To Tell The Truth - Please Stand Up

Tuesday, May 31, 2011

Tradition, Honor and Remembrance

Yesterday Mr. Sunday the kids and I made our yearly pilgrimage an hour and a half away to my parents’ home town for the Memorial Day parade.

(That is not us or our kids.)

My mom went there when my grandparents adopted her at 12.

Memorial Day is a loaded Holliday.

My grandparents’ daughter, my aunt drowned in a swimming hole on Memorial Day weekend.

They adopted my mother and her sister soon after.

I remember sitting in my mother’s parent’s yard and watching my father’s father march in the parade with the other WWII vets.

There aren’t many left now.

I started taking my daughter down to watch the parade the year before my grandpa passed. He had moved down south many years before.

We go to catch a glimpse of small town life.

We go because it is our tradition.

We go to remember our history.

We go to honor those men and women who have sacrificed so much for their idea of the American dream.

We go so they know we care.

We go because their sacrifices are important.

Where The Heart is

Momma’s Happy Place

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Tecumseh, MI

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Blogger is acting nutty…still…grr.. I can’t publish. I can’t comment…

I swear I have been reading all of your blogs and had really great insightful and witty comments for all of you….but alas…to no avail…I have been defeated by Blogger. Fiddely-dee, tomorrow is another day. XOXO

I hope they fix it soon.

Oh, No! She Made the Pom-Pon Team!

After the first two years of having my daughter in school and in completive gymnastics, I began feeling a lot like a pimp, or some kind of wrapping paper and pie pusher. …really I did. I started feeling like all of my friends and “family” were avoiding me and my latest super-duper fundraising order form. And who could blame them, who needs a $20 pie or a $15 roll of wrapping paper anyway?

And honestly what does the school or organization get for all of that pushiness anyway? 5-10 percent?

(Now Little Caesars Pizza-kits that is a different story, altogether….we love those…if you are selling I am buying…well, I would be buying if I had any money)

I quit. When a fund raiser comes around I try to give a few dollars (which is highly confusing to the organizers who have no idea what to do with THAT) and I call it a day. Personally, I call it a win – win situation. They get their money and I get to look my friends in the eye. All good.

Which all brings us to today – I pushed my daughter to go back to the second day of High School Pom-Pom tryouts. She refused to go to the first set of tryouts. When her friends made the squad, she was disappointed that she hadn’t even tried.

Anyway miracle of miracle, they had an odd number or something and opened another Pom tryout for the incoming freshmen. So she put her hair in a pony and gave it a shot…. She came hope sobbing…. “I suck, I have no idea what they are doing. I don’t get it, the kick line is so complicated…I will never get it”…and on and on she went.

Being the stellar mom that I am, I said “honey you can’t be that bad. You have good dance experience from gymnastics. You have your momma’s rhythm, thank goodness, it is a wonder I married your dad anyway. …Poor CoCo…. You just have to go tomorrow and try again. I am sure everyone else is feels exactly the way you are tonight. Auntie D said that CanCan was even feeling a lot like you are, and she made it.”

“But MOM, it is expensive. Remember I had to quit gymnastics because we couldn’t afford it anymore?”

“It’s MUCH cheaper than gymnastics.”

“But it is EXPENSIVE!”

[Here then comes the part where mommy should really read the stuff they send home from school and not just sign it]

“I think I can come up with $150 for pay to play, for a school sport. We are not THAT poor”

“No, mom! It is a school club not a sport! You don’t understand!”

[Well of course I don’t, I’m a mom, and therefore I don’t understand anything , and this is me rolling my eyes and dismissing what she is saying.]

“You just go back and try again tomorrow, after that if you don’t want to do it, I won’t make you. But I think it would be good for you to be doing something. This year you have been out of the gym has been so tough on you I think you need something that you enjoy and that you can feel good about. You do your part and I’ll do mine…that always has been and always be the deal.”

She went back the second day and made it.

She was absolutely right. Pompom is not a school sport. Our districts one hundred and fifty dollar pay to play does not apply. It is $725.00 and $375.00 of it for camp is due yesterday and another $150 for camp uniforms is due in a couple of weeks.

I DO NOT FREAKING HAVE IT!

And I have no more rabbits left in my hat.

Can we all say, “Mommy should have let her give up? I should have let her flounder around in her fear of failure or successes or whatever?” I am never really sure which one it is with her. But no, I am just not built like that.

So if any of you happen to have a couple dollars you would like to donate to the cause of getting my oldest back off my computer, interested in …anything and into an activity where smiling is a requirement, she and I would be truly grateful. And I promise, I will not send you any wrapping paper.

After The Storm

After the initial night of hysterics, my oldest handled her consequences pretty well. Maybe she just needed to know we were going to hold her accountable? Since we are out $400 for a trip that no one took I also decided it was high time she started doing chores around here. I decided she could start loading and unloading the dishwasher and cleaning the bathroom. Mr. Sunday doesn’t “like” the way she does the dishes. I suppose he thinks that men are the only people who do things so poorly that you will never ask them to do it again. Unfortunately it’s just that they are only the ones who do not outgrow it with adolescence.

Now let me just show you what I am dealing with here. When I tell her she has to clean the bathroom she says, “It’s not like you care if it is clean or not. It is always a mess” the way only an almost 13 year old girl can. “Oh, I do care, I do clean it, and I think YOU should experience for yourself what it feels like to clean up after other people, just to have them muck it up within seconds!” I supervised, and stood over her the entire time she was cleaning with helpful instructions. And even when she is at her worst, she is hilarious, singing, “it’s a hard knock life”, while she worked, she still has no idea. No sooner than she finished scrubbing the (white) floor, did her two little sisters come trotting in fresh from their mud hole and hopped their muddy selves into the shower. I couldn’t have planned it any better, that is if I had. As her proud face fell into an expression of exasperation, all I could do is smile, shrug my shoulders and say, “and that is exactly how I have spent the last 12 years – welcome to my world.”

The girl has even asked me to watch old project runway episodes on hulu and do her hair just about every day since we dropped the hammer. Neither has happened in a very long time. Who knows maybe she was she was feeling a little too disconnected to fast. Maybe with limits comes the feeling security. I still don’t think she will be thanking me anytime soon. But I am grateful that we were apparently able to give her what she needed and certainly wasn’t about to ask for.

Can you imagine? “Hey, mom I am nervous about going out of town without you guys and I am not sure I like having so much freedom. You think you could just stick a little closer to me?” That’s not gonna happen but it would sure make the life of a parent much easier.

Sun, Fun and Ice Cream

I think we can add sunscreen to the list of things that break Amélie out in hives. Thankfully she has Mr. Sunday’s coloring, Miss CoCo is not so fortunate.

Grateful to see the sun at last, my little girls have been outside from sun up to sun down.

CoCo likes to make shadow hand puppets, she is pretty clever.

Can you hear Amé screaming for CoCo to get out of the umbrella from there?

They are sisters… best friends. They will leave an indelible mark on each other’s lives…

And backs apparently.

The ice cream man came by the other day.

In Mr. Sunday defense (I suppose) I have a lot of shirts that color that I wear coach in.

So, Mr. Sunday asked me, “who took the picture?”

Um, so those of you who know me in real life probably have no idea why I was aghast. Bless her sweet heart my neighbor has 20 years and ~~several~~ a few dress sizes on me and the obvious my hair is RED! But that’s ok, I’m just gonna tag him as the stud with the plumber’s crack and knee socks. I am sure his high school sweethearts on FaceBook will be kicking themselves over what could have been all theirs. Right?