Tag Archives: life

In the name of the fair

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Fair season is winding down up here in the great hot north. I hit up my third fair of the year last weekend, this time without the kids, to sing under the watchful eye of the world’s biggest Holstein cow. On the other side of the building 4-H kids stood, shoulders back, showing off the sheep or goat or steer they’d been working to feed up, groom and halter train all summer, unaware of just how many life lessons were packed into that project.

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We took the long, impromptu trek to the state fair a few weekends back with, meeting up with a bunch of family. I bought my two-year-old a wrist band and she fearlessly jumped on every ride she was tall enough to sit in.

I mean, she didn’t even bat an eye at the thought of reaching the top of the Ferris Wheel. She just grabbed her cousin’s hand and off she went growing up and I stood below, watching and wondering if I should start worrying now about her sense of adventure.

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Like, should I be hiding my husband’s dirt bike already?

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I suppose she comes by it honestly when it comes to carnival rides. When I was a kid, the bigger and faster, the better. And so when I had to accompany her on a ride that spun and jerked around a bit, I happily obliged, even though the seats were ripped and like five out of the ten carts were out of order. We squealed and laughed and then squealed and laughed some more as it jerked us around and spun us in circles…for like six hours. Seriously, the ride lasted forever. It gave us our first opportunity at a mother/daughter ESP moment as we looked at each other, wincing, both trying to will it to stop while I seriously questioned my parenting choice of hotdog before spinny ride.

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But we lived and we headed to the livestock barns to check out the pigs, goats, and cattle and grab an ice cream.

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Oh I love a good fair. The county fair was my favorite weekend of the summer growing up, because I was and always will be, a project person. And so I did projects. And showed horses and looked forward to one of the few times in the summer that I got to stay long hours in town and hang out with my friends.

And so I was eager to take my two-year-old to her first county fair this year…and, well, here’s how it went.

In the name of the fair
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It was 175 degrees and 200 percent humidity. I knew because my hair told me soon as I sat up in bed.

The higher the hair, the closer to God, and I got closer to God with each passing, sweltering hour.

It was 175 degrees and 200 percent humidity, so I did what any good and reasonably sane mother would do: I loaded up the kids and went to the county fair in town.

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Because this was our only chance before they packed up the carnival and quilting projects, put the horses away, sold all the 4-H steers and took the show rabbits off of ice and back home to safety.

Plus, they were selling giant glasses of freshly squeezed lemonade, which taste really good after lugging a 30-pound 2-year old across the parking lot because she suddenly wants to “hold you.”

Yeah, if only she could hold me. “One day child, one day,” I said quietly to myself, her sweat melting into my sweat as she began sliding down my legs at the food stand where the two of us had a 175-degree decision to make between pizza or hamburgers while my nephew spun around us in the wheels he strapped to his shoes so he “wouldn’t have to expend so much energy.”

Kid had the right idea. So did the lady who took one look at me as I trudged across the asphalt dragging a wagonful of children as if I was on the last legs of a yearlong trek across the Sahara. She handed me a handful of Popsicles and saved my life.

Ah, the county fair. It’s always hot at the county fair.

Unless it’s hot and windy.

Or windy and raining.

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I stuck one Popsicle down my shirt and handed the melting children the rest and continued our journey past the livestock sale toward the carnival for a flashback to all of the sweat that trickled into my eyes when I was a 4-H kid standing in my long-sleeved white shirt holding on tight to the halter of my clean-enough horse.

Which reminded me of the once-a-year horse-washing ritual I would perform on my mare in the grassy backyard, complete with hose, Mane ‘nTail and a ShowSheen finish only to wake up to an open gate and a horse that escaped to the nearest mudhole. That happened more than once.

But still, we persist. In 175 degrees or 175 mph winds. In the name of the county fair. And big, godly hair.

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Things I used to be…

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Things I used to be
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There are things I used to be.

I used to be more careless. I used to be flexible. I used to be able to say “yes” loud and clear without worrying what “yes” would cost me.

