Home is a great place to be

Yesterday was a LONG day - we left Sydney, Australia at 11:00am on Sunday, flew for 14 hours, then got into LA at 6:00am on Sunday. Pretty weird to spend 14 hours in the air and then get off the plane 5 hours earlier than you got on the plane.

It was hard to say goodbye to our wonderful new Aussie friends. We seriously met such fabulous people on this trip - and we know it might be quite a while before we see any of them again. But the great women who helped organize the Retreats and the media stuff we did insisted that we put 2014 on our calendar for the next round of Australian Retreats. I have a feeling we will be back there before too terribly long. But 2 years is a long time!

April and I with Felicity Aston, our amazing Retreat organizer. She did a truly fabulous job with everything and after exchanging literally 1000's of emails with her over the past years to plan these Retreats, she's become a great friend. So fun to finally meet her in person and work with her in person on the Retreats - so hard to say goodbye!

The flight was fine. I edited all my photos, Ashton got the rest of his homework done, April and I had a good planning meeting plus I watched most of a couple good movies (The Iron Lady and The Artist - good stuff and not movies Jared would really love watching with me - such a luxury to sit there and watch movies and have people bring snacks around every so often - but I did fall asleep through parts of them - sleep is all over the place in random snippets these days!). My seat sure got uncomfortable and it's frustrating to know you need to sleep but not really be tired at the right times. The luggage got very heavy as we trekked through airports and security lines and passport lines and customs lines. But overall, we had nothing to complain about.

After getting off the plane in a daze in LA and having to half carry Ashton off along with both of our luggage (after claiming he was NOT tired, he finally crashed hard the last hour of the flight and I had the hardest time waking him up - I almost had to ask the flight attendants for a wheelchair!), we said our fond farewells to our wonderful traveling companions, April and Alia, and got on our final flight for SLC.

Oh, it was so good to see Jared and the kids at the airport! Wow, those hugs felt good and I swear they all got way cuter and bigger (or simply more handsome in Jared's case) while we were gone. The last few days I was really getting homesick - between the time difference and conflicting schedules (Jared and the kids were heading off on their own adventures - skiing with relatives who were in town and going to the bull sale at the farm where Jared grew up Ashton and I were having all our own adventures in Australia), we were only able to find a few precious times when we could use Skype to catch up with each other.  So by the end, Ashton and I were really really missing Jared and the kids!

The kids had this beautiful banner waiting for us when we walked in the door

Here are the kids with some of their cool Australian souvenirs (Thanks Felicity for lots of them!). 

They loved the sand and sea shells and Asutralian licorice and Cadbury's "lollies" we brought back as well 

(Those are mini koala and kangaroos clipped to their shirts - a bit hit!)  

Now I've got piles of stuff to catch up on for Power of Moms and lots of exciting new things to pursue based on the great people and exciting new connections from this trip. Plus I need to catch up on a little more sleep (but jet lag is seeming better in this direction so far, thankfully - it was pretty brutal when we first got to Australia!). But mostly, this week is going to be about catching up with Jared, Isaac, Eliza, Oliver and Silas - while re-stocking the house with food, working on the dust that seems to have taken over the house while we've all been mostly gone, and doing all the good, basic stuff involved in being a mom.

After talking about motherhood at the two wonderful Australian Retreats, I'm just so excited to be back in the full game of motherhood myself. I love my husband and kids more than ever. I'm re-committed to so many things I talked about at the Retreat and have lots of fresh new thoughts and ideas thanks to the great Aussie moms I had the chance to talk to. I'm so grateful for the new perspectives this trip has offered about so many things! And I feel so grateful that I get to be part of The Power of Moms - it's hard, hard work but it's so worth it as I see it help me become the mom I really want to be while helping other moms - and mums - do the same.

Prior to every Retreat, especially these ones with all the travel and extra work and stress involved in our first international Retreats, I always wonder what in the heck I'm doing. I wonder if all this work and stress is worth it. But every time, especially this time, I come away from Retreats feeling so fulfilled, so empowered, so glad to be able to be a catalyst and a recipient of the beautiful experience of Retreats.

I'll get photos of the Sydney Retreat plus our site-seeing in beautiful Sydney up soon. Stay tuned!

Australia Part II: Wildlife and Beach

(I wrote this 3 days ago but now I finally have a fast enough internet connection to get this post finished and posted. I'm appreciating the internet speed I usually take for granted at home! Since this post, we've spent 2 perfect days exploring Sydney, did a radio show and a top TV morning show here - pretty exciting - and did the first day of our Sydney Retreat - going beautifully so far - one more day to be with this fabulous "mums" and we head home Sunday morning. Will be so sad to leave so many dear new friends and such a beautiful, fun, exciting country we've grown to love. But will be SO good to see Jared and the rest of the kids again - missing them so much!)

