The Mom Life

In all my life, I've never known anyone quite like my Mimi. As a preteen, she'd embarass the mess out of me asking, "Are you wearin' a bra yet?" in front of my whole family. She'd rub and PINCH my arm if I sat by her on the couch as a kid. Instead of saying, "You look pretty Ashley" when I lived with her, she'd say, "Well don't you think you look pretty." But in all of that, I knew she loved me. She cared about me and what was going on in my life. Why else would I find her reading my mail and moving things around in my room when I lived with her? She is 97, almost 98. Her days left are few, so I want to grab a hold of every good memory I have of her. Like how the night of my first date with Seth she asked him to look at her sink to fix something. And how she said he was better looking than she thought he'd be. I loved the summer days eating watermelon on her back patio. She would be sure to have the tall white tupperw...

There are a few things I LOVE about being a librarian. I love the days I get to put brand new books on the shelves. I love inspiring kids to read things they might not normally read. (Ex. Last week I had a TON of kids check out poetry books after my lesson on poetry.) I love getting to use my scanner. (And apparently so do all my students...I get asked at least 10 times a day, "Can I scan it?") I can't imagine what it must have been like to have been a librarian before they used scanners. Ooooh, and the card catalog. Kids today don't even know what that is. Mine is just collecting dust in the corner of my office area. I am oh so thankful for technology! I love the possibilities that are out there for my library...book club adventures, author visits, literature circles. Fun stuff. I feel so thankful that God put me where I am right now at Purvis. My coworkers are wonderful, my students stinkin' adorable, and my library the perfect place to grow in my care...

Adoption stories can be so interesting and touching. I know I like to read about them, and ever since we adopted Cruz, I've noticed that a lot of movies like to use kids in foster care or ones that have been adopted as their main characters. We get a lot of requests from friends of friends who are interested in hearing how the process went for us, adoptiong kids through DHS. There are a lot of positive stories told about international adoption, but our local children are also precious treasures often waiting for the right family. The following is something I emailed to a friend of a friend (who I've never met) who asked us how the process has gone for us. We love telling our story! After we were married for 3 years we decided we wanted to be foster parents. We were liscenced in January 2009 and in February we got a 3 year old boy, whom we were told would just be a fostering situation. Within a month or so we realized his birth mom was not going to get him back and he wou...

I was wondering today as I was driving home to grab a movie to return to Rameys before getting the kids from day care, how did my mom do everything she did with 3 kids? Motherhood seemed so easy for her. We all respected her and my dad, and for the most part didn't give them much trouble...or so I recall :) But I am sure there were moments much like I experience now where she must have thought, "Wow, this (errand, appointment, etc.) would be so much easier with 1 or 2 kids. With 3, it's a little bit of a nightmare." Mothers of 3+ kids should get a badge of bravery or something for the challenge they are taking on! I got an easier start, missing the whole newborn phase and some of the toddler phases. But, I have so much respect and am sort of in awe of women who have 5 or 6 kids and make it look easy. What corners are they cutting? Do they use paper plates and plastic silverware? How does the laundry get done and put away promptly? How does the mother ever ge...