I used to be OK in a bikini, stretched out across the front lawn with a magazine and an endless afternoon in front of me. Because I used to be younger.

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I used to be younger, and thinner and less affected by the one margarita I ordered with supper. I used to order two and then sing into a long night without worrying about the morning and the thin thread attaching me to the little bodies breathing in and out, eyes closed tight in their beds without me.

I used to have spare time that I didn’t spend on searching for sippy cup lids or calculating the coupon cost per diaper.

In my other life, I never once uttered the words, “Don’t lick the doorknob!” and I certainly never made 37 negotiations a day that involved two more bites or five more minutes and no, you can’t put the puppy in your purse.

And I certainly didn’t use the phrase “be careful” as often.

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There are things that are buried in me now under these new layers of motherhood. I think about peeling them back only when I’m looking through old photographs of myself toasting to the sky or in the rare quiet moments that last long enough that I’m almost convinced I could be her again, before the creak of the door or the cry out of the lungs of the fresh soul in her crib in the dark calling for her momma.

I am momma.

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Last week, I was driving the ribbon of Interstate 94 that stretched out west for home. My babies were tucked in the back as the landscape zoomed by their windows and my eyes were heavy with the weight of exhaustion my new body holds. It overwhelmed me.

I signaled, parked in a rest stop and found a shady spot to take a break. I used to be unprepared, but this new version of me had blankets to spread out under our bodies and so we all laid down in a big pile under clouds rolling slowly, slowly, slowly across a blue sky.

And I want to say it before it absorbs into my skin and gets lost in the bigger, more urgent stories of a life…

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If I died tomorrow, this 20 minutes at a rest stop along I-94 with the baby navigating the lines of my tired face, my husband lifting the toddler to the sky, her squeals, our laughter, all four of our bodies touching one another, touching the earth, looking up at the trees and the fact that we simply couldn’t be anywhere else in the world if we wanted to, will make the highlight reel when I close my eyes at the end of my life.

Because I used to be so many things, but now I have these layers attached to this wonderfully agonizing winding and unwinding thread, and I will never be who I used to be because now I am a mother.

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In dark times, hang on to hope

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Western North Dakota has become many different things to so many different people over the last 10 years of an all out and unprecedented economic boom — a refuge. A last resort. A stop along the way. An experiment. An adventure. And for many, a new home.

Last week, it became a place where a family lost their baby to the sky.

And this isn’t my story to tell except that it’s my community and my heart is breaking. In another time of my life here in my hometown, it would have been more likely that I would have known many of the families whose homes were ravaged by a tornado that whipped through a trailer park on the south side of town in the terrifying and devastating moments before midnight.

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MIKE McCLEARY Bismarck Tribune

But then again, in another time, that trailer park was nothing but a field and I was a young girl with plans to leave a place that didn’t yet hold all of these new dreams, let alone my own.

But here we are now, together in this town, together between new stoplights, new foundations and freshly planted lawns, all of us on wobbly knees, all of us so focused on navigating our place here that maybe we forgot about that sky and how it can freeze our pipes and frost bite our skin only to turn around and soak us in sweat before sending down hail stones and ripping homes from the dirt.

And maybe that’s why the lump swelled up in my throat the way it did when I heard of the devastation that occurred while I was lying safe in my bed with my arms around my own baby. Twenty-eight injuries. One child lost. More than 100 people displaced in a town that has yet to become familiar to many of them.

I didn’t want this to be their experience here. I didn’t want this to be the place where a baby lost his chance at a future, where bodies were injured and belongings scattered in the dirt. I didn’t want this devastation to be a chapter in our unpredictable story.

But if we can’t control the sky, we can control how we connect our hearts to our hands and our hands to our actions. And we can carry on the narrative of compassion and neighborly love and muscle that made us a dot on the map in this wild place to begin with.

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A cat found in the rubble of a mobile home destroyed by Tuesday morning’s tornado hitting Watford City rests in the arms of Andrew Anderson, a missionary helping the Red Cross at the Prairie View RV Park.

And that’s what I see happening here now. Even if there’s no blanket soft enough and no hug tight enough to put that baby back in his mother’s arms, at least there’s a community wondering how they might help those new parents bear the weight of their grief.

Because the roads in and out of this town are full of people talking about how they’ve been helped and hurt, how they’re leaving for good or coming to stay forever.

And regardless of the story, I wish nothing for any of us but to hold on to hope. Because the sky can rumble, it can scream and shake us until we break. But in so many ways I’ve come to know it to shine again and that’s the only promise any of us can make here in this place.​

As shelter closes, Red Cross praises Watford City

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Chris Moore stands beside the American flag he has attached to the box of his pickup truck parked next to his mobile home at the Prairie View RV Park in Watford City on Tuesday afternoon. His home was damaged by the EF2 tornado that struck the park in the early morning hours, but the flag remained upright. MIKE McCLEARY Bismarck Tribune

Who are we without our memories?

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Happy summer everyone. We took as much of a hiatus from real life as we could over the 4th of July week to head to my grandparent’s lake cabin in Minnesota like we do every year over the holiday.

This year was pretty special as more family joined us from across the midwest and my two-year old had a blast following the big kids around the lake.

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Great Grandpa and Grandma with all ten of their great grandchildren

I’m not going to lie, traveling with two young kids and staying in a hotel for night upon night is no joke.

Kids like schedules. But there are so many reasons it’s worth it to spend a week having donut holes for breakfast, skipping naps for more swim time, serving popsicles before supper and wiping the sand and grass off of their little feet before zipping up their jammies and flopping down for bed sunkissed, dirty and exhausted from fun at 10 pm.

My only wish is that my girls could remember every minute of the weekend spent with this family, especially these special moments…

Last week, Edie caught her first fish off of her great-grandparents’ dock on a little lake in Minnesota.

After her daddy helped her pull that bluegill out of the water using the little orange fishing pole with the button reel that has likely caught many grandkids’ first fishes, she inspected its puckered mouth, ran her fingers over its scales, looked toward the shore and yelled at the top of her lungs, “Gramma Ginny, look! I caught a fish!”

Gramma Ginny is Edie’s 80-something great-grandmother who is known to her family as a woman who loves to play bridge, has read thousands of books, is probably magic because she can float in the water for hours without paddling and refuses to look on anything but the bright side in life. This is a quality that is seeing her and her family through the difficult and inevitable process of time that has taken her quick wit and memory, but has not broken her spirit.

Edie calls gramma Ginny her best friend and like any best friend, she was thrilled by her little granddaughter’s first catch. I watched them celebrate with a lump in my throat wishing time would stop for a moment.

Edie, don’t get bigger just yet. Gramma, don’t get older. Warm sun, don’t go down on Lake Melissa today; just hang in the sky a little longer and shine on my mom in her swimsuit as she floats out to the sailboat with her sisters. Don’t set on these cousins getting to know one another and growing up too fast. Don’t stop our laughing and start our worries. Not yet. Hold still now, time.

“It’s a beautiful day. A good day,” said Gramma Ginny over and over as all 10 of her great-grandchildren, from 7 months to 14 years old, navigated their relationships to one another over games of beanbag toss, squirt gun fights and kayak trips to the lily pads.

“Yes, yes it is Gramma,” we would reply, all of us reliving old memories of swim lessons from aunties, rainy day card games and mosquito slapping by the campfire, wishing we didn’t know that our matriarch’s memories slip in and out like waves as she holds on tight to her husband’s hand and wades into the familiar feel of the cool lake water towards her grown daughters with children and grandchildren of their own.

I looked at my grandparents and thought about the 60-some years of a life they’ve lived hand in hand like that and I wondered how it is that I want to stop the very thing that has given them so much adventure and fulfillment and love.

What do we know if we can’t remember it all?

Who are we without our recollections, our stories? Our memories?

We are my 2-year-old daughter, fresh and eager to discover a mysterious new world, and her great-grandmother, two best friends celebrating a catch in a special moment on a good and beautiful day.

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What Edie has to say…

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Coming Home:
2-year-old Edie thinks she’s 30-something, or 60-something, or something

Yesterday, I told my 2-year-old that it was time to take a nap. She replied, of course, that she didn’t want to. When I asked her why, she said, “Because it’s too dangerous.”

The day before I told her “never mind” after she asked me for the 40th time what I was doing. She replied, “Never mine? Oh, never yours.”

My daughter calls the fly swatter a “shoo fly,” and announces the presence of every bug within a 10-mile radius, demanding that I bring her the shoo fly to take care of every one. On nice days at home, this is about all we do.

Edie calls her rubber boots “scrubber boots,” and I hope she never stops

My 2-year-old thinks she’s a 30-something mother or a 60-something grandmother, or a teenage girl, depending on her most recent and influential caretaker.

When she’s wearing her jeans, boots and a hat, she’s just like Chad, her dad that she often calls by his first name. She also calls him a queen, which is fun for us all. And as it turns out, when she’s outside, she spits just like him, too. Discovered that little gem the other day.

Yes, little Edie Elizabeth transitions in and out of her personas with ease, keeping us on our toes. On our way home from town last week, she initiated conversation by asking, “How you doing girlfriend?”

That night at supper, her icebreaker of choice was, “So, how’s your mom doing?”

Then she insisted that I take the cantaloupe off of her cantaloupe, proving that she is indeed a toddler after all.

And that’s why these tiny humans are so amazing really, just the right miraculous combination of spitfire and inherent sweetness to keep us all on our toes.

For example, a few days ago she wrapped her skinny little arms around both her baby sister and I, declaring us her “best friends.” About a half hour later, she must have changed her mind as she tested the waters by gently slapping her so called best-friend-baby-sister’s cheeks.

These are the things parenting books don’t prepare you for, these big personalities that come out of a tiny human you somehow had a hand in creating.

This morning, on our way into town, we passed a man sitting on a big ol’ Harley in the parking lot of our little grocery store. He was a large man, bald, tattooed, wearing leather — a straight-out-of-the-textbook Harley-Davidson owner.

“Look Mommy, that guy’s got a motorcycle,” my daughter chirped from the back seat. “What’s his name?’ she asked, because she always wants to know, leaving me to make up a lot of characters to appease her.

“Larry,” I lied. “I think his name is Larry.”

“Yup, he’s Larry,” she replied. “He’s perfect.”

And then my heart swelled up big enough to leak out eyes that were seeing the world as Edie sees it… where naps are dangerous and biker men are perfect and I think I’ll just enjoy this moment and worry about it later, like when she actually becomes a teenager.

Me and my dark cloud…

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Yesterday this happened….

IMG_6546I’m still finding salsa bits in all corners of my house today and probably will be until the same thing inevitably happens with a tub of sour cream or jar of pickles or something, and then I’ll just divert my attention to that…and other stories of my annoying dark cloud…

Coming Home: Am I the only one plagued by comedic bad luck? Maybe.

Have you ever had a week where you feel like there’s a dark cloud of bad luck following you around? I’m not talking about catastrophic events, but rather painful toe stubs, coffee cups falling randomly from the cupboard, a printer that will only print blue ink or a chandelier that quit working one day only to magically work again the next?

Yeah? Now imagine this is your life.

Seriously. I’m a klutz. A magnet for small disasters. A target for falling things.

Once, while painting our house, I got my head stuck in a ladder. Like, bad. And because I was all alone outside while my husband was inside working on another project, there was a legit chance I could have died that way.

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I was stuck long enough anyway to contemplate the meaning of my last words to my husband. But no matter how I spun it, “Hand me that paint bucket, would ya?” just didn’t seem like a profound send-off to the after life.

Anyway, I lived through that one to continue to make a dramatic story out of every family trip. Seriously. Once, we made it an entire 50 miles into a 500-mile road trip before we had to change every tire on the camper. EVERY. TIRE.

And after that, we hit a deer with the pickup we bought the week before, so yeah, why don’t you ride with us next time.

If you like slapstick, hang out with me, a woman who has bigger ideas than the muscles attached to my flailing arms — flailing because bats seem to prefer to fly right for my head instead of the million miles of open sky available to them.

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Hang with me if you like performing the Heimlich maneuver at restaurants because I’ll likely inhale a chip. Or mistake wasabi for guacamole.

Come along and I’ll tell you how I got my big nose from my dad … and a flying sled and an unruly beer bottle, thanks so much for asking.

I mean, how many people have been smacked in the head by a 15-foot board flying off a trailer one day only to fall through the floor of a barn the next?

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Have you ever witnessed a woman in her best dress fall directly on her face for no apparent reason, flashing her entire rear end to a restaurant full of strangers? No? You should have been there for that one.

And the time I bent over to retrieve a napkin and banged my head so hard on the kitchen table that dinner guests fell silent to watch those little cartoon bluebirds circle around my head.

How many times can a dad rush his young daughter to the emergency room for a crushed foot, a disjointed wrist or a smashed finger from an unfortunate incident between a 2,000-pound bull and a metal post?

How many times can a husband shake his head at his wife before his head actually falls off and he turns from bystander to victim?

Yeah, life’s tough out here for me and my cloud, and I’d buy a helmet — but then I’d just be asking that coffee cup to fall on my toe next time.

Be careful out there friends.

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Spring’s little gifts

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We went from winter to summer here in Western North Dakota. Last Saturday it was nearly 80 degrees and so I loaded the kids up with sunscreen and attempted to clear the yard of dog poop while Edie sprayed the hose into the little plastic pool and Rosie watched and drooled in her stroller.

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The sunshine made us all feel so alive and happy that I didn’t even mind shoveling the dead squirrel in full-on rigamortus from the yard for the thirteenth time that week (country living is glamorous).

And when we heard the next day was going to be even warmer, we went ahead and made plans to go fishing, successfully transforming us from grumpy, nose to the grindstone workaholic types, to full-on retirees–if retirees wipe toddler noses and baby butts while they’re poles are in the water.

Oh, it was the complete heaven that comes when we get nice weather up here. Because when it’s nice, it’s glorious. The lake was still and the fish were biting, at least for Pops, who proves time and time again that he’s the luckiest of the lucky ones.

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I looked over at him who is getting better and better every day and said “Isn’t it a great day to be alive?”

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And it was indeed. It is indeed.

Cheers to spring turning rapidly into summer. Just make sure you’re checking for ticks.

Love, the Girls of Spring!

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Coming Home: Relishing the signs of spring, whether good or bad

Throw open the doors and bring out that old book that props up your window. Let the sun in and the breeze blow through the house because I think spring might finally be happening after all.

I wouldn’t dare say for sure, except last weekend I picked some crocuses and a tick off the back of my neck, and out here those two things might be the most reliable indicators that sub-zero temps are on their way out, for a few months anyway.

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It’s incredible what a 70-degree day will do to a person up here where winter drags its heavy feet coming and going.

After a February that lasted three months, I promised my friend who has been living on a ranch in North Dakota with her husband for just a few years, that spring always comes … eventually. She didn’t look convinced.

Maybe because I wasn’t so convinced myself.

But here it is, however late. It’s that promise that keeps us crazies living up here in the great white north, all bundled up and waiting to walk around in our Ice Cream Shirts (with a jacket in the pickup just in case). And now that I see it in writing, I realize that I might be the only one in the great white north who uses the term “Ice Cream Shirt.” I’ll explain.

Ice Cream Shirt: The term our grampa Pete used to describe a button up, collared cowboy shirt with short sleeves, the type of shirt a man might have to wear if he spends his days scooping ice cream. Also, a piece of clothing the man himself probably never wore, because of the thorns in the bullberry brush and frankly, arms that aren’t accustomed to the sun should probably remain in the protection of sleeves, no matter the weather.

It’s the same sentiment my friend’s husband has about shorts. “I don’t like things touching my legs,” he said. “Like grass or bugs or air.”

That’s a cowboy for you.

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And it’s my understanding that even the ones who live in the desert might only be caught in shorts on that Caribbean cruise his wife bid on at a church silent auction or something.

Oh, there are good reasons for these unspoken wardrobe rules out here.

My little sister found out firsthand last weekend on our hike up to the top of the hill we call Pots and Pans. We were both dressed in tennis shoes, leggings and had a baby strapped to our chests, practical for a sidewalk stroll but brutal when you march right into a giant cactus patch, proving once again that out here, sunshine comes with a few small, annoying price tags, some with tiny stickers and others tiny legs.

Oh well, shedding a little blood is a small price to pay for a spring crocus bouquet, said the girl with a cactus plant dug into her ankle to the other with the tick stuck behind her ear.

Happy spring everyone. Wear what you want and soak it in!

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To live in these moments

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Good Monday to you. Here’s to another week of weird weather and hope for warmer and better days. This week’s column is on what sickness gives and takes from you. Since I wrote this, Dad had a good report on his visit to Minneapolis. Looks like he’s officially on the mend and we’re grateful for more rides in the feed pickup together.

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Coming Home: Long moments remind us of fleeting nature in life

This winter has been long enough. I woke up to another three inches of snow on our doorstep this morning, crushing my hopes of spring finally hanging up her coat here.

I tried to complain as I poured the coffee, but I know it will fill the dams and make the grass green.

A few days ago, before the snow came, the old stuff was working hard on melting, so we bundled up the girls and went to pet the horses and my husband took my dad out to feed the cows.

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It was the first time he’d been out on the ranch since the end of October when I sat with him in my car, watching as my husband, uncles and neighbors loaded the calves up on shipping day.

I looked over at him then, and even though the doctors said he was on the mend, he was still in so much pain. I knew somehow the road was going to be longer.

And it was. It still is.

We don’t want to be weak when we were once strong. We don’t want to be lonely when our homes were once full. We don’t want to worry about the end when we’re trying hard to live in the moment. We don’t want to rest when the sun’s shining, and there’s so much to be done.

But that’s what sickness does. It robs you of detachment and forces each moment on you. And the word “moment” changes too. In pain and worry, it stretches out before you for miles, like your engine’s sputtering on a lonesome back road. In hope and healing, those long moments turn into a reminder that it’s all so short and fleeting.

And there’s so much you could have missed if you weren’t granted another one.

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I’ve only had one near-death experience in my life, one where I wasn’t strapped in when my car went rolling too fast off of I-94. But I was a teenager and invincible and barely phased by a bruised head and broken glass. I walked away with a lesson on safety belts, but my moments weren’t tested the same way my dad’s have been these days.

“I hope I can get better. I’d hate to fade out like this,” he said to me as he sat in my easy chair and I bounced my baby in the sun streaming into our house, illuminating the dust, bits of Play Dough, toys and chaos that new little lives leave behind on the floors. I don’t know what I said then except it was probably some dismissive, reassuring quip like, “Don’t worry, it will come slow, but you’ll feel like yourself again.”

And my sick dad — working so hard at recovery — will probably not remember those rushed words, but I will never forget his and the way they hit me as I held our growing baby who entered this world during the moments he was desperately trying not to leave it.

And so the winter’s been long enough. And I’ll take the snow to fill the dams and then I’ll welcome the sunshine, because there’s so much to do.