What a perfect day!

We got up early and headed to the Currumbin Wildlife Sanctuary on the southern end of the Gold Coast. We spent the day petting and feeding kangaroos plus seeing great reptile and bird shows and seeing koalas and wombats and all sorts of crazy and cool creatures. We also did this really fun and challenging ropes course through the jungle of the sanctuary.

After a great day at the Sanctuary, we had dinner at this amazing place right on Currumbin Beach - the Currumbin Surf Club. Then after our early dinner, we had a great time swimming (Ashton) and wading (me) on probably the prettiest beach I've ever seen until the sun went down. Warm water, gorgeous white sand, the prettiest colors in the water, tide pools, perfect weather. Happy happy happy.

I'll let photos fill in the details.

Of course Ashton was the first to volunteer to hold the snakes in the reptile show (Did you know 1 in three houses on the Gold Coast has snakes in it? And Australia has 10 of the top 10 species of deadly venemous snakes? But luckily most house snakes are innocent and do a great job eating any rodents around.)  

Ashton had to climb every tree he could find. See him up there? This tree was a favorite.

Koalas really are terribly cute. Fun to be about 3 feet away from them.

These guys were wandering all over the place - they are about 3 feet long!

 Those are koalas in the trees behind us.

We went into this enclosure where there were like 200 kangaroos and we could feed and pet them - pretty cool!

 

Ashton and this Emu became best friends.

 

As well as awesome wildlife and beautiful grounds, Currumbin Sanctuary had this quite amazing ropes course. We put on snazzy jump suits and had a very challenging and fun and exciting time tight-rope walking and zip-lining through the jungle. I did the easy and intermediate courses with Ashton and bravely ziplined and climbed all over the place. But I was a bit shakey and tired after that so I opted out of the "extremely challenging" level course and watched Ashton do it. He's brave. And strong. I was impressed.

 

This is Ashton WAY up there. I was zoomed way in for this photo.

After plenty of good times at the wildlife park, we headed to the beach that was just a few steps down the road. We started off by climbing a big rock where we could get sweeping views up and down the coast.

 

Beach at Currumbin - amazing views both directions,
gorgeous baby-powder sand, clean green water

View down the Gold Coast towards the big buildings of Surfer's Paradise

delicious dinner with amazing views at the Currumbin Surf Club 

 We played in the waves as the sun set - pretty darn beautiful stuff.

Australia Part I: Gold Coast Retreat and Rainforest

We're in Australia! It felt mostly like we're in a surreal dreamworld thanks to jet lag the first couple days. But now we're really having fun. We've become accustomed to the accents and new words. Some favorites: candies = lollies (people have given us all this wonderful new Australian candy to try), worn out = flat out, whining = winsing (kids' whining is a topic of discussion at EVERY Retreat!), exit = way out, yield sign = give way. April and I have learned to drive on the left side of the road and have found that we're constantly turning on the windshield wipers when trying to turn on the turn signal (we have to concentrate really really hard and we're pleased to announce we've had no head-on collisions yet!!). It's so green and beautiful here and it feels like a wonderful combination of England (with the accents and the green) and Hawaii (with the beautiful jungle-like plants and heat and humidity). We've met wonderful people who've welcomed us with open arms and made the Gold Coast Retreat run beautifully and we're staying with a kind, fun family who took us into their home without even knowing us.

We've spent most of our time here so far preparing for and presenting the Gold Coast Retreat. We found out that Australian moms (or mums I should say - we're getting used to that) have the same loves, concerns, and needs as American moms. It's great to see that everything is so universal. They laugh at the same things. They have the same hard issues. They love and cherish the same things about motherhood. It's great seeing how universal motherhood is.

Here's a glimpse of the Gold Coast Retreat (SUCH a fabulous group of women!) but you can see most of it on April's blog HERE:

Then yesterday (Sunday), we enjoyed church presented with beautiful Australian accents and were treated to two talks by people we actually knew (our hostess, Sharon, and one of our new friends from the Retreat, Hannah). The topic was families and it was so great to hear beautiful talks that totally built on what we'd been discussing at the Retreat. I got a bunch more great ideas. The kids loved going to Sunday School with Australian kids and seeing what the youth program here is like - a lot like in the United States!

