT GOOD, a little went a long way.

I was asked to list my favorite hobbies.  After she had the nerve to point out that 'playing smell' is not a hobby, I hastily scribbled an & sign in between the two.  Because 'smell' is a legit pastime.

What am I thankful for? Not nearly enough, obviously.

I see the underlined 'new' here and the exclamation point and I think, "I probably drove Mrs. Stark to drinking."

Sometimes love just isn't enough. All of those songs were WRONG.

"Much more" seems to be a recurring theme.

See, here she tried to shame me into writing more.  It didn't work.

Sometimes You Just Know

"I knew, like you know about a good melon."  -When Harry Met Sally

Sometimes I don't know if I am doing what I am supposed to be doing. Sometimes this applies to the small things "Did I really want a wild cherry Slurpee or did I want Coke?" and sometimes it is bigger, like "Should I live in Texas or somewhere that isn't so hot?" I work hard to think it through, and make a mental list of pros and cons and whys and why-nots.

Today, Philip asked me what I wanted to be when I was growing up.  We had a long talk about it.  During the talk, I realized "These are the moments you know, and you realize THIS is what I am supposed to be doing.  And it doesn't take a lot of thought."

These moments sometimes happen once in a lifetime: "I know I want to marry this man."  "I know I want to be a Mom."  And then sometimes they happen once a year, once a month, three times a day, when we are reminded: "That's why I married him.  I knew I made a good choice."  or "I knew that being with my children is exactly what I am meant to do."

I posted the following on Facebook one day, another day when it was reaffirmed to me.  A day when in between the hustle and bustle of all we do, I had whispered a quick prayer, "Lord, please help me remember that You have called me and equipped me in these things I do." What came to me after is summed up here:

I love having my kids here with me. Some days it is really hard and I question my sanity but more often than not I am so glad we have made the choices we have and I know we are doing exactly what we should be doing, and I look at Gracie's little finger running below a line of text or see Philip curled up in a chair doing math, with his cheek resting on his fist,and I remember YES, this is beautiful. And it makes my heart smile.

Sometimes you have to stop thinking with your thinker, and Know with your Knower.

When You Give Your Kid A Voxer Account...

So, when John and I had upgrade abilities on our cell phone contract, he got an iPhone for the first time, but I was replacing my 3g.  So we cleared it off, removed the internet and other features the kids don't need, and gave Philip the old 3g iPhone for music and games.

We set him up with the Voxer app so he could text us and voice and picture message us.  I had no idea that out of that would come:

(This is the place where your bicep and forearm meet, all squished together...)

But I also got this.  :D

My kids are pretty great.