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A thousand breathless moments

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How little, not big moments, remind you about living

There are moments in this life that remind you what living is. And I can say from experience that it’s only a little bit the parts that you plan out to do the trick, like jumping out of an airplane over the Gulf of Mexico. Making it safely to the sandy beach after swallowing the atmosphere in the world’s most terrified silent scream does indeed make you thrilled to be alive, but I think it’s a lot more the quiet moments after the jump that stick with you in playback.

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Like the margarita I had with friends on the beach afterwards, laughing at how close I came to throwing up my breakfast on the way down.

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This chapter in my life doesn’t involve any sky diving plans, although some days the story feels a lot like jumping out of a plane with a prayer and no parachute. Right now the adventure is supper negotiations with a toddler when we’re all spent from the day, evening hours wearing a path in the floor bouncing the baby to sleep and balancing schedules so the cows can get fed, the taxes can get filed and the work can get done so the bills can be paid.

And in the in-between moments the floors are swept and spilled on, the laundry is cleaned and soiled and the plates are filled and washed over arguments won and lost while we make plans.

When they say they lived “Happily Ever After,” they mean for you to fast-forward to the highlight reel. Only sometimes the highlight footage is found tucked in the mundane.

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Last weekend I took my two-year-old to watch the High School production of the Wizard of Oz. My daughter loves to dress up, and so I made a big deal out of it. She chose her dress, her hair bows, we painted her nails and she picked out a necklace from my drawer to wear. She didn’t know what a play was, but she was thrilled anyway.

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“Mommy! You look so different!” she exclaimed after I put on the purple dress she suggested and we both did a twirl. Then we put on our fancy coats and headed to town, and while the high school students were making moments for their highlight reel they were also making memories for me, watching my little daughter worry for Toto, her little body hardly heavy enough to keep the theater chair from folding in on her.

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And it was that. And then, later that night, it was looking over to find my usually stoic husband dancing with the little neighborhood girls at the fireman’s fundraiser, and then it was my dad, who had been deathly sick for months, now able to sit in a vehicle to watch the neighborhood kids fly down the sledding hill and his granddaughter build a snowman,

and then the baby’s first giggle and all of us racing upstairs to lay out together as a family on our brand new bed that had just been delivered and about a million tiny little moments between that carry momentum to me these days that render me as breathless as a jump from that plane.

Love and Parenting

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Happy Valentines Day loves. Above is my attempt at finding something in their closets that was “Valentiny” and getting them to sit together for a photo without incident.

This was after getting home from our early morning trip to the doctor where I got the fun surprise Valentines Day gift of bronchitis and Edie got her ear infection back.

Love.

But on the bright side, it’s above freezing for the first time this month! If you look close you can see the snow melting off the deck and I would call that February’s Valentine to us here in the frozen north.

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They must have put Valentines Day in February in an attempt to help cheer us up and pull us through to spring. Depending on where your feelings fall on the topic, it may or may not be working. Either way, I think there will be some good sales on chocolate tomorrow, so there’s always that.

So in honor of love, I dedicated this month’s Prairie Parent to the topic.

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I invite you to check it out. There are some fun articles, including Valentines Day desserts, how to use your love language to celebrate the holiday, the importance of having mom friends and my “From the Editor” comments on the way love changes and grows throughout our lives.

From the Editor: The Evolution of Love

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I’m certainly feeling that ever changing love today with my beautiful, challenging, kissable little Valentines.

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But it seems like no matter the day, I find myself caught in a moment where I wonder how this became my life (admittedly some days the question is more positive than others).

Were we ever seventeen and falling in love?

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Did that boy become a man who is now tasked with catching and wrestling or two-year-old into her snow pants so she can go feed her cows and her pony some “cereal?”

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Minus the never-ending house construction project, some days I don’t think I could have scripted it better, even with the challenges.

And the bronchitis and ear infections.

So friends, take a moment to read through our magazine online today. Hopefully there will be something there that makes you smile. I recommend the interviews with preschoolers on what love means to them.  

 

Peace, Love and Candy Hearts,

Jessie and the girls

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