After church, we headed off on a gorgeous drive through the rainforest - tiny zig zagging one-laned road through amazing views and vines and ancient huge trees. We were pretty excited when we spotted this on the side of the road - our first kangaroo!

We ended the drive at O'Reilly's Rain Forest where we got to explore beautiful botanical gardens and go on a "tree top walk" through the canopy of the rain forest.

More photos coming soon (slow internet connection here and I just spent an hour trying to put up photos that didn't load - so more later!)

Why I'm Going to Australia on Tuesday

Ashton and I along with my Power of Moms partner, April, and her daughter Alia leave on Tuesday for Australia where we'll be conducting two Retreats - one near Gold Coast and one in Sydney.

Here's where we get to hold our Gold Coast Retreat. Nice huh?

And here's where we'll be spending a little down time:

I can't believe this is really happening!

Here's the story:

Back in August of 2009, I this email from a "mum" in Australia:

Hi Saren,

I'd love to get some Learning Circles or Retreats going here. I was so excited when I read your email [about what Power of Moms offers], I almost cancelled my booking at the gym to start organising immediately. But as I sat at the computer my 18-month-old started stomping on the keys and I knew it would have to wait :)

I feel SO excited about this! I'm sure I ran WAY faster at the gym today as I thought about implementing things and how great it could be!

Thanks again and I look forward to hearing from you!

Best Regards, Felicity Aston  

Power of Moms was in its infancy in 2009 and I was so excited to see that we had people in all the way in Australian who were excited about The Power of Moms - I forwarded Felicity's email to April and we were both thrilled about it.

Felicity kept doing what she could do to support the mums around her and thinking about how to bring more of what The Power of Moms offers to Australia. She entered some beautiful photos in our photo contest, spread the word about The Power of Moms on her blog (Felicity's Bits and Pieces) and wrote a great article for us (Find You, Be You). She mentioned the idea of doing a Retreat in Australia in emails a few times - and then she got serious about the idea.

In January 2011, we got this email:


Saren and April:
I have been wanting to send you another email for a while about holding a Retreat here in Australia, but I always think you must be SO busy then I decide to put it off for a bit longer :) 

I mentioned previously that Naomi (from www.sevencherubs.com ) and I have been talking about the possibility of putting a retreat together over here.We would love to get information on 'where to start', how you run the retreats and what classes you offer so we can do something similar. Of course we'd really love it if you just flew on over here for it, but we realise that may not be possible and we would love to organise one for sometime this year if we can do that with your help from afar. 

Any advise and or training(?) would be wonderful. 

Looking forward to hearing from you!

Love Felicity

I replied with:

Felicity:

If you could get a large group of moms together for a Retreat and/or conference, it would be financially feasible to do a Retreat in Australia and we'd be over there in a heartbeat!  It's just so darn expensive and time-consuming to get there that we'd need a lot of moms' participation to get enough funding together.  Maybe if we could do a couple big one-day conferences in different areas there plus a 2-day traditional weekend Retreat, we could make it financially feasible.

If you don't think you could get a largish group together for Retreats and/or conferences quite yet, we can do an online training via our Trainer Manual and emails to get you up and running as a trainer so you can set up great workshops and Retreats in Australia.  It's SO much better for everyone when you can experience one of our Retreats in person - but the best case scenario is not always possible.

Let me know your further thoughts and let's get some great stuff going in Australia!

Saren

Then Felicity replied with:

Hi Saren:

Oh the thought of you coming over is VERY exciting :) We feel really confident that we could absolutely get a 'large' group of women together for conferences and retreats......what kind of numbers would we need? Also what kind of costs would be involved? Even just approximate amounts would be great so we could start generating interest and getting an idea of just how many people are interested. We would LOVE it if Power of Moms were able to come and present it personally here :) that's a whole lot cheaper than us flying to the states to attend :)

Let us know the numbers and we'll get back to you asap!!

Felicity

And that was the beginning of about 1000 emails back and forth with Felicity over the past year. Felicity and other great mums, true to their word, have gathered about 120 mums to attend two Retreats in Australia. Felicity has found generous families who've agreed to host the Retreats in their gorgeous large homes,  arranged all the catering, chair rental and countless other details, set up our flights, helped us figure out what site seeing we should cram in on our non-Retreat days, etc. And in a few days, I finally get to meet this wonderful friend I feel like I've known forever thanks to all the emails!

