Year-End Countdown: #2

Continuing the year end countdown - Here is the second most popular post from my blog in 2011.  It was originally posted in February.  I will post #1 tomorrow!!  Any guesses??

Change of Plans

Today, my youngest, Emily, noticed my wedding and engagement rings.  She asked me where I got them.  Of course, I told her that Daddy gave them to me.  Naturally, she said "Why?"  Somehow in this conversation, she asked if I "wore a pretty dress" (talking about the actual wedding).  This past August, Emily was actually one of the flower girls in my brother-in-law's wedding, so she understands the concept of a wedding. However, I realized that she had probably never seen pictures from our wedding - at least not since she has gained this new understanding of what a wedding is.  So, I got our wedding album and looked through it with her.

As I looked at it with her, I was thinking about how things have changed.  Everyone in our wedding party looked so young.  The flower girls are now teenagers.  Two of David's brothers were teenagers then and they are both married themselves now.

She asked me "Where was I?"  I told her that "she was with God waiting to be born," but I was really thinking, "Where was she in our "plan"???  The fact is, even though I planned to have kids, I never thought I would have 3 girls.  I never thought about how difficult raising kids would be.  In the June Cleaver-ish picture I had in my mind, the house was always clean; a perfect dinner was on the table at 6:00 sharp; the kids never had temper tantrums or back-talked;  and we never worried about money.

I have certainly gotten a healthy dose of reality over the past 12 years.  The facts are more like this:

the house is never completely clean; there is no such thing as a "perfect" dinner when you are facing picky eaters (and even if there was, it wouldn't be ready at 6:00 on the dot); the kids have temper tantrums and back-talk and fight with each other and get moody and get mad and complain and- well, you get the picture; there is never enough money when you are raising kids- even if you pay off a debt or get an extra check, there is always something else to spend that money on.

See - PERFECT! ;)

No matter how cliche it sounds, though, I would go back to that wedding day and do it all over again.  If I knew then what I know now,  I would change a few things along the way.  But, I wouldn't change the end result for anything in the world.  After we looked at the pictures, Emily gave me a kiss on the cheek and we baked some cookies.  They probably didn't taste like June Cleaver's, but I still think they were perfect~!

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