This Independence week remember what America is all about. Dream big and follow those dreams. Celebrate the freedoms we have here in America and don’t take it for granted.
“I believe in America because we have great dreams, and because we have the opportunity to make those dreams come true.”
– Wendell L. Wilkie
Photo by Stephanie McCabe on Unsplash
Happy Birthday, America! Today, we celebrate the signing of the Declaration of Independence from Great Britain. Our forefathers fought for our freedoms and today we recognize our lucky we are to live in the United States of America.
Most of us will celebrate by having the day off of work. We will eat hamburgers and hot dogs because that’s the American way. We will probably have a beer or two to celebrate the day off and the freedom we have to have a beer anytime we want to.
For the past two years, my Prince and I celebrated July 4th with friends on Lake Anna in Virginia. They have a wonderful fireworks display every year, and we were blessed enough to be out on a boat looking up at these amazing lights.
This year we also spent the holiday weekend on the water. Our friends took us out on their boat Saturday and out on jet skies on Sunday. This time we were in the great state of Wisconsin. We got to experience the water of Green Bay and saw the vastness of Lake Michigan. It is amazing how big the Great Lakes are.
The shoreline around Green Bay was amazing. It was full of rocks, limestone, cliffs and beautiful houses. My Rock and I had a great time on the water. I had not been on water skies in over 30 years, but I was able to pop right up! It makes me appreciate our lifestyle. We try to eat well and stay in shape (make sure you check out my recipes and workouts) so that we can do these activities even if we only get the opportunity once every few years!
Overall, our time in Green Bay was pretty amazing. We saw some great sunsets, had some good laughs, and spent some quality time with friends. We saw Egg Harbor, Door County, Fish Creek, as well as other stops along the way. Thank you friends for the wonderful weekend!
If you haven’t heard, last Thursday we started our trek out west where we will spend some time in Park City, Utah. We spent Thursday night in Chicago and then the weekend in Green Bay. Yesterday, we drove to Lincoln, Nebraska where we saw fireworks going off all along the water. The displays went on forever. Today, we will continue our drive and celebrate our independence somewhere in Wyoming. Hopefully we can find a wonderful fireworks display tonight.
I wish you all a safe and happy holiday! Celebrate and appreciate the independence that we have.
As I have said several times before don’t let others bring you down. You are a light. Shine it as bright as you can. Don’t let others steal your sunshine.
“Do not allow people to dim your shine because they are blinded. Tell them to put some sunglasses on.”
– Lady Gaga
Photo by Greyson Joralemon on Unsplash
Luck doesn’t always just happen by chance. You need to create your own luck by taking chances and giving yourselves opportunities to be in the right place at the right time.
When it comes to luck, you make your own.
– Bruce Springsteen
Photo by Dayne Topkin on Unsplash
This week my niece will be graduating from fifth grade. It is so hard to believe. It seems like just last week she was born and yesterday she was starting kindergarten. But here we are six years of school already completed and the first graduation is upon us.
My sister and I grew up in a town where we went to elementary school from Kindergarten through sixth grade. Then middle school and high school were in the same building. Therefore, you graduated from sixth grade and twelfth grade. That was it. Only two graduations.
It makes me sad that my sister isn’t here to watch her baby walk down her first aisle of many. It makes me sad that she won’t be there to hug her princess and tell her how proud she is of her. So I thought I would try to let my niece know how much she is loved. I was able to go to Virginia last week, and I spent some time with my niece having lunch and giving her a few graduation gifts.
If you know me, you know I enjoy taking pictures and then making books and calendars. I use Snapfish and have for years. I love the company and the products. I make the kids a book of memories every year for their birthdays. And every year for Christmas I make the members of our families a calendar to hang on their wall. Therefore, I thought it would be a fun idea to make my niece a book of her first 10 years of memories for her graduation.
In this book, I also included some younger pictures of my sister and myself. I wanted my niece to see how cute we were 🙂 when we were younger and how fun the clothing and hair styles were! It was fun yet sad to look back on all the pictures of my sis and me. Man, did it make me miss her.
