Powerful Life Lessons

Sometimes the best life lessons can't be painstakingly planned out, carefully crafted or providently pursued. They cannot be taught by a teacher, learned in a classroom or forced upon us. Most often, we stumble spontaneously upon the most important life lessons in the least expected places.

Last week we spent 5 wonderful days enjoying a family holiday in Chilliwack BC, visiting family and friends. We took one full day to drive into Vancouver and make family memories at the Vancouver Aquarium, where we had plans to meet up with some wonderful friends. As we headed out of the hotel parking lot on a sunny and balmy BC February morning, we entered our destination into the GPS and set off on our adventure. Well, the GPS takes you the most direct route, and innocently sent us down East Hastings Street, right through the middle of the notorious Vancouver Downtown Eastside, home to nearly 18,000 of Canada's poorest residents. As you can imagine, a small 10 year old boy who has grown up in a middle class home in a small town Alberta landscape, had a lot of questions about what he was seeing! His eyes became as big as saucers as he peered out of the back window of our lovely rental car. He watched in amazement, all of the people, most of whom are homeless, sitting on cold sidewalks, huddled together for warmth on what is left of torn blankets, in their tattered and dirty clothes. We even saw an old and filthy stroller with a small child, not much older than Stetson sitting in it. Imagine what kind of life that poor little baby has lived in such a short time. What kind of future lies ahead for a baby born on the streets, into that kind of poverty? Too many people to count, lined up in front of empty shop windows, abandoned by hopeless owners whose business was driven out two decades ago, by the up rise of drug trafficking and prostitution. We saw several police cars, parked in the alleyways, on the street, Beat Cops walking the "strip" and trying to manage the problem, knowing that despite their best efforts, they will not be able to put an end to it. Not today. Not tomorrow. Not this week. Not this year. We saw an ambulance parked on the sidewalk, with it's back doors swung wide open, as paramedics and police tended to what I am sure is a permanent resident of that street. Everywhere you looked, there was more to see, worse than the last block.

How do you explain all of this to your child, when you can't even make sense of it yourself? All we could do was be honest.  We started out by educating him as best we could, at a level we were comfortable with, being sensitive to his age and what would be appropriate for a 10 year old. Clearly, that was not going to satisfy this curious tween. I could sense that he wanted more from us, that he still needed answers to his questions. We allowed him time to ask what he wanted to know. We explained that these people had been faced with very difficult times, financially, emotionally, mentally, physically, and possibly all of the above. We told him that most of these people were now addicted to drugs and reminded him of the importance of saying NO to drugs, and not falling prey to peer pressure and of course, staying in school. We stated the value of self-worth, self-confidence and self-control. Once that chain breaks down, it is easy to forget your own value and try to fill that void with drugs. Once you become addicted, people turn to a life of crime and will steal and prostitute themselves to pay for that next high. This lead to a discussion about the downward spiral, the vicious cycle and the inevitable question....."what is a prostitute?" Gulp. I vowed that I would always be honest with my children and give them the correct information when confronted with life's most difficult questions. I briefly wondered why I had promised to hold myself to such high parenting standards. One look in the rear view mirror at my two beautiful, clean, healthy and well fed boys, and it came back to me. Two perfectly good little reasons. And thus began our open and honest family discussion on drug trafficking and the world's oldest profession, unfortunately, not just a Vancouver Downtown Eastside problem. Though we don't see any of this on the streets of our small town of a mere 8000 people, in central redneck Alberta, it still exists in cities all over the world, and on a much smaller scale I'm sure, even in our own little sleepy town.

Sometimes, you have to leave the confines of the classroom and be fully present when the opportunity arises, to learn life's greatest lessons.

Lazy Sunny Sunday Morning

It's a lazy sunny Sunday morning, after a week off from the regular routine. Harrison didn't have school this past week and we flew out of province to enjoy a short little 5 day family holiday that's left us all tired and feeling lazy! I am hoping to find my motivation at the bottom of my mug of coffee! I have much to cross off my To Do List of chores: I need to clear off the kitchen table (it's where all of our papers/mail/bills end up) to make it a usable work space to start making my Cookie Monster theme crafts for Stetson's 2nd birthday party next weekend. This means I have to file all the bills in the filing cabinet downstairs, deal with all the junk that I don't feel like dealing with and then finding another place to put it all!!! I have one load of laundry washing now, but have heaps more to do. Cleaning. Ugh. Well, that's as bad as the laundry, and that job never ends either!  The house needs to be vacuumed again...but I just did it!!! (OK...that was 2 days ago now and there's cat hair & crumbs from the kids all over the carpet again!)

Even my little bundle of energy toddler is rebelling against such activity and the hustle and bustle of our regular routine, as he's lounging lazily on the couch, tucked under a soft blanket, watching his favorite TV show. Well, this house won't clean itself, so I better drink up that coffee and see if I left my motivation in the bottom of that cup or not!!!

