Make Them Stop Growing

It is rare that I get to take a day off from work to spend doing activities at my Panda's school.  So when she came home begging me to chaperone a kindergarten field trip, I decided it was time I took a day and spend with her.

Our day started when her teacher handed me the list of students that I would be in charge of for the day.  Two girls and three boys were under my watch.  And I wasn't going to let them misbehave!

We all boarded the school bus.  It's been a long time since I've ridden on a bus and I don't like it anymore now than I did as a schoolgirl.  Relief set in when we arrived at our first stop, the town library. After a story, a weird song about the Dewey Decimal System and some pretty heavy plugs to participate in the summer ready program, we moved on to the Fire Station.

The entire class loved the firemen.  But after spending an hour there they were ready to move on to lunch and playtime at the town park.

The grocery store was next and presented a challenge that I'll address in a future blog.  Let's just preview it for now that Kroger grocery store managers may want to be a bit better informed on the health differences (or lack thereof) between brown and white eggs!

The last stop was at the local ice cream stand for a frozen dairy treat, a favorite of all the class!

The evening was spent honoring my little Monkey. She has successfully completed her first year of preschool and celebrated her closing program.  I wept through a good portion of the evening, crying for kids who didn't even belong to me!

My Monkey attends preschool at a local church. While it's not our home church, the teachers in this facility are second to none.  It is such a relief, as a full time working mom, to be able to leave your kids with people who love them just as much as I do.  The daycare/preschool facility has become a part of our family and my kids have grown so much from being there. She posed with her teacher for a quick picture!

The program featured great songs, the graduation of the 5 year olds, and awards.  My Monkey won two awards, one for saying all of her Bible verses and one for reading the most books in her reading program.

After the program was over, and my tears were dried, she spent the night running around hugging friends and just being a silly 3-year old.  She spent time with her other "partners-in-crime", the girls in the picture below. 

The recurrent thought I kept having was that I wanted to stop the hands of time from aging my kids.  They are sweet.  At 6 and 3 years old, they are innocent and still want to be with their parents.  They snuggle, climb on our laps and love us unconditionally. But I know those times are fading.  And if I think too much about it, I'll be digging out the tissues to dry my weeping eyes. 

The days may be long when raising kids, but the years are so short and fly by. Hold on to them tight. I have my kids in a grip and don't intend to let them grow up too fast.

16 and Pregnant

I am not a TV viewer. Nielsen would be disappointed in our household as the only shows that ever get watched involve cartoon characters or race cars.

However, after reading about the MTV show 16 & Pregnant I got intrigued. And after viewing one episode, all my stomach could handle, I got disgusted.

The show is filled with immature, pregnant teenagers who constantly whine that their social life is over and their boyfriends won't change dirty diapers.

Give me a break. What did you expect when you had sex with someone? Babies are work. They cry alot, poop alot and eat all of the time. You lose the ability to go out whenever you want, taking a shower seems impossible and forget about sleep.

This show hit a nerve with me. My mom had me when she was 16 years old. She and my Dad, who was 18 at the time, got married and have been married to each other for 36 years. My Mom tells me stories of how she took me to school with her. She was determined to finish high school. So I went to school in a carseat while my mother finished her school work. My Dad had already graduated and worked three jobs in order to keep a roof over our heads.

I know my grandparents helped my parents. But not to the extent I see on this horrible show. There wasn't whining or complaining. There was just doing. Doing what needed to be done to have a marriage, family and to keep the lights on.

36 years later I have some of the youngest parents around. And it's fun to watch them be "young" grandparents to my two girls.  But I could never imagine what they went through to get me to the point I am today.  I don't know how they made it work, except with a lot of love, God and family.

16 & Pregnant wasn't a choice I was going to make.  And with our 3rd child on the way, I'm glad I waited to be older to have kids. Mother's Day always makes me appreciate my parents even more. It couldn't have been easy to be a kid having a kid. And I admire them both very much for not taking the easy way out and not whining about what happened.

Something Funny Happened on the Way to Oklahoma

It is finals week at Purdue. The campus is filled with caffeine-driven, sleep-deprived, panicked and anxious students. It is a week I don’t miss, although I do have found memories of one finals week.

Purdue finals week 1993 holds a special place in my memory. And it wasn’t for the stellar grades I received or other academic excellence. Rather, it was the week my future husband and I would officially start dating.

I met my future farmer during Christmas vacation of my freshman year. I had gone to Purdue with a boyfriend from high school, although the relationship didn’t last much past Halloween. I wasn’t looking to get serious with anyone, just make a lot of friends. I often joke that my Dad sent me to Purdue to get my Mrs. degree, to find a farm boy to bring back home to farm with him! A B.S. was a good second degree, but an heir to the farm was my dad’s first priority!

I was very active in Purdue’s Christian Campus House all throughout college. Freshman year Christmas break included a mission trip to Cookson Hills, Oklahoma. Cookson was a place I had visited in high school and someplace I was excited to visit again. And as per God’s plan, my future husband, whom I had yet to meet, was on the trip as well.

A funny thing happened on that trip to Oklahoma. 80 other students went as well, including my future husband. So I spent the week flirting with my future husband. And when second semester started, we just happened to be in the same Calculus class! We spent a lot of time studying together, although while I studied him, he actually learned math.

After our Calculus final exam, which I would have to retake my sophomore year, he asked if we could go out over the summer. I later learned he then went home and broke up with the girlfriend he had been dating!

My future husband proposed to me 6 months after that calculus exam and we were married 2 years later. God put him in my path and after knowing him for 17 years and preparing to celebrate our 15th anniversary this summer, I can still look fondly back on finals week 1993. It was a funny thing that happened on the way to Oklahoma.