Thanksgiving Time

I thought, since Thanksgiving is coming up, I'd share some things I'm thankful that my mom did as I think of them.

I'm thankful that my mom taught me to dress nice.
When I was a teenager, of course I wanted to dress trendy, but what is trendy is not always what is modest or looks good. She would catch me in some outfit that I could only imagine made me look like a hoodlum and make me change my clothes. She would tell me, "The way you dress is the kind of people you'll attract. If you dress like a skank, you're not going to attract nice people." It makes sense.



I'm thankful my mom put me in dance lessons.
I was so enthusiastic about being on the dance teams in junior high and high school and I never would have had the talent if I hadn't had the training. When I was little, I would sit with her after a performance and we would watch other dancers and she would tell me, "You have to be sharp, Honey, like that girl." I was kind of a shy, mellow dancer when I was little.



I'm thankful my mom made me take piano lessons.
We would whine and whine because we hated practicing, but my mom made all five of us take piano. I have to admit that I love playing, but I still hate practicing. My mom would try to help us when we were stuck on a song. She'd stand by the piano and clap the beat and sing the notes. We would yell at her and tell her, "Mom! That's not helping. I can't play when you do that!"



I'm grateful for my mom's personality.
If nothing else, her antics make for a great story. I remember when Carly was a baby, she was taking a nap and one of the neighbor kids kept ringing our doorbell and running away. My mom was getting frustrated because she didn't want the baby to wake up. By the third time she had caught on to his plan. She waited for him to ring the doorbell and when he took off running she was right behind him. She caught him by the arm and swatted his behind and told him, "Now go home and tell your mother why I smacked you!"



I'm grateful my mom took us to visit our Great Grandma Sophie when we were little.
We hated when she would pile us into the back of the Baja truck every sunday and drive us up to Ogden to see our great grandma. There was nothing to do there, except try and find where the hole in the basement went, or go down the street and pick cherries, or dig in to the bowl of candy she always had on her kitchen table, or watch cable tv. :) On the way home, my brothers and sisters and I would always sing songs or tell eachother scary stories. We still laugh at the stuff we made up. Beside that, we got to know our great grandma!