California for Stefani

I have been thinking about this post for some time and so hopefully I manage to get out what my thoughts have been.  Let me start this blog off by saying this…

“Kraeg, if you are reading this, please place your mouse cursor on the x at the top right hand corner of the screen and close the window because this blog is not for you.  This one is going to be a very Christian type blog with lots of things that won’t make sense” … now of course I am kidding a bit, but really, this probably isn’t a blog for any of my non christian readers since I will probably will say things that I have no backing for it other than my faith.

I am sitting here listening to Father’s House by Brian Doerksen… what a great CD to listen to when wanting to talk about God/Jesus and his home.  It kinda gets you in the mood to talk about spiritual stuff.

Heaven… this is only relevant to Christians (if I understand the concept properly) because it is home to God and his son Jesus and where we will reside once our time is done on this earth.  But do you really think about it?  I do a lot because I just can’t get my head around the whole concept of the afterlife.  All I imagine is my earthly body and it’s hard to comprehend a spiritual body.  I remember as a teenager that “death” and “heaven” was so far away.  You think you are going to live forever and so you just don’t worry about things like that.  I remember thinking that I would understand it more when I got older.  I thought as I aged, things would come easier when it comes to the concept of heaven.

I am now 40 and honestly, I don’t understand it any more now than when I did when I was younger.  And it isn’t that I don’t believe in it or even worry about it, but to actually wrap your head around not being in this earthly body is what gets me.  How do I imagine living the rest of my life as a “spirit”?  We are going to live forever… yikes… how does that look?  How do we grasp living forever?  It is always talked about in church, but do we really think about it?  Do we put our minds into this concept and imagine what “forever” will look like?  I try, but it actually stresses me out a bit because I can’t imagine it.  I can’t see how it looks because it won’t look like our earthly body.  So I tend to just pass it by because it kinda scares me.   Even if you can get the concept of Heaven figured out, how does one figure out the “new earth” once this current earth is destroyed.  Will it all look different again (Heaven that is), or what? 

I look at my life as I am an individual and everything I think and see comes from my perspective and not through anyone else’s eye’s but mine.  God created me to see what I see and to figure things out with him.  So my thoughts about Heaven are the things that go through my mind and they tend to not be able to be swished away easily.  I try not to think about it much at night because death isn’t really something that should be thought about before going to bed (i get nightmares easily). 

Do I look forward to spending the rest of my life with Jesus face to face?  “hell ya”… for sure and yuppers!  I can’t wait to see my hero face to face.  But when I picture that, I see it in the earthly form that I am, but it won’t be that way, because we will loose our earthly form when we die.   How do I see it differently?  Maybe I don’t have a good enough imagination to see it, but I do know it will look fairly different that what I imagine it to be.  I know life in heaven will be without sin, without having to choose between right and wrong and spending eternity happy.   Does it matter that it will look different than what I imagine?  I guess not because ultimately it’s our goal and how it looks shouldn’t matter. 

So when I am a little frightened about death and living life forever in Heaven, I will just remember that when it is my time to go, that God will take me in his arms and will bring me peace because he is taking me home.  How that home will look will make no difference to me at that point because my earthly body will be gone and all that will be left is my spirit.  I sure hope God/Jesus can handle my spirit up there in Heaven though… I still might cause trouble (in a non sinful way of course).   I guess how we look at Heaven in our earthly way is ok and we can imagine it however we want because when we actually get there, we will just be happy to be there and not worried about anything else. 

I still can not grasp eternity, but maybe as I get older I will understand all this a little better, but from my experience so far, that hasn’t been the case.  I guess it doesn’t matter if I don’t understand it and I will try not to over think it because it doesn’t really matter in the end because we will just be happy to be living with God/Jesus at his home.

So for now, I will imagine Heaven to be side by side with Jesus chatting with him about stuff and  Elton John playing the piano in the back ground (yes I have faith that he might still find his way there).   In case we do have any form of an earthly body, I have requested that mine look like Shania Twain’s. 

Here I sit at work (one of my bookkeeping clients) and I am delaying the number crunching that I will be doing in a bit. I have 3 plastic bags of papers, so something tells me it will be a long file. No biggie, I enjoy rummaging through piles of papers and inputting numbers. It is what I love to do and thankfully I can do a job that I love to do. I wish I had a few more clients, but that will take time and someday I might not even have to leave the house to do this, but do it all at home. Here is hoping!!!