I do hope my niece cherishes the book. She may not understand all that it means. Right now she wants to be a kid who plays softball, who swims, who smiles, who dances and who doesn’t necessarily want to think about missing her mom. Maybe she just wants to be a kid who is normal. And I am proud of her for being that kid. But as she gets older I hope she realizes how special her mother was. And I hope she will look back on the memories that are shared with her, and she will smile and treasure all that there are.
Photo by Jason Dent on Unsplash
This quote is so true. I learned in my educational leadership classes that you will never be able to make everyone happy. Someone out there will ALWAYS criticize you for your actions. Stay true to your heart and don’t let what others say bother you one bit!
“Do what you feel in your heart to be right―for you’ll be criticized anyway.”
―Eleanor Roosevelt
Photo by Khadeeja Yasser on Unsplash
What are you made of? What circumstances do you face and what are your reactions? Many people can face the same things but have very different reactions and outcomes to those circumstances. Don’t be afraid of boiling water. Be who you are meant to be no matter what you face.
“The same boiling water that softens the potato hardens the egg. It’s what you’re made of. Not the circumstances.”
—Unknown
Photo by René Porter on Unsplash
I hope you all had a wonderful Mother’s Day this past weekend. It was a time to remember and honor your mother as well as be honored yourself and celebrate all the different types of mothers in your life. I hope you had some time to reflect and celebrate those that mean so much to you. But even if your Mother’s Day didn’t end up being picture-perfect like in the movies, I hope you found a ray of sunshine in your weekend.
This past weekend I was alone. As you know, I am a Pilot’s Wife, and my hubby is on a very LONG trip. I spent much of my time binge-watching the show “Firefly Lane” on Netflix. It’s based on a book by Kristin Hannah. If you’ve read the book then you know the plot and the outcome. If you haven’t watched the series, I highly recommend it. I thought it was fantastic. I cried my eyes out and was pretty emotional for a few days, but I thought it was really well done.
I don’t want to spoil it for you, but I am going to if you keep reading. The book is about two best friends who go through 30 years of friendship together. They go through all of the ups and downs of middle school, high school, college, first jobs, boyfriends, break-ups, marriages, divorces, kids, work, etc. They go through it all yet their friendship remains the rock they both need until the end when one passes away.
This movie brought up so many thoughts in my head. It showed the two girls’ relationship with their mothers. It made me think about mine. It made me think how you see these relationships on television but it’s just not the same in real life. My sister and I were always close to my mom but we were also teenage girls. Seeing this show made me realize how difficult mother-daughter relationships are. There is so much emotion and expectation on both sides. We say things we don’t mean. We don’t understand each other. We are too much alike but we can’t see it, and we battle each other instead of truly trying to understand each other.
I couldn’t help but think about all of my girlfriends, and how lucky I am to have such special memories with each and every one of them. But it especially made me think of my best friend. She has been there with me through thick and thin since I was in seventh grade. Even though we haven’t lived in the same town since 1994 we have managed to stay close. We may not get there for all of the big things but we are there for each other. She gets me and I feel like she may know me better than I know myself. Last fall, I was blessed to be in the same city as her for a month. It was a month of reminiscing about old times and creating new memories. The month was absolutely amazing. I felt like we should have been in the movies because we danced and sang just like the Firefly Lane girls (but to Taylor Swift instead of Abba).
In the series, one of the friends gets an aggressive cancer. It hit too close to home and of course, made me think of my sister. I know it’s a show but it made me wonder what I could have done differently in real life. What could I have said differently? Could I have squeezed her more times more often? Could I have moved in with her or at least moved back to the same city? I wondered why I didn’t write her a letter or take her on a trip. It made me feel like I wasn’t there, and it crushed me. It made me want to go back in time and spend the night at her house. It made me want to go for a walk with her and sit on the back deck and take it all in. Why can’t we do that??
Therefore, the movie wasn’t really great for my emotional well-being, especially with my husband being gone. But I need to remember that it was just that, a movie and a book. The lines are already made up. Everyone knows what to say in difficult times. Everyone knows what to do and it all works out in the end because that’s how movies and books are made.