I'm so glad that April and I decided to bring our 12-year-olds with us. They both do a lot of data entry and behind-the-scenes work for Power of Moms and this will be a great chance for them to see the more exciting parts of Power of Moms while hopefully having some bonding experiences with their moms that they'll never forget. Plus they'll be able to work together on the Power of Kids blog that they've been running with their younger siblings for a while now. Ashton's worked really hard to raise the $500 he had to put towards the trip plus his spending money.

We've got our Retreat agenda all squared away and have coordinated with Felicity on countless details but we haven't had much time to think about what sights we should try to see on our days off. Anyone have suggestions of must-see's near Gold Coast/Brisbane or in Sydney? We won't have long but we'd love to pack in what we can. Mostly, though, I'm so excited to meet so many great Australian mums and learn from each other.

***There are a few spots left if you know anyone in Australia that should know about this! And while we're on Retreats, we just launched Retreats in April in Vegas and Palo Alto. For details on all upcoming events, click HERE.

Q and A: Tricky Questions

Question: I'm curious to know what you think about this article:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/Amelia/when-your-7-year-old-son-announces-im-gay_b_1277910.html

Answer:
My first thought on reading the article was that I really do not think that most 7-year-olds have enough understanding of themselves or the world around them to know for sure whether or not they are gay - or to know a lot of other things about what sort of lives they might want to lead down the road. I've got two very bright 7-year-old boys and I've worked with kids of all ages all my life and in my experience, kids go through phases and have different passions and interests that come and go. I don't think it's wise to "pigeon-hole" any child into any particular thing they identify with at a young age. I think it's good to accept our children's interests and tendencies and talk about them openly. But I think it's good to encourage them to enjoy childhood and not worry much about their present or future identity right now.

My daughter has been telling me she wants to be a doctor when she grows up since she was 2. She's now 9 and is still saying she wants to be a doctor and while I totally support her in watching medical documentaries and researching medical things on the internet and getting books about the body at the library, I don't feel like it's a done deal that she's going to be a doctor. She might change her mind. We talk about what might be great about being a doctor and what might be hard about it. I tell her that we'll love her and support her in whatever she wants to pursue. But I also tell her that she really doesn't need to make decisions about her future career right now.

Can't we accept and support possibilities but defer a final answer when it comes to our children's identities?

So I guess my main first thoughts spurred about this article were focused on our children's identity and these were my conclusions:

• Accepting our children for who they really are is a beautiful and important thing.
• Understanding who our children really are is a real challenge. I'm always trying to figure out what is part of the fabric of who my kids are and what I can and should help them tweak or change or enhance. How do you decide what to keep pushing on and what to give up on? (See this post on how I gave up on a particularly clean room for one particular child...)How do you decide what to encourage and what to discourage?

But then, the more I thought about this article and saw what others were saying about it (there were quite a few comments made when we shared the article in our Power of Moms forum HERE - plus there are tons of comments on the article itself), I realized this article brings up a whole other topic that's really important to me.

• Teaching our children the values and norms that are centered upon beliefs that are dear to us is an important parental duty. But how do we simultaneously help our children learn to to understand and respect the opinions and choices of others?  

In my family growing up, my parents really focused on teaching me and my 8 siblings the values they held dear (and went on to write a book about the methods that worked that become a #1 NYTimes Bestseller - Teaching Your Children Values). We had clearly explained and enforced family laws that echoed values of respect, kindness, and hard work. We did awards around the dinner table (for more on that, click here). We watched movies together and analyzed what people had done and why and what we'd have done in those situations. We made "decisions in advance" (when we were 12, we wrote down in our journals a list of things we wanted to commit to always or never do in our lives and signed the list like a contract with ourselves).**

But at the same time, my parents really focused on teaching us about other cultures, other ways of thinking, and other ways people choose to live. We were reminded again and again that "different is good" through dinner table discussions and excursions around the world. We were taught to be friends with everyone and to seek to understand and love all those around us while holding true to what we feel is right in our own practices and beliefs.

In my own family, as my kids get older, there are more and more questions that come up. I want to do what my parents did for me. I want to help my kids develop their own strong sense of right and wrong (and of course, I'd like it if that sense was pretty close to my own) but I also want them to be empathetic and understanding and respectful.  We do a lot of discussing and talking in our home  - it helps that we know a lot of people who have made very different choices in their lives. I think that welcoming questions and  talking and discussing is a big key to the understanding part - as well as the "forming their own opinions" and "solidifying values" part. But we're still figuring all this out.

I want to help my kids have a clear moral compass and a strong sense of right and wrong but I also want them to be open-minded, empathetic and loving.