I have been a Christian all my life... from the moment I had thoughts in my head, I remember thinking about Jesus. I have always had a relationship with him which has been great. I have always known that I was protected and had someone by my side all the time. Never once have I ever doubted it. What an amazing feeling that is.

I believe that Jesus is the son of God... and to me that means he is a separate entity of sorts. Do I believe in the Trinity... who knows... I believe that God and Jesus are one, the same way Doug and I are one... so I guess it all depends on your interpretation of that term. Does that make me less of a Christian??? I sure hope not because honestly I have no reason to believe that it makes any difference to my relationship with God/Jesus. Do I care if someone firmly believes in the Trinity??? Nope... they can believe what they believe and I can believe in what I believe... we are all allowed to have our opinions of the interpretation of the bible.

Jesus was put on this earth to show people the way in a human form. How lucky are we to have someone like him to live by example. I try really hard to live by his example and of course, fail at times. He wasn't liked much though and loved to be a rebel. I love that he did things out of the norm... granted he knew he was right, so I guess he had that knowledge. I don't have that knowledge, so sometimes it is hard to walk in his footsteps and know if you are doing it right or not.

I wonder if Jesus felt alone a lot... I think he did. He did things out of the ordinary and that usually means being alone. Heck he even got kicked out of his own home town, so I guess that means something. I love that he said things as he saw it... he had the confidence to do that and not care about the consequences. Unfortunately, I am not like that and when I do try to be a little more like that, we are hated by people even more. So I tend to keep my mouth shut about things now because it just makes people feel better. I wonder what he thought about himself though? I guess he didn't regret anything he said to people, because he was without sin, and I think regret somewhat can stem from sin. I wish I could say things and know with 100% confidence that what I said was how I was supposed to say it. Usually it is about 95% though, but that extra 5% is what gets me thinking.

Jesus is my hero... he is who I look up to and who I want to follow. I know he is my best friend and he doesn't mind if I grumble to him a bit every so often. He puts up with me and loves me just how I am. Granted I try to be who he wants me to be... I don't want this to be a one sided friendship. I don't want him to be the one that does everything for me and I give nothing back. So I work very hard on giving back to him what he deserves. I want our friendship to be 2 way relationship... to be all it can be. I love my friendship with Jesus... I know it is forever and one day I will actually get to see him face to face. Then I can give him a great big hug and thank him for real! Then I won't be alone anymore... what a thought.

Doug and I struggle with the concept of friendship... we believe it is one thing and other's think it is another. I think others must struggle with this too. I think people fill their lives with church, kids and sports so that they can forget how lonely this world can be. We don't have any of those things in our lives and so we notice the emptiness. Honestly though, I would rather be alone then to have friends that never call. It would be like God/Jesus taking care of us ALL the time, but we never pray to him... maybe once a year or so just to make a small connection to make sure God/Jesus is still there. That is a sucky relationship and I want no part of that. The only way we can communicate with God/Jesus is by prayer... which doesn't have to look official, but just the occasional daily hello and how are you. My phone doesn't connect to Heaven so I have to use prayer. Us humans though have phones to talk to each other and we can use them every so often... heck we even have email, which is much easier than a phone LOL. We have used that phone thing a lot but it tends to be fairly once sided... we use the dial pad a lot, but our phone rarely rings... must be something wrong with it HA HA HA.

Again, I have said this before... I would love to move away from all this to start over again. Clean the slate with all new people and see if we can improve our relationship skills with new people who don't have preconceived ideas of us. But... if we are going to stay here, then we will have to figure it out with what we have. We are working on getting into new groups to see if we can find a new circle of friends. If it doesn't work, we are ok with that too. If nothing else, we have the most amazing car to drive in when we feel down. Heck it is still amazing even if we feel up HA HA HA.

Life is about learning and making our light Shine for Jesus. If we have no other purpose than that, I am ok with that. So I need to work on making my light shine. How does this look? We will see. We are open to the possibilities and I think we try very hard to be open to what God/Jesus wants us to be.

"we were meant to shine, not just survive" ... that is our new life motto.

Many years ago (probably about 8ish), I remember telling some friends why we were upset with them... (we should know better, but we don't).

