Music Monday - For Mom

There are a lot of really great things about growing up on a farm.

There are a lot of challenging things about growing up on a farm.

But for the most part - especially now that I'm a city-bound adult

I cherish the idiosyncrasies of our childhood farm life.

On our farm we didn't have a dishwasher.... we had 4 dish washers rather:

Skylar. Ailen. Jordan. Kelsey.

Between the four of us we negotiated the post-dinner kitchen disaster zone.

Even though we knew this was one of the "kid chores", we would often put up a protest. Without fail Mom and Dad stood their ground and the dishes got washed by our tiny, soft, innocent child hands (yes, fishing for sympathy here...).

Years of conditioning later.....I'm highly nostalgic whenever I wash dishes.

Not so much because of the dishwashing activity,

but because of the routine of our household:

the parents prepared the meal,

we ate together as a family,

and the kids cleaned up..... and always, while we were toiling at the sinks, Mom would shift over to the piano and with a few hymnals or song sheets start plunking out some tunes on the out-of-tune piano.

When she played.....

sometimes we would sing along.

sometimes Dad would join in on his flute.

sometimes we'd pair up for a waltz or a two-step.

"You never dance with anyone as well as you dance with your siblings."

- Mom

Her music was the soundtrack to our family evening ritual

with Louis Armstrong standard in her playlist....

Thank you, Mom, for the gift of your music, and for the constant reminder that this truly is a wonderful world.... dirty dishes and all.

Make that ... "dirty dishes, spitting brother, and all."

Happy Mother's Day

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For our blog's first birthday we invited all our readers to share some favourite posts from this past year with us, and we'll reveal what you all had to say in our posts as the weeks go by.

Mom's submission was first one we received, and her 2-cents is below!

1. Kelsey: your MI6 picture FREAKED ME OUT! Because I was so worried about you making the connecting flight to India, I couldn't believe you dared leave Heathrow to see anything of London!
2. Ailen: your post about Theo's Hockey Game made out of Lego was wonderful and very detailed. It really made me appreciate the detail he went into while constructing. That he had just been at an actual Oilers game no doubt helped, but he even thought of building CAMERAS using Lego block eyes, for goodness sake.

I love it when you talk about how much you both love "home".
Love, Mama