It's Another Monday Chaos

Does anyone else suffer from the "It's another Monday" blahs!? It seems that my weekends are so jammed full of running around for hockey, from one rink to another, one town to another, with a cranky, overtired, underfed toddler in tow, that by Sunday night, I can't even get off the couch to tidy up the toys or the dishes! And so, this usually finds me starting off my week in a state of panic! Today was no different....

I was up in the wee hours of the early morning with my toddler, who still can't seem to figure out how to sleep through the night without disturbing Mommy's much needed 8 short hours of sleep! So, when the alarm went off, I sleepily turned it off & fell back to sleep! Thank goodness for my 10 year old demanding his own alarm be set, or we may have all still been asleep this afternoon! However, just because he woke up and got himself dressed, doesn't mean he actually wanted to go to school! Far from it! He started his usual whining and crying routine about how stupid school is, and even threw in how his foot hurts and that he can't possibly go to school if his foot hurts! While arguing the fact that one can certainly attend school with a sore foot, I was dashing around the kitchen, making a peanut butter & jam sandwich and throwing together anything I could find in the pantry that could pass as an acceptable lunch. I quickly ask if they have "lunch police" in middle school. He looked at me as though I'd lost my mind....which I'm quite certain I probably have! Oh that reminds me, turn on the leftover coffee from yesterday, still sitting in the pot....that will work as a quick fix until I can brew a fresh pot later! Once convinced he would survive school, we rushed to get him there....only 2 minutes late today! Not bad and it beats my usual Monday morning record of a good 10 minutes late last Monday!

Once home it's time to get the toddler out of his crib....who had been sleeping soundly since his early morning wake up a couple of hours earlier! Daddy was at home with him while I drove Harrison to school, but he too was fast asleep in bed! Let the chaos begin....once Stetson hits the floor running, look out! The toys are strewn from one end of the main floor to the other in mine field fashion. The giant pile of cardboard I have precariously stacked in the small plastic bin in front of the garbage can is regularly dumped out in the middle of the kitchen floor, forcing me to navigate my way through a maze of already eaten cereal boxes & long forgot empty egg cartons. DVD cases of Thomas The Tank Engine episodes, colourful markers without lids, toy cars & airplanes that need to be put away, add to my list of other Monday chores. Everything that I didn't do over the course of my busy weekend is still sitting there, waiting for me to get to it! Add to that laundry that still needs folding, more laundry that still needs washing, dishes that still need doing, a house that needs cleaning and one exhausted Mommy with the Monday Blahs! Am I the only one who finds it hard to get motivated to accomplish my long, never ending list of Monday chores?!

Feeling sluggish and unable to find my motivation, I sat down and sipped my warmed up leftover coffee out of the pot and decided that I have all week to get caught up, and even at that, it will soon be Monday again and I can add the long list of chores that didn't get finished this week, onto next Monday's list!

Brand ~ Homemade Chaos

As a Stay At Home Mom to the two cutest and busiest little boys I know, I spend my days putting their needs first, followed by the household chores that always need to be done, leaving little time for my partner, who has unselfishly settled for a distant third place in the race for my attention, while most days my own needs don't even make the master priority list! I refuse to believe I am alone in this chaos. This doesn't mean that I don't enjoy my role as housewife and mother. Quite the contrary! I love being there for my family. I cherish the one on one time that driving my oldest son to and from school allows us, if only for 15 minutes a day. How else would I find out his deepest fifth grade secrets, that no one else is privy to? I don't know what else I would do with all of those extra hours in my week if I wasn't cheering him on at the hockey rink. I wouldn't trade all those spontaneous toddler cuddles for coffee breaks and adult company in a workplace. I wouldn't swap my endless piles of laundry and the dirty dishes that build up in the sink, while we are busy playing, laughing and learning! I wouldn't exchange my 24 hours of volunteer duty for the monotony of a 9am-5pm high paying job. I couldn't be talked out of all the sacrifices we've had to make, just to keep food on the table, pay the bills and maintain a roof over our heads. Our house is small and nothing fancy. We are a one vehicle family, and a much older vehicle at that! But those are not things the children will remember, when it really matters. It is my hope that they will look back on their childhood with fond memories of time spent together as a family. And I really don't want them to remember my ill housekeeping skills! As I type this, the house is quiet as my boys are tucked in their beds, fast asleep. There are 3 loads of clean laundry, sitting in baskets waiting to be folded, there are toys scattered across the living room floor, the dishwasher needs to be unloaded and a few dirty dishes sit in the sink, awaiting their turn....but right now, it's my turn! My turn to enjoy precious moments alone. My turn to relish the peace the evening brings and delight in the quiet their sleep brings, before the chaos hits that the early morning brings. But it's our chaos....our own special brand of nothing but the very best Homemade Chaos!