They were new to Canada and when they moved here, we opened up our home to them, including my family parties... we invited them to some family functions (including Christmas) and just tried to make them feel welcome here in Canada. It went great for about a year or so... we would see them often, they would come to our place to visit, and we would go to their place and visit... but soon it slowed down. They became the popular people in the church and preferred to spend time with the movers and shakers of our church. It wasn't long before they were too busy to do stuff with us anymore... and our friendship dwindled.

One day I decided to let them know why we were leaving the church and why we weren't friends with them anymore... and the response to that was...are you ready for this... even though they only see some people once a year, they still consider them great friends. I was floored and honestly, totally stunned. How could I respond to that? I didn't and just left it at that.

Why do I bring this up? Well, it has happened to us again... we have a friend that never calls us, and now has informed us that he considers Doug his good friend... I am totally at a loss about this whole concept. How does one have a great friendship if you never get together? I totally understand being a friend with people long distance... but best friends? Not sure how that is possible. We have some good friends spread through out the US and we truly appreciate who they are and what they mean to us, but they can't be there when we need a shoulder to cry on and when we just need some company in the evening. To me that is where the best of friendships happen... the face to face of everyday of life.

I guess because we don't have kids, or go to church, our life isn't totally occupied by other things, and so a close friendship is important. For us, if distance is an issue, then that is a decent excuse for not phoning to visit, but what is the excuse if you live near by? So, the assumption is that if someone doesn't ever call, then doesn't that mean they don't want to do stuff with us? To me that seems pretty straight forward and honestly, I am ok with that. Good grief, I don't expect people to like us, and if they don't want to do stuff with us, then that is their choice. My issues is if they don't do stuff with us, but still call us friends.

Doug and I are ok with our life. I would prefer to live it in California though... if we are going to be alone, then I would like to be alone in nice weather and surrounded by crazy people just like us. Now this post is not directed to anyone on my facebook friends list, so don't think I am posting this about you. My parents have been our best friends and have been there through our ups and downs. My friend Conny comes out to visit me in White Rock at any given time that I ask... something tells me she gets as lonely as we do. Our friends Kraeg and Anna are just plain busy with starting a new business (but they better start pulling up their friendship boot straps soon HA HA HA... breaky soon???).

Sometimes I wonder what we are supposed to do in this life. I posted a song by Mercy Me on facebook awhile ago called "This Life". It describes our thought process and I think it encourages us on how to live. We aren't going to fit into this world, but we can still Shine... we were meant to shine for God. He created us for a reason, and sitting back and letting the world pass us by is not an option, so we will keep our mind open to all that he wants us to do. We have no idea how that will look, or where it will take us in this life, but I think we are open to all possibilities.

We still feel unsettled here, but something tells me that is just how we are supposed to feel. Keeps us from getting too comfortable I guess (i will just keep saying that to myself). For now we will enjoy living only an hour from my parents so we can visit just about every week. Maybe some day we will live a 2 1/2 hour flight away instead. For now we will enjoy living in the beautiful seaside town of White Rock driving our Mustang Convertible with Mickey Mouse in the back seat. We will enjoy our new pet Minnie and we will take whatever vacation we can grab a hold of. God has been good, and I will never complain about what we have... we are forever grateful for our life no matter how it looks.

So if you see a blondie and a red head walking hand and hand (well... side by side) on the beach, know that we are living the life the best we can and we are happy doing it together with God happily protecting us from all sides.

Well, it’s Saturday and tomorrow is Halloween.  I have always loved Halloween… i like the dressing up (as a kid) and love all the candy.  As I got older I loved the fact you could get Halloween lights and now our house is fully decorated for the season.  I tend to stick to the mellow parts… pumpkins, Casper type ghosts and the occasional bat.  I am not a fan of the scary parts of Halloween, so I stay away from that.   As a Christian, I have never had a problem with this day and with trick or treating.  Why can’t we make the day what we want to make it?  I think Christians tend to take things too seriously.  Call it Harvest day, or whatever you want, but it’s still Halloween in my eyes.   I did put up my first winter lights… they are LED Snowmen, so they aren’t Christmas lights… they are winter lights.

