YO MOMMA! (Happy Mother's Day)

[Elyse]

YES you have more than "bragging" rights here. Gorgeous kids, oh the eyes (to the soul!) thanks again for sharing these.
You got to do a HOME BIRTH, now I am flirting with jealousy, lol. Yep, we're kindred spirits. I did not get to but sure believed in them but being an active-duty military wife at the time I had to all but report in with my DNA. Worse, hubby was deployed during both pregnancies and I had to depend more upon TPTB.

You rock, Mama for having *done it.

I don't have my kids with me today. Both married daughters and my only grandchild, a barely-two year old boy were with me/us here in our temp. home for a full week and left last Tuesday. We had a wonderful time together for which I'm very thankful. The girls are now 28 and 31. I was blessed to get to homeschool them for a total of 13yrs. I think it was.

Lol, yeah. I definitely got to do a home birth! I'm sorry you didn't get to experience that and that your husband was away for your pregnancies... I bet that was scary!
You know, it's sort of funny thinking back, because someone at the Dream Center had suggested natural birth or even a home birth and introduced me to mindful meditation. I had considered it but in all honesty was scared to death and didn't think I could do it!  And its a GOOD thing that I learned about mindful meditation because my "husband" left me alone at home AFTER I went into labor and it sorta came in handy! Yep, even after BEGGING him not to leave because I felt the baby drop, he left and was gone for a long time. But I'm so glad it happened! I honestly didn't think I was strong enough to do it... and I bought into the crap that they make you believe on TV and guess what? Doesn't hurt. I mean, you know ALL about the contractions and stuff... so I was under the impression that the actual delivery would be even MORE painful. Nope. The pain was gone. Like magic. MAGIC I TELL YOU!!! And I will tell you this, IF I were ever to have another child, they wouldn't be able to drag me into a hospital. I am entirely convinced that its more painful to have one at a hospital now.

Yes, we are indeed kindred spirits! HOME SCHOOL! Your girls were SO lucky to have you homeschool them! I BELIEVE in homeschool! I don't like or trust the education system we have now at all. And you don't even wanna get me started on common core! Kids aren't learning! They are taught obedience while they are forced to retain information... much of which is re-written history. I can tell you now that my kids knew at 2 or 3 what the average kindergartner / first grader knows at 5. This isn't because they are smarter than other kids, or because I'm just some fantastical mommy, but because I LET them learn! And also, I think expectations of our children are just so low in public schooling. If I give my kids the information, they run with it! All I have to do is make it "fun". Kids are designed to learn like that! By two, my kids knew their whole alphabet and could write it out! They knew their colors, shapes, could count to 20 or more. Not only that, but we learn lots of hands on stuff, like gardening. The Pledge of Allegiance! Self-sufficiency! My older kids know a variety of wild edibles and we go out to collect them from time to time. Stuff they don't want to teach in public school. Lol, I'm sorry! I'll stop now!

I'm sorry that you didn't have your girls with you for Mother's Day. I spent the day alone with my kids and we ate leftover Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle cake from Michael's birthday and they even let me take a nap, or rather I was afforded one thanks to the crash following the sugar rush, (Talk about an AWESOME Mother's Day gift!) but I guess I always get a little melancholy around holidays to include Mother's Day because I don't have much of a family. (My parents were pretty abusive so I had to run away from home at a young age. Needless to say, we don't have much to do with each other.)

Native American Dream Weaver, thank you for sharing the pictures of your daughter~ Wow! She is gorgeous and YES... she looks JUST LIKE YOU in that second picture! My goodness!