So I guess my question back to you is this: How do you teach your kids the values you hold dear while helping them develop their own opinions and teaching them to be understanding and respectful of others' choices? 

I'd love to hear your ideas on this topic and I just put up a new topic in our Power of Moms forums on this. Please add your comments and ideas here:
http://powerofmoms.com/forums/topic/teaching-values-while-teaching-understanding-and-respect/

**Just FYI, any of these ideas are laid out in detail in my parents' books (Teaching Your Children Values and The Entitlement Trap).

Eliza's Birthday and Tea Party Tradition

Better late than never, right?



Eliza's birthday is Feburary 13th. She was best Valentine's Day gift ever - our little pink bundle who's grown up to give us love notes right and left all year long. She's everything anyone could want in a little girl - sweet, smart, pretty, dramatic, determined, emotional, artistic, and athletic with a love for beauty and adventure.


Hard to believe that sweet pink bundle is now NINE years old.


Seems like yesterday she looked like this - and talked my ear off in her cute little voice every waking minute.

first day of preschool

preschool graduation

Starting Kindergarten

Here are a couple quick stories stories about Eliza this past year:

Eliza really wanted to learn to ski. But it was way harder than she thought it would be. Her skis were going every which way and she was so frustrated. As she tearfully fell for about the 20th time on the bunny hill, I told her she really could quit if she wanted to. For Eliza, saying she can quit is pretty much like triple dog daring her not to. She wiped her eyes and said "Nope. I can do this." She got her mind around what was going on, really looked at what other people were doing, made some great observations about what seemed to be working, and resolved to be a skiier for real. Within an hour, she was riding up the big lift and making it down the easy run, unhappy with any suggestions Jared or I might give her but excited to tell us about tips she received from kind strangers who helped her up when she fell and wasn't near us (and she preferred us to keep our distance). But the end of the day, she was triumphantly skiing down that hill with very few falls and pretty decent form. Eliza is one determined little girl.

Eliza's a good reader but usually picks pretty simple books. When we saw part of Anne of Green Gables at a party earlier this year, I challenged Eliza to read that whole book and told her I'd take her out for a special book club date to discuss the book and we'd watch the movie together once she finished the whole unabridged book. It was a bit of a challenge for her, but she finished it and we had so much fun at our first "Mother-Daughter Book Club Meeting." We went to a favorite restaurant and Eliza had a whole list of great questions ready for us to discuss about the book - plus she showed me how she'd written out her favorite things about the book inside the front cover so she could give it to her daughter some day. It was so fun to have a real discussion on a somewhat deep level with my own little daughter. We're excited to read another book together and do this again soon!

Every year since her 4th birthday, Eliza has had a tea party for her birthday. Sure, it started off with a little influence from me since I grew up going to tea parties in England and thought they were pretty cool - but she's taken tea parties to many new levels with her ideas. Sometimes they are princess tea parties. One time it was a pajama tea party. Often she insists on dancing at the close of the tea party. Sometimes young men are invited to the tea party. Last year she didn't want boys there so one of her brothers dressed up as a girl so he could come (check out her 8th birthday tea party photos and see if you can find the imposter). Always her brothers eat as many cucumber sandwiches as they can get their hands on whether they're invited or not. Always there are heart-shaped cookies to be decorated by one and all before the end of the party.

4th birthday tea party

Eliza insisted that all the boys dance with all the girls at the close of this tea party -
and everyone thought that was a great idea - they were so cute!

5th birthday tea party

6th birthday tea party (she wanted a pajama tea party...)

7 years old - teeth lost, favorite doll Tasha

7th birthday tea party

8th birthday tea party (can you find the imposter?)

dancing at 8th birthday - Eliza insisted on dancing after tea

This year, we started off Eliza's birthday with her favorite breakfast - yogurt with granola and berries. Then I snatched her from school for a special lunch date and kept her home so we could make the heart shaped sugar cookies we always make and decorate for her birthday.



Then after school, she had her traditional tea party. She only invited a few friends since it's her off year for birthday parties (we just do bigger parties every other year). It was such a perfect sized group and these little girls were so fun to listen to when they somehow instinctively started speaking with British accents as they very politely asked each other about their lives and passed the little tea sandwiches around. The other girls all called her "Princess Eliza" and she called them all "my lady" and it was all very cute. I love seeing little girls be little girls acting like little ladies rather than seeing little girls trying to act like teenagers.

Ready to welcome her tea party guests in her new birthday dress

decorating heart-shaped cookies

and another cookie-decorating time and candle-blowing time with her brothers before bedtime

What would you learn if you watched your life on video?