We just got back from a great weekend with my parents.  We went to 6 wineries in Yakima, Washington.  I gave a list of various ones to Doug and told him to figure out which ones he wanted to do, and I would be the designated driver.  We wanted to take the Mustang, but 4 adults and many bottles of wine just didn’t make sense, so we took my parents Aerostar.  It was a good drive, but I missed my car.  Thankfully the Aerostar does pretty good on the hills, so that was much better than the Tercel we used to have LOL.  We stayed at a Best Western in Yakima and shared hotel room.  We always manage pretty good in that regards.  Nobody snores or farts too much HA HA HA!!  Between the 4 of us, we brought back 11 bottles of wine.  Thankfully the border guard was ok with that.  Oh wait… he was only told about 8 of them {giggle}.  We even did a winery tour of Kestrel Vintners… we were supposed to pay $25/person for the VIP treatment, but he waived the fee if we bought some wine.  

So we have driven with the top down a bit in the last week.  The weather has been cold, but if it isn’t raining we tend to drive around.  We have scarves, toques and jackets in the back of the car to keep us warm.  Too bad we don’t have heated seats, but beggars can’t be choosers… so we live without heated seats LOL.  It is amazing how often we look at our car and just grin.  This piece of metal with a vinyl roof makes us so very happy.  It actually brings us a little piece in our fairly unpeaceful (emotional) life…. which segues (spelt correctly) into some of my thoughts these days.

We still feel a little unsettled.  We love where we live and we love living so close to my parents… but sometimes we just feel so unsettled.  We booked our flights to LA for April and are very excited to be going back to California.  We love it there, but I think it is a matter of the grass being greener in another country (HA HA HA).   We have to learn to like it here because what if this is where we will be for a long time?  Thankfully White Rock is as close to California as we can get without moving out of Canada.  We can just say we are on our way!!

The root of our issues though needs to be dealt with… why do we feel so unsettled in such a beautiful city and with such a decent life?  I probably know the reason, but it probably is best to not get too much into it on a public forum.  I just have to get over our disappointments in people and move forward.  I was looking through my photo albums and that didn’t make it any better.  So many pictures of great parties we used to have… and none of those people are friends any more (except for my amazing parents).   I can’t even look at those pictures because it doesn’t bring me good memories, but all the sad reasons they are gone out of our lives.   Some reasons are because of church ( we aren’t Christian enough I guess), some reasons are because we weren’t the mover’s and shakers of the church and so being friends with us wasn’t good enough anymore (and yes, this is not a perception, but reality) and some are because our views on life didn’t mesh with theirs, and so “agreeing to disagree” wasn’t an option.  Of course some aren’t friends because people change (ourselves included) and you don’t have things in common anymore. 

How does one get over these disappointments when they stare you in the face every day?  Moving to Mexico was going to be a new start in life… with a clean slate on the “friendship” blackboard… now that board is only partially erased and we need to rewrite it instead of starting over.  I want to start over… live in a new place… make new memories… meet new people… people with no preconceived ideas of who we are, etc.  But that isn’t an option right now… so what do we do?  We hold our head high, forget the past, look to the future and rely on God to light our path into the unknown.   (This rambling is not any reflection of how wonderful my parents are as friends though).

On another note… for those out there who forget to take their marriages seriously… please make sure you take time for yourselves.  It’s one of the reasons we do these weekend things and just do stuff… we change up the routine so that life doesn’t get mundane.   Drive a different way to work (or back home) to see the world differently.  Do things spontaneously… get out there and enjoy life together.  Marriage is serious stuff and it takes work.   Your partner should be your best friend and best friends should get out and have fun.  Doug and I still fight even on our road trips (just ask Doug about Googling Target), but we work it out and plan the next one.  We need to mix it up to stop the routine getting us down.  We take our marriage seriously and want to make it work (helps that we both want the same thing).  I can’t believe it’s been 22 1/2 years already.  Sure glad I have Doug to enjoy life with.  Here is to many many more.

Less than 2 months until Christmas… YIPEEE (my favourite time of year)

Time for a little lighter blog.  I will try to not get to serious in this one, but I may slip every so often.  I figured I would make note of a few things that make me fun and not so normal (what is normal anyway).

  1.  I carry around a stuffed Mickey Mouse that I got in fall of 2005 when we visited Disneyland with my parents (yes I took my parents to their first trip to Disneyland).  Mickey Mouse travels with me everywhere.  He is like the traveling gnome from Travelocity.  I take pictures of him in every major photo stop that we go to.   He also sits in the back seat of our Mustang strapped in with the seatbelt (so he doesn’t fly out when driving with the top down).  I decided to even start a facebook page for him (oops… he started it himself, but I am just helping LOL).  It’s kinda fun to have him travel with us.  We get questions all the time, but everyone seems to like the idea and thinks it’s fun. 

