Delaney's 6th Birthday

D is for Dainty

E is for Easy To Laugh

L is for Lovable

A is for Animal Lover

N is for Nature Lover

E is for Empathetic

Y is for Young Soul

Happy Birthday Sweet Girl!

A is for 

It's Almost Summer!

We have been very busy gearing up for summer. Laila is already done with preschool and the big girls only have 6 more school days left before summer vacation officially starts.
We have been busy finishing up the porch, working on the lawn and getting the pool up and running. Memorial weekend was sort of our kick off for summer with lots of swimming, BBQing and bon fire-ing :)
Delaney's birthday is this Friday which is hard to believe. Time flies and their birthdays always seem to sneak up on me.
I will be sure to post something special about my brown eyed girl.

I hope you are all as excites as I am for summer to start - it's my favorite time of year!!

Team

These girls have it all when it comes to family. They have a Mom and a Dad who love them and who love and respect eachother.

I know a lot of kids that have faced their parents divorce in the past few years. They go from being one team to two.

I know that divorce happens, my parents are divorced. It just makes me sad to watch all these little kids emotionally digest all that comes with a family being split up.

I wish every parent going through a divorce would make their child/ren their number one priority. Bickering back and forth and bad mouthing the other parent only makes things harder on the child. Finding new boyfriends and girlfriends also takes it's toll on a child. Imagine how hard it is for them to allow someone who feels like a perfect stranger on to their team. They are so protective of their parents and so especially needy it is so hurtful to get left behind because of something newer and more exciting.

I hope with all my heart that Bill, the girls, and I remain on the same team until we die. I hope and I pray.

The least we can do for our children is hold their hand tight as we ease through the transition. Don't move on to quickly. Take time to figure out the new "normal" before jumping in to something else. We need to co-parent and talk civil to one another. It's the least that can be done for these children.

Children deserve respect.

Like I said, I know divorce happens and some people do it all right. But some people do it all wrong and in the end it affects a child'd life forever. It does and don't ever question that. It does.

Sometimes I really wonder why life has to be so complicated.

They're So Different

Sometimes it's hard to believe my daughters all came from the same parents and are growing up in the same house. They are so different from eachother!
Cecelia is a breeze. A total breeze. I can't even express how easy she is. Every once and a while I get the whole "I know!"...but that I can handle.
Delaney is hot and cold. She is super funny - probably the funniest one of the three, to be honest. I just told her yesterday that she's just like her Uncle Dave. She is also (still) the most sensitive and if the teeniest tiniest thing doesn't go right she has a really hard time dealing with it.
Laila is sweet and angry. She has no fear when it comes to speaking her mind to her family or anyone else in her path. On the other hand she slept with me for a while last night and her little face just made me melt.

I love having the mix of personalities in the house - it keeps things exciting.

One of those things

I'm sitting in the living room and Laila is in the bathroom singing at the top of her lungs "I ain't 'fraid of no ghost!"

I didn't even know she KNEW that song! Funny!

Snuck Out

I snuck out of town last week to see my Mom, the boys and their girls for a few days.
We didn't do the usual 500 hours of Mickey...and it was actually a nice break.
I mean, obviously we went on a couple of thrill rides and obviously I came home with a large bag of Mickey souveniers, but that's just par for the course when you're in Orlando.
Mostly, we just spent time together and laughed. We laughed, and laughed and LAUGHED!
And then we laughed some more.

Even though I had a hard time making the decision to go "there" without my family, it ended up being a really fun and really adult-like trip for me.

Sometimes you just have to go with the motto: "Work hard, play hard."

Family

I love my girls equally. I love my parents and they love my brothers and I equally. In my adult life, I cannot remember a single hurtful, mean, or cruel word said between my brothers and I. It's a beautiful thing. Growing up I always just seemed to know that there was no competition for love or for things. It's been easy because my parents have never favored one over the other. They never excluded any of us from anything. My brothers and I have never cared if one brother got this, or the sister got that. We've all had our stuff come up over the years...graduations, weddings, children, buying a home, going back to school, moving from here to there, etc. etc.  Our parents have been there for us when they knew we needed it the most. We've always understood that people have different needs at different times. Even growing up, if someone needed a new pair of tennis shoes it didn't necessarily mean everybody got them. Why buy for all if only one is in need? Taking out the jealousy component in a family makes things so easy.
I hope, hope, hope I can continue this with my own girls because I DO love them equally. I would never favor one over the other. I would never just give and give and give to only one child. Creating jealousy in my children would be devastating to their relationships and our family as a whole. I've seen it happen.
Raising a happy and cohesive family is probably the number one goal of mine. Wish me luck.

**Update to post: There is an entire book dedicated to this topic called Siblings Without Rivalry.