“Rachel, I don’t want you to grow up” – Granny, to a young me

my response

“Why Granny, Won’t you love me when I’m bigger?”

I don’t know how old I was at the time of that conversation, and I don’t remember her response to me, but now that I have my own children – I completely get it.

 

They want to grow up so fast

And I want them to stay small

They want to zoom through childhood and do it all…

 

I want to hold them and protect them and shelter them

 

It’s inevitable as we reach the end of this school year that the kids are already talking about next year.

NEXT YEAR when I will have a 3rd grader (the oldest grade in our Elementary School) AND a kindergartner!!!

Be still my heart

We talk about what their goals are, what they want to learn and accomplish and do over the summer and the next year and that inevitably leads to the ‘When I..‘ conversations.

When I’m a 3rd grader, I will know multiplication

When I’m a kindergartner I can show my teacher how I can read and I’ll get to do PE!

When I’m in High School

When I get married…

When I’m a Mom…

When I’m a Dad…

When I Grow Up

I go along with them and we play ‘When I Grow Up’

When Princess grows up she wants to be a veterinarian-dolphin trainer-teacher-mom-writer-artist!

 

Monkey wants to be everything his Daddy is.

I make them laugh when I tell them that when I grow up I want to be a photographer, writer, friend, mom – because in my mind I am still not grown up.

They find that really amusing

After every When I  conversation I tell them that they can be anything they want to be and their Daddy and I will do everything we can to support them and help them achieve their goals and grow into the people the are destined to become.

Right now we’re doing our best to give them the foundation they’ll need to become those grown ups.

Independence.

Strength.

Confidence.

Love.

 

 

Thank you, Hallmark, for choosing me as one of their “Life Is A Special Occasion” bloggers and allowing my life and stories to be a part of their Life is A Special Occasion program.  While I am compensated for my work with Hallmark as a Life is A Special Occasion ambassador, everything posted is original and real and from our life

One Thousand Posts

This is the One Thousandth post on this blog.

One thousand notes, recipes, tidbits, pictures, random thoughts…

One thousand moments of my life our lives recorded here.

I admit, I had no idea what I was doing when I started From The Land of Monkeys and Princesses

I had no clue when I started talking about lemons and road etiquette, that this blog-thing, this online note taking would someday lead to friends across the world and even introduce me to some down the street.

I had no idea where it was going to go, I didn’t even know there was a “where” that it could “go”

It was a place to store my stories, pictures and recipes – a place for family who were living in Australia, Kentucky, the wilds of Texas and elsewhere to check in on the kids and see what we were eating.

It’s  pretty clear from my first posted recipe, that I had no idea how to format a post, write a recipe for a post or do any such thing – but then, I wasn’t thinking about an audience.

I was writing to remember.

To share.

To archive.

I was writing for them:

 

 

I’m not a scrapbooker and physically hand writing anything for long periods of time (5 minutes or more) causes me pain.

So I started this blog thing.  I didn’t tell anyone, about it.  It was a secret, something that was only for my family and something my kids could someday look back upon.

Something they could read and see, a way for them to experience life as they lived it, when they lived it, through their mom’s eyes – you know, before I was all ancient and stuff.

These were my daily, and not so daily, notes and little bits of life, my recordings, memories, photographs and takes on the things that happened… nothing more than the every day – and yet, now… 4.5 years later, I look back on them and I laugh.  I cry.  I roll my eyes…

and I thank God that I have each of these memories.

I thank God that I have this space to tell our stories, to share them, to store them, to treasure them.

My kids know about this space.

We talk about it, they ask me to take pictures of them and share them with the internets and to put their stories and sillies on my blog

Someday, my kids will look back on this space, these posts and they’ll read my words, see their pictures and re-experience their lives.

I can only hope and pray that it means as much to them as it does to me.

 

 

I’m thrilled to work with Hallmark as one of their “Life Is A Special Occasion” bloggers, and that my 1,000th post on my blog celebrating my family, my everyday life and love for them, coincided with my monthly Hallmark Post.  While I am compensated for my work with Hallmark as a Life is A Special Occasion ambassador – this post was not prompted by or encouraged by Hallmark.  It just happened, y’know – like life