2.  My hair is bright red… at least it is most of the time.  I love going as bright red as possible.   It helps me feel a little more fun and I feel less dull with it.  I used to have long, curly hair, but when Doug had his stroke, I decided I needed a change… so I cut my hair.  Soon my hair was really short and then one day I decided to get blond streaks.  I did the blond thing for awhile, and started dabbling with the reds and finally found a way to get it nice and bright red. 

3.  I hate silver… it seems so “normal” and dull.  So when we got our Mustang and found out it was silver (our Escape was silver too)… we quickly decided that it needed to be changed.  Of course I couldn’t change the colour, but we added some “touches of us” to it.  We put a strip down the car and put the word Mustang on either side of the car.  It cost us a little bit of money, but it was worth it to make the car seem less “common”.  I also hate “common” LOL

 

4.  I love the “dorm room” look in our place… or at least that is what I was told our place looked like by an old friend (not a friend anymore), so I hope it wasn’t an insult about our place.  I hate blank spaces on my wall and try to fill it up with many things.  Our bedroom even has a Disney theme to it… I love all things Disney and I think that makes me feel young and happy.  I tend to lean more to Mickey Mouse, but I do love Disney as a whole. 

5.  I love lights… lots and lots of lights.  Halloween lights, Christmas lights or any other kind of lights.  Currently my Halloween lights are up, but soon the Christmas lights will go up.  I think it just makes me feel bright and shiny (happy, shiny people??? LOL).  There is something about coloured lights that just make me happy.  I also love all the comments I get from people about all my lights.  Maybe one day an airplane will mistake our place for a landing strip and we will have a plane land in our back yard LOL

6.  I LOVE LOVE LOVE to travel.  Not sure if that makes me specifically fun… but it’s a part of who I am. 

7.  I love driving down the road with the convertible top down… and for no reason at all, just throw up my hands and yell YIPEE!!  What a feeling it is to drive with the wind in the your hair and the ability to put up your arms and the top of the car isn’t there… it’s so freeing.

8.  I love it when we (both Doug and I) totally mess with peoples perception of us.  I think when people first meet us, they think we are a certain type of person, and soon find that we are not like that.  I love the looks on people’s faces when I say something that they don’t expect… yup… that is a lot of fun.

Well, we are back from our vacation. What a great time we had. Here was our itinerary…

Seattle – 1 night

DisneyWorld – 3 nights

Carnival Dream Cruise – 7 night Western Caribbean, ports including Cozumel, Roatan, Belize & Costa Maya

Florida – 4 nights – sights including Kennedy Space Center

Seattle – 1 night

What a great vacation and now we are back home to regular life. I don’t mind that too much because it gives us the opportunity to save up for our next vacation.

We have been struggling with coming back home to the pains of being here. We are trying to figure out how to deal with that. Doug posted on his blog kinda how we feel about it all, and so I won’t try to go over it again. Doug's Blog

Something I thought of today though, and I am going to try to explain it. It all started with reading a blog of a friend of mine who quoted a verse from the Book of Alma… well… I know my Bible a little, and I know there is no such book in the “regular” Bible, so I asked her were it came from and she told me it was from the Book of Mormon. She told me they use this book as a companion to the Bible. That made me think… and so we chatted about it with my parents for awhile and then started to do a bit of research about it. Doug gave us a quick history lesson of what he found out and then we left it alone until our drive home from my parents.

I was having some issues with believing some of how it came about, but then I thought about it a bit more and realized… what does it matter? Does it change my relationship with Jesus on if someone else believes that there are other books written about Jesus? Not a chance! And who am I to say it is true or not? It doesn’t change my Christian views, so why should I worry about it or even put any thought to it? What I see as the “regular” Bible is just a piece of our Christian heritage, and who knows what else is missing from what we were taught. Even the Bible can be interpreted differently and if you don’t believe that, look around and see all the religions that have stemmed from different versions of our “regular” Bible.

