Five Things Friday

1-
Six hundred and seventy nine.
Did you read that number?
679.
That's 679 posts that make up this blog.
It was almost six and a half years ago that I started writing in this little corner of the net.
I had no idea what I was doing and I had no plan or agenda.
It was just a place to write the funny, the not so funny, the joyous and the sad moments of the life I share with my family.
Here I have chronicled tales of my children growing up, my fears and joys as a mother and a wife.
As my kids have gotten older, I've often struggled with what to say and how to protect their right to privacy.
I've wondered what to write about when the funny things little kids say slowly began to disappear.
Now I've just relaxed into writing whatever I want, whether it has to do with my family, or my kids or even nothing to do with us at all.
Thanks for being on this journey with me!

2-
I was listening to NPR today
and the story was about an interviewer who, over the years,
interviewed Louwana Miller, mother of Amanda Berry.
As you all know, Amanda Berry is one of the three young ladies rescued from captivity in Ohio this week after being kidnapped a decade ago.
The interviewer was saying that Louwana was like a Grizzly Mother Bear, absolutely unwilling to give up hope that her daughter was alive and could be found.
She yelled at the interviewer when she needed to.
She threw the FBI out of her house because she felt like they weren't doing enough.
She was afraid of nothing and no one- all she cared about was her daughter being returned to her.
She even met with a psychic, who told her that her daughter was dead.

Louwana Miller died at age 43 of heart failure.

43.

The interviewer said that she thinks Ms. Miller died of a broken heart.

I found myself swallowing a huge lump in my throat.
That may be the reason she died, or may not.
But I am so deeply sad that she died not knowing for sure that her daughter was alive.
My heart breaks that she didn't get to hold her again, to see her with her own eyes,
hear her voice and hold her close, whispering words of comfort into her ear.
God willing, there is heaven and she is able to see, and she knows.

3-
The kids jumped in the pool for the first time of the 2013 season.
This has been a cool Spring so far, and the water was a balmy 68 degrees.
Chris went first.
A little hesitation but then he went in full tilt off the diving board.
He surfaced screaming and yelling and gasping and laughing.

Trey was watching.. he was supposed to be next.
He was hopping about in agitation,
caught between a promise and complete and utter dread.
He must have gotten on and off that diving board twenty times,
with the rest of us reassuring him, then getting annoyed and irate after about the tenth attempt.

It took all we had not to just shove his ass in.

Ultimately he jumped in, off the side, when none of us were looking.
The little sneak.

The big surprise is that the boys managed to get Kate to jump in.
I would have bet MONEY that this wouldn't happen.
I think that she did it for them, and also for herself, as she realizes that these moments will become fewer and farther between.
She wanted to make a memory with them.
I think that's a big part of growing up- the realization that these things, these moments COUNT.

Kate jumped in fully clothed in a tee shirt and jeans.
I wanted to run and get my camera but I didn't.
I made myself stay and took a million pictures.. with my heart.

4-
Apparently I sent Trey to school earlier this week with moldy strawberries.
Obviously I had no idea
but this was reported to me IMMEDIATELY upon his entrance into the house in the afternoon.

I apologized and asked him to give me the container, so that I could put them down the disposal.
Somehow, though, I've been convinced to let the Gladware container of strawberries sit on the deck table so he can watch the mold grow.

There was a time I would have been repulsed or grossed out, but I've been the Mother of a boy so long that I wasn't even bothered.
Maybe I'll try to work in a lesson about penicillin. :)

5-
I have a million things to put out for the Purple Heart pickup tomorrow.
It's so many things that the pain-in-the-assness of moving it all outside almost outweighs the
feel-goodness of it!