“How do you go from where you are to where you want to be? I think you have to have an enthusiasm for life. You have to have a dream, a goal, and you have to be willing to work for it.”- Jim Valvano

Over the past 23 years of my life I’ve made quite a few messes. No mess as terrible as the BP oil spill, but let’s just say that I didn’t always make it easy for my parents when I was growing up.

I can remember a night where I had to create a diorama of a native american reservation and I hadn’t started it until the night before it was due. My dad sat with me the entire night (after he got home from work) and helped me glue dirt to the bottom of a shoe box and create little native american men. I can also remember the day before I started high school and swore that I had nothing to wear. My dad spent the entire day with me at the mall while I tried on every single outfit in the stores. Basically I was (and still sometime am) a huge pain in the butt growing up, but my dad is awesome and never lets me down.

So…

Happy Father’s Day, Dad! Love you!

My entire life every single person I have ever met has told me I look like my mom. They are right, but what they may not know is that I don’t only look my mom. I also talk like her, act like her and do a lot of other things like her. Of course I didn’t get any of her talents (quilting, decorating, crafts) which is beyond annoying to me, but we have so much in common that it’s fairly obvious that we are a mother/daughter team.

Now for the past five years I haven’t seen my mom on Mother’s Day. For a lot of people this would be sad, but for me every time I see my mom it feels like Mother’s Day, because I’m always reminded of how much of her I see in myself.

Anne Lamott wrote “My gratitude for good writing is unbounded; I’