Now you ask… why am I mentioning this? Well because the above belief will probably get me in a lot of trouble in the “regular” church who believe solely in the “regular” Bible and have no flexibility in what else is out there. How do we survive in that type of structure? I don’t think we can because in the end someone will always want us to change to their way of thinking and I have no desire for that. I want to have an open mind to all that is out there and the various versions of what a relationship will look like with our Saviour, Jesus Christ. I want my relationship with Jesus to be built on my faith and not what others tell me it should look like. He is excepting of everyone, and so I have to follow that same rule of thinking. So unless church has changed in the last little while, I don’t think we will fit in much. So… what do we do about this? How do we go about surviving here in White Rock with all the bad memories of friends past? How do we go about making new friends that believe in Jesus Christ and not have to succumb to the “regular” church way of thinking? Well… I think we need to have a bit of change of heart… stop looking at what isn’t to be (Mexico) and look at what might be… where do we find this? I was thinking that Doug and I need to find our hearts desire… what makes us tick? Is there an area that we feel God is leading us? If we stay in our cave and hide away from people, we will never show the love of God to people. How do we go about showing what God is all about to the people in our community? How do we show how loving God/Jesus is to everyone, from all walks of life? It won’t be by staying locked up in our house and it won’t be by being pissed off in church all the time… so where do we go? We need to focus on where this might be… no matter how small it is. Do we volunteer somewhere in something that we have a heart for? I know for now it isn’t in church because so far all church has been is a place where they want the members to all think the same. So we need to look outside the box (or church) and find it somewhere. We need people around us… people of all walks of life… we must be needed somewhere… we need to find that place and ask God to guide us in the right direction.

We need to forget about the past and work on the present and future…we need to see where Jesus wants us because he isn’t going to give us this interesting view of thinking and then hide us away in our little condo in White Rock. I am very curious to see where he will guide us, too, because I want to be open to where He thinks we should be. I think it will be small though, because we seem to be good at the little things. I want to look towards this and see what areas we are good at. Maybe work with seniors? Maybe with kids? Homeless people? Single parents? Cooking for others? Teaching computers? Teaching English? Doing some bookkeeping? Playing guitar (that is Doug)… who knows… we have some talent… wonder if they can be used to show how wonderful God/Jesus is and what a great friend he is. I love him with all my heart and I want the world to know that he is amazing and loves everyone no matter what.

So… where do I start?  I met these people 40 years ago, but I don’t remember the details since I was only a newborn… yup, Vic & Chris are my parents.  I am the first born and their guinea pig HA HA HA!!   I think I have always enjoyed my parents company.  Yes, there are moments in one’s life that parents can cramp ones style, but I don’t think it was too often.   What are some of my memories of them…. my dad playing piano to us before going to bed, my mom praying with us, reading to us or even singing to us, our various camping trips (i didn’t say they were all good memories LOL), trekking up the mountain to check out our water supply, the many times my parents put up with our games, skits, etc.

My dad is the math person PLUS he also is a music person.  I got my math skills from my dad, but I didn’t get the music skills.  I LOVE music though, but don’t have the same talent as he does with music.  I do play piano though (SHHHH… don’t tell anyone) and used to enjoy it a lot.  I prefer to let someone else do the playing though… much easier for me.   My dad has a love for teenagers and as a teacher, he is great with them.  It took a bit for him to get used to the idea of me being a teenager though.  Everyone told him that once I became a teenager everything would go downhill, so I think he was expecting me to be a lot worse than what I was… yup… I did do some not so great things as a teenager… I listened to secular music (Bryan Adams, ect) AND I had some posters of movie stars on my wall.   I think he eventually figured out I wasn’t that bad as a teenager and he softened up a bit.  If I remember correctly, he had a hard time saying “I love you” to me for the first year or so when I turned 13… all those stupid people that scared my dad… hope Karma bit you in the ass.  Once he got over that “teenage” hurdle, things went pretty good… other than the normal teenage thing.  Turns out me and my dad don’t work well together and if you want proof… ask us to pile a woodpile together.   Now that can bring it oodles of memories and most not that great, but at least we can both laugh at that now.

