Amy's quest for a beautiful home: Mom, I 'll bet you wish there were TWELVE!

My blogs are usually about decorating, or making things beautiful for yourself and your family. Today, I am deciding to share something that is dear to my heart. My kids! I know, I know, kids are the first thing in your life that you think about being dear to your heart right?

Well, for me today is a little extra special...Waking up this morning to the 12" of snow that greeted my children's smiling faces I knew that this meant a day of dressing, undressing, and re-dressing kids in multi layers of clothing. UGH! is the word I usually use. The snow gets everywhere in the house, the multi layers cause a lot of EXTRA LAUNDRY, and it always seems that we can never find the appropriate mittens, or gloves for the proper child.

Having 5 children was a choice, yes... a choice that I made, and little did I know that it required me keeping up with 10 mittens,10 boots, and hats, and scarves......and the list is endless.

Today once I got everyone dressed (with the help of my darling husband) the first thing that ran through my mind was LAUNDRY, I better get some going. Then, as I was gathering clothes throughout the house I was totally horrified by my daughters closet. I suddenly realized that the cup of coffee I was looking forward to would be waiting for awhile; since now I had to clean her CLOSET! I was..... angry, complaining, and was actually informed by my other half "I HATE IT WHEN I HAVE TO LISTEN TO YOU COMPLAIN!" So I began to complain to myself quietly with each heap of crap I was grabbing. When I put my hands on some old books in the bottom of her closet (at this point, I was basically throwing everything away) when the small "a Little Golden Book" entitled "Mickey Mouse heads for the sky" fell into the trash, and the front cover opened exposing the cover where I had written " To our baby, from mom and dad Nov 14 1990."

I stopped short and grabbed the book out of the garbage, when I did, out fell this....

I sat on the floor in total shock! This book had not only been moved over 4 states, and 4 homes, it had sat unread on the book shelf of 6 kids (Yes, 6!) for nearly 20 years!. This is the birth certificate of my first born son that died when he was 6 months old on October 30, 1991.

Not only today did I quickly realize that I should be thankful for the 10 mittens and gloves I had to argue about finding, or not finding this morning; it made me realize how quickly our lives can change. It was almost as if someone was sending me a message "I'll bet you wish right now you were looking for 12 mittens!"

Moral of the story, we only have one chance to be the best person you can!! Don't waste it on being petty, arguing for nothing more than the satisfaction of being right. Stop Complaining! Do Something nice for someone! BE THOUGHTFUL! Don't forget your kids, yes....I mean everyone that gets caught up into the every day facts of life. Think about your decisions and how they will effect everyone around you! What you think is best for you, may not be what is best for everyone else. Time Flies! Don't let too much time go by that you don't check on your family, friends and loved ones...You just never know.

To those of you that are family members you will know how difficult these are for me to share, but after this morning, I dug up some photos that may be wanted by everyone, and never seen again. Feel free to download them or email me and I will be happy to send them to you: