Mother’s Day | FoodsOfOurLives.com
With Mother’s Day being next weekend I wanted to say something about Mom’s. My mom in particular. And my sisters, who are moms. But I haven’t really been sure what to say exactly. Of course I want to relate it back to food… There are a lot of things I learned from my mom, not necessarily because she sat down and taught them to me but because she did them and I noticed. Here are a couple examples:
I am sitting here right now and it’s 5:30am.
I learned how to get up early, before the kids, from my mom. As long as I can remember, when I would come downstairs my mom would be sitting there with her Bible and her coffee. Always.
That was something I could depend on and not only do I desire the alone time myself, but now my kids know when they get up, I will be there already. My boys are usually up first so they are the ones most affected by this, but I overheard my daughter telling someone the other day how when she gets up, breakfast is waiting and her school lunch is by the door and everything is ready for her (spoiled little princess, right?!) but hearing her say that, I know these things make her feel special and loved and I wouldn’t be able to get that done without getting up early.
Another thing I learned from my mom is how to get ‘er done.
I can remember so many times when my mom would have a project she wanted done that she kind of needed help from my dad on…she would wait…for a while… then if he wasn’t quick enough she’d just get sick of it and do it herself.
I am pretty much the same way. I hate waiting for someone to help me, sometimes things would be done more effectively if I would wait… but I hate waiting so I typically don’t.
I think this ties into being confident to try things, which is another important thing I learned from mom. Someone once told me, they think women who were homeschooled as children tend to be really awesome at this (yes, I was homeschooled through 8th grade). Perhaps because of their moms being brave enough to keep their kids home all day? I have a feeling it’s because women who choose to homeschool are just like that.
Not afraid to go off the beaten path and give something new a try.
I am not homeschooling my kids (and I absolutely do NOT think this mentality is restricted only to homeschooling moms) but I certainly am not afraid to try things, in fact I love trying out new ideas to the annoyance of my husband who is always trying to get me to slow down and not create so many projects for myself… but I have so many fun things I like to do because of this mentality. Our time in Montana has sure been proof of that!
Since we have lived here I have learned how to care for dairy goats, sheep, raise chickens and ducks, slaughter and butcher out any number of animals, crochet, knit, run up and over mountains, how to stay warm in sub-zero temperatures, bake with sourdough, make kombucha, gotten quite a lot better at photography and cake decorating and all kinds of other fun stuff. Can you tell I love it here? And who knows what kinds of things await me in Florida! Ha ha, although I have promised the hubby if he gets me a house with a pool I won’t be so inspired to be doing, but rather, will prefer to lay by the pool all day long… we’ll see if I’m actually capable of sitting still long term. Probably not. But we won’t tell him that.
Another key thing I learned from my mom is how to cook.
I think this all comes back to being confident to try things. My mom always cooked (and still does) everything, from scratch. Everything. People think my cinnamon rolls are good. But I haven’t got moms beat (yet). Hers are amazing. When my mom got married to my dad she didn’t really know how to cook, but she sure does now! Again, that whole confidence thing. She jumped in and figured it out and raised us that if you want to eat something, you have to cook something. We never really had pre-made foods around. Cereal was probably the extend of it. Maybe store-bought popsicles if we were lucky. When I first got married, my husband and I went grocery shopping together a few times. As I was wandering all over the grocery store trying to find all these ingredients for spanish rice, he finally asked what the heck I was doing. I told him and he introduced me to rice-a-roni.
I had never heard of it other than the commercials. I didn’t buy it more than a few times though, as I still preferred to make my rice from scratch.
Just the other day my husband and I got a good chuckle because I went to pick up my daughter from a sleepover and the mom mentioned she didn’t eat any dinner. Which I said was strange, she’s usually a good eater. Then she mentioned, “Well we just had hot pockets and she didn’t seem to know what they were and wouldn’t eat it.” Ha! That’s because she DIDN’T know what they were. I can just picture her sitting there with a (secretly) horrified look on her face wondering what this mystery food could possibly be. Apparently I am passing on my lack of knowledge of pre-packaged foods to my children and I am totally ok with that.