In grade 10 my class did a student exchange with a group of students on the east coast… there is no way I would have done this without my dad.  He was one of the teachers that went along, and it made it much easier on me.  I won’t go into detail about that whole adventure as that would take many posts and probably some therapy to get over.  But all I will say is that I survived it because my dad was there.  Otherwise I think I would have asked to be sent home earlier.  When I turned 16, he bought a motorbike and we learned to ride it together.  What cool parents to let their daughter have a motorbike and if I remember correctly, when we moved, he bought the street bike and we learned to ride that too.  I got that bike for my grad present.  Now my dad wasn’t too amused when I became engaged at 17 and when we went to Hawaii as a family (and left poor Doug behind), he proceeded to take me out for lunch and explain that maybe I should play the field a bit… totally understandable for a dad to worry about their 17 year old getting engaged to a 23 year old who was my first boyfriend.   Let’s just say that Doug’s background didn’t ease my dad’s worries… so again, totally understandable for the apprehension.

My mom is the artist in the family.  She comes from a long line of artists.  I have a number of paintings of my Oma’s in our house.  My mom does some amazing sculpting with clay and can paint too.  My sister Andrea got that talent too, along with her son Owen.  It’s cool to see how those talents can run in the family from one generation to another.  I did NOT get that talent at all.  I can paint a wall if I have to, but that is the extent of my artistic talent.   My mom was a teacher before I came along, but decided to be a stay at home mom once I showed my cute face.   I think it was rough on my parents financially with only having 1 income, but they managed and we sure appreciate having a parent home with us.  Granted because my dad was a teacher, we had both our parents home after school.   My mom is quiet (probably where I get that from) and is very relaxed.  She wasn’t the type of mom who made our lunches for school, or even made our breakfasts… granted again, my dad was a teacher, so he was the one that helped us in that area, but for the most part, we made our own breakfasts and lunches.   My mom does not like to cook, but thankfully my dad does, so we didn’t starve.  I think each family needs to figure out their strengths and work with that.   My mom was good at cleaning up after my dad though (in the kitchen), which was needed LOL.   My mom and dad both tucked us in night, but it was my mom who would read us the bedtime stories (Cross and the Switchblade).  She would pray with us and just listen to us when we needed someone to talk to in the darkness of the night.   She read us all sorts of books to us. 

My mom was the calm one when it came to me becoming a teenager.   Ok… mostly calm… my first time driving with my mom didn’t go so well and it was soon after that when they decided I would get driving lessons instead of them teaching me.  Smart move on their part.   I don’t recall many issues with my mom when I was a teenager.  I am sure she can come up with a few, but I think my mom did pretty good as a mom of a teenager.   AS the picture shows, my mom was always good at the strong supportive part of being a parent.  It was great that she was a stay at home mom.

My parents were great parents (for the most part… just ask me about Rye bread)… they took us with them most places even though they could have gotten a babysitter instead.   They allowed us the freedom to be who we wanted to be, even if it meant a small kid would put their feet up in the pews at church in the choir.  They didn’t conform to what society said they should be and with that, raised 3 girls as individuals.  They taught us sex education at an early age so that we understood what our bodies where about and about some of the dangers of predators.   They taught me about faith in God and how easy it actually is.  They didn’t sugar coat adult life and because of that, I was fairly prepared for what the world would throw at me as I grew into an adult.  My parents always told me I was beautiful and because of that, I have a fairly decent self esteem.  They practised what they preached… they were not the type of parents who said one thing and did a totally different thing.  We learned from example and that is a great legacy for a parent to give their kids. 

We have done some stupid things as adults and my parents have bailed us out.  We owe them big time for that.  I think for the most part, our relationship is as friends and not as parents any more.   They support us in all that we do and are a shoulder to cry on when we need it.  They have seen us at our worst (Mom & Dad… think New York LOL) and have seen us at our best.  They have been with us through it all and we are forever grateful for that.  I love having them as best friends.

We are leaving on vacation in 8 sleeps and it is going to be weird to be without them for this vacation.  We have done our big vacations with them for a number of years now, and this will be the first one in a long time that we haven’t done with them.  We will really miss them.  Next year we go to the Panama together, so that will make up for it.    I think my most favourite memory I have vacationing with them is going through Central Park with the horse and carriage.  We were bundled up in blankets in the carriage.  I loved sharing my first time in New York with my parents.   I also enjoyed taking my parents to Disneyland for their first time.   Instead of the parents taking the kids to Disneyland, we were taking them to Disneyland.  That was fun.   So many memories, so much fun… here is to many more memories together.  Thanks Mom & Dad (Chris & Vic) for being great friends, wonderful parents and such supportive people to Doug and I.  We are blessed and thank God every day for you guys.