First of all, thanks with all my heart for the kind, kind comments and emails I received on that last post. I've got some pretty wonderful readers.

In church today, we were discussing how important - and how hard - real progression can be. Someone made a comment that struck me. He shared a story about about a runner who was trying to shave off a minute or two of his time as he prepared for a big race. He kept trying to just run faster but was quite stuck as far as his time. He decided to have someone film him running so that he could watch himself, analyze his own form and his stride, and figure out how he could run faster. It's so important to our progression to step back and try to get a real "read" on the effectiveness of what we're doing. Short of setting up a camera to video all that we do and then watching to see where we could improve, it's hard to figure out how to really see what we're doing wrong or what we're doing fine but could do better. Honest and real feedback is a hard thing to find in this world - but when we can get it, it's such a valuable thing.

Thanks for the honest feedback on my blog and on what you see of me through my blog. Thanks for keeping it to positive feedback given my somewhat fragile ego when I wrote that post. Even though purely positive feedback doesn't give you all the info you need to really progress, it can sure help you realize the great things about where you are and give you the energy to move forward further.

This week I'm going to pretend I've got a camera on me and really think about what I'd be seeing if I watched that footage. It's worth a try.

Thanks again for your kind words.

Jealous Pity Party

Someone made a comment a while back asking if there's jealousy between me and my siblings. Initially I thought the answer was no. We're all different. We all love each other deeply. We're happy for each other when things go well. We're always praying for each other and thinking of each other. I wrote this big blog post about my sisters, our history together, and how much I love them.

But that question stuck with me as questions you're not quite sure about usually do. And tonight I realized that yes, sometimes I'm jealous.

I just read my sister Saydi's blog. It's not just that she's living her dream (and mine) of spending a chunk of time in London with her family (we both grew up there for several years). It's that she's such a good writer and photographer. Her posts make me FEEL. I wish I were better at photography and that I could express things in writing the way she does.

Then I read my mom's blog. She and my dad are in Hawaii having great adventures with my brother Jonah and his family. Jonah and Aja are gypsies who live life on their own terms and never seem to care what anyone else thinks or what anyone else has. I love that about them. I want to be more like that. I'm feeling so encumbered and fettered lately.

Then I read my sister Shawni's blog, glanced at a photo of her and wished, for the umpteen millionth time, that I were as beautiful and thin as my dear sister. When we were growing up, she was the beauty in the family and I was the writer. Now she gets to be both. Then I felt bad for being jealous of Shawni when she's got plenty of hard stuff to deal with and I shouldn't let dumb thoughts like this sneak in. But sometimes I do.

Then I started to think about Noah, Tal and Eli's recent trip together to Puerto Rico and the cool jobs they have, about Charity's freedom and great life in Palo Alto, about Josh's amazing teaching abilities. Then I thought about how hard I work on so many things that don't seem to amount to as much as they seem like they should... I thought about how some things seem to come so much more easily to other people...

But I snapped out of it and started counting my blessings and had the words to a random song come into my mind "I'm one of a kind. I'm as unique as can be. I'm alright I'm OK and I'm glad I'm me." Sort of a dumb song. But it made me feel better somehow. And it made me picture my sisters and I singing that song in the group we sang in as kids. And then I felt tons of love for my siblings and gratitude that we all have different strengths and different challenges.

Then I decided to write this little post because I think we all deal with these sorts of feelings sometimes as we read other people's blogs or look at other people's lives (not sure if it's better or worse if the blogs are family members' blogs...).

My life has it's great parts. My life has it's hard parts. Pretty much everyone's dealing with hard stuff - most of which they don't blog about or flaunt around at church on Sundays. We generally see the happy stuff, the pretty pictures, not the heartaches or the messes. We can catch glimpses here and there of other people's hard stuff if we look below the surface a bit - and sometimes, people do put their hard stuff out there for all to see but sometimes we still stay fixated on what we admire and covet about them and don't figure in the hard stuff we'd have to take on if we were to trade places with them...

I admire and even feel a little jealous of many things about many people. I yearn for so many things I really can't have. But ultimately, when I can get over myself enough to see what's true, I recognize my blessings in all their abundance. I realize that there are plenty of people who read this blog and wish for things that I have - and that if I read their blogs, I'd wish for some things they have. That's just how it is. We can't have it all. But we can love and make the most of what we've got. And we can learn to admire and appreciate rather than envy and covet.

Enough. Pity Party over. Time for bed.