So I am sad and I miss her and I wish she was here to celebrate Mother’s Day and to help me support our mother. But she’s not and all I can do is cry when I need to cry. All I can do is look at her pictures and tell her I love her. All I can do is remember that through my session with the Medium, she has no regrets, and she is happy in the spiritual world. And she will be there waiting when I get there. Then we will dance and laugh and all the memories will come flying back to me. And I will know exactly what to say just like in the movies.
Until then little sis, please send Signs from Heaven, I could use a few right now. Please know that I love you and will do my best to be the best Aunt Stacy to your little ones that I can be.
Just because you don’t keep going back to a certain situation doesn’t mean you are upset or unloving. It just means you have decided that situation does not make your heart happy. It means you do not feel good about yourself in that situation. And if this is the case then it is okay to leave that situation and choose a different path.
Refusal to return to a situation doesn’t mean you harbor animosity or are incapable of forgiving. It merely means you see the situation for what it is and have chosen a different path.
~ Naomi Carr
Photo by Jens Lelie on Unsplash
A few weeks ago, I wrote about all the wonderful girlfriends in my life. I have known most of these women for a long time. Therefore, we have been through several stages of life together. We have gone through elementary school, the awkward middle school years, the fun high school years, and then into adulthood. Some of us got married, some had children, and some of us went to college. Sometimes we went our separate ways, but eventually, we found our way back into each other’s lives.
These women are some of the toughest women I know. They aren’t afraid to take chances. They aren’t afraid to go somewhere by themselves. They aren’t afraid to try new things. I have found that almost all of my closest friends pride themselves on being independent and being able to take care of themselves and their families.
As we go through life we learn lessons whether by choice or by circumstance. Even my girlfriends who are married still have a sense of independence. One of my best friends tells her husband, “I don’t NEED you, I WANT you by my side.” Isn’t that how it should be? Many of us don’t NEED each other. We like having people by our side. We like having companionship. We like having someone to talk to in the morning. But if someone wasn’t there somehow we would survive. Maybe we would have to work a little harder to get where we want to go, but we’d figure it out.
Sometimes it’s hard to compromise and allow yourself to be taken care of, especially if you have been single for a long time or if you have had to do a lot of things on your own. You learned how to make your own money, you learned how to unclog your own toilet, and you learned how to smash that big bug on your floor. So once you take that step and say “I do” you have to learn the art of compromise and communication to make that marriage work. I have known many people who are married yet very lonely.
As you know it took me a while to find My Prince. What I was afraid of was giving up my independence or losing myself. The best thing about being a Pilot’s Wife is when he goes to work for long periods of time I need to make decisions about household items, I need to fix things that may break, and I need to kill little creatures who try to invade our home. But when he is home, he gets to squash the bugs, handle the decisions, and fix the things that have gone wrong.
What I see in all of us women is sometimes a dilemma. Many of us were independent women for a period of time. We developed our routine, we became set in our ways, and we learned how to be alone and not lonely.
Eventually what we need to learn is how to let others take care of us. Sometimes it’s so hard and because we were so independent we see this as weak. We know we can do all of it on our own. Why would we need help? We don’t need anyone to put gas in our car. We don’t need anyone to help us run the power tools. We don’t need anyone to get the glass on the top shelf for us.
But what we need to learn is that it is okay to let another person treat us right. It is okay for your husband to wash your car for you. It is okay for your friend to take your car and fill it with gas. It is okay for your partner to get that glass down that you couldn’t reach without a step stool.
Even though it’s hard we need to learn grace. We also need to realize that we all are getting older. We all may face a point in time when we are not physically able to take care of ourselves. We need to learn that is okay to ask for help and it is okay to let someone else do things for us. We need to let these generous humans take care of us. It’s what they truly want to do. Sometimes we need to let our significant others treat us like the princesses we dreamed we were destined to become when we were little.
So the next time your partner offers to make you a cup of coffee in the morning say, “Wow babe, that would be awesome, thank you” instead of channeling your independent self and saying, “No, that’s okay I can do it.” Allowing yourself to be spoiled from time to time doesn’t make you less of an independent woman. Let’s learn to find that balance because someday even if we don’t want to, we may need to rely on others for help.
Photo by Doug Tunison on Unsplash