I think if someone was to ask me what the most important thing I learned from my mom was?
I would say faith in God and confidence. I’ll take two.
Which I bet mom would get a chuckle out of because I don’t think she sees herself that way necessarily, but that’s what I see. But look at what a roll that has played in my life, and now it’s already starting to play out in my kids lives and my sisters lives who are all super confident and God loving people as well!
Can I talk about my sisters (they’re mostly all mom’s too except Emma)? Goodness these women! They’re amazing.
Mother’s Day | FoodsOfOurLives.com
Rachel was sort of halfway diagnosed with MS a few years ago and although they ended up telling her they actually had no idea what the heck was wrong with her, she has MS like symptoms. She had a handicapped sticker on her car because she could barely walk across a parking lot. So you know what she did? She ran a marathon. Killer right? It took her a year to train for it. But she did it. Never tell Rachel she can’t do something unless you actually want her to do it.
Then there’s Kirsten, sorry I don’t think any of us can top Rachel’s marathon, but Kirsten makes some of the best sourdough bread ever to be found despite the fact she’s been kicked in the head by several horses and had a tree fall on her (which thankfully hasn’t seemed to affect her). She is also one of those people who doesn’t care what other people think. She does what she wants to do because she wants to do it, not because other people expect her too or want her too. She follows God and she follows her heart. She also has this amazing super ability to come up with fun food flavor combinations. Cupcake of the Week two weeks ago? Ya that was Kirsten.
Lissa. This girl does hair, she went to cosmetology school and is As. Girlie. As. It. Gets. but somehow we all roped her into getting goats, ducks and chickens. So here she is literally 9 months pregnant with her second (she gave birth a week later, um maybe less, so I am talking quite literally) and she calls our house and says to my husband, “One of my ducks just got attacked by owl and it’s not going to make it so how do I butcher it?” Oh. Yes. So my husband walked her through the process, sent her to good ol’ youtube. Her husband was out of town so she was on her own with this mind you. Then she texted me with another question about it, so what did I do? I told her to just take it to mom 😀 My mom has slaughtered tons of chickens over the years so I figured she could manage one duck. And they did. How awesome is that?! I love it. They totally ate duck at Thanksgiving.
Then there’s Emma. Good ol’ Auntie Em (that’s what all our kids call her). She’s a lot younger than the rest of us but no less confident. When she wanted to learn to crochet, this makes me laugh, she didn’t bother to wait for someone to show her! Sound familiar? She just figured it out… and made up her own crochet stitch and methods in the process. Ha! Chip off the ol’ block.
I have to mention my brother, John, I suppose too, I only have one brother. He’s my favorite. Thankfully you tend to marry someone like your own parents right? Because he married a girl who fits right in with all these confident women. John was brave/crazy enough to let me talk him into letting Amanda get dairy goats (I’m a little bit of an instigator when it comes to farm animals)! Along with dairy goats (actually he strongly dislikes the goats but we all like to give him a hard time) he also likes to climb and has summited Mt. Rainier several times and I am pretty sure that takes an enormous amount of confidence, but guess who went with him last summer? Oh ya, his awesome wife! I have no doubt his son, Ben, and him will be summiting together in not too many years.
As you can probably tell, we are a big bunch of go-getter type people and I believe strongly that is due to my mom (yes Dad, you helped too! I have no doubt you’re reading this. But this post is about Mom. If you’re lucky you’ll get your own post later :b).
I can already see this trait popping up in all the cousins we have running around, especially in my own kids, because I see them everyday, we don’t actually live near any of our family. I think it’s awesome when I find my older kids (7 and 9) in the kitchen whipping up some fried eggs or baking a cake. Seriously.
Of course my 9 year old still has a problem following baking instructions and typically messes the cake up…but he keeps coming back and trying! He even made some very good strawberry shortcake last week which made me so proud.
So anyway. There’s your Mother’s Day post… what did you learn from your mom? Or what do you love about her?
…and later this week I will have a special Mother’s Day Cupcake recipe for you!
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