Imperfect Life, Perfect Timing

Aren't you glad that the world didn't "end" on Saturday? I am, because for one thing, we don't know when that's going to happen! We just have to be ready, right? So, don't worry about how clean your house is or whether you've made cupcakes for Jesus' arrival, just get your heart online with Him and you'll be like the cute drum-banging bunny...Everready!! Two r's or one, I don't know. Oh well.

I'm also glad we lived through Saturday, because we didn't have to miss our Loon's game on Sunday. Now, I sat through this one in style, my friends! Steve's work was gracious enough to invite spouses and kids into the company suite, complete with food and goodies! We even won one of the drawings for our favorite ice cream place! It was a very good thing we were in a suite, because 4 innings into the game, a major rain and hailstorm hit, forcing a rain delay! We ended up going home, but it was such a fun day.

I wish I could say it was a great family time, but as the girls have grown up, they are less and less gung-ho about things that used to excite them. It is so disappointing for us as parents, to have planned such a fun day and have their noses stuck in their i-pods the whole time, looking up only when I poked them to see if they were still alive. They asked if we were going straight home, and of course, we said, "no, we're going to hit Meijer first". Groans ensued, and the familiar, "oh, yay" comments started. I had had enough, so I said, "ya know, first of all, I've heard enough groaning out of you girls. All you cared about was your i-pod the whole time! We were doing something fun as a family and you didn't care at all!" Then I went into my speech about how if they don't appreciate these special things they are given, that we are going to take someone else's kids next time! And on that day, my girls will go work on a farm!

Steve and I could have been raised in the same family, for all the similarities we have in our upbringing. We both came from hardworking parents, who did what they could to make outings special without a lot of money. We all used to pile in the station wagon to go for country drives. The first one to spot a deer would get a quarter. For fun, my dad would stop the car and say, "whoever wants to get out and run, go ahead." Oh, man, we'd all pile out and run as fast as we could alongside the car while dad drove and mom probably laughed her butt off! Dad would treat us with something we didn't get very often....an orange crush! If mom saw a rock she liked, my brothers would get out and drag it into the back of the station wagon, where I rode with my feet out the back window! Simple family fun. I didn't know we didn't have much. You don't miss what you don't have.

Ironic that we would want so much for our kids because we didn't have it, and they don't seem to require it anyway. Hmmm....whose the one in the dark. Us or the kids? Clearly it is us.

And so we learned our lesson, and though we have been blessed with far more than we were raised with, we both treasure what we got from our childhoods. For me, it was the years of camping, drives, and strange things like corn picking and canning. Sure, we didn't have a lot of distractions and activities (couldn't afford them anyway), so maybe it was easier to be a kid back then.

Sometimes we fail to realize that our kids would often rather stay home and have a campfire than sit in a special suite at the ball field. They'd rather make shakes at home than go out for ice cream. Sometimes in our zeal to make "the perfect childhood", we forget the definition of perfect altogether.

And what is perfect is our family movie night...feet tangled up on the couch, Sophie sniffing around for loose popcorn, laughter, cuddling, and the constant offers of "can I get you something while I'm up?" It's watching a movie we've seen 29 times and laughing in the same spots. It's a whole bunch of little things we can never take for granted.

That's pretty close to perfect for me. And by the way, I did settle down and explain myself a bit better for the kids to understand my feelings. They also need to learn to be more appreciative and not take things for granted.

As we grow as a family, things have changed, and each change has been hard to accept for all of us. Growth hurts sometimes, and knowing our kids are preparing for a lot bigger world makes us want to freeze in our tracks and hug them forever. It's that kind of thinking that sometimes gets us off track, wanting to do too much for them. Wanting to hold on too tightly, give them too much. Hang on for dear life. It's why I need them to click into "happy mode" when we're out doing fun things. It's so I can look back and say, "wasn't that Loons game a blast?" I have to learn that all of our memories combined together are a blast, and honestly, some events will be a flop! I remember being a grouch the first day of one of our most favorite vacations of all time!

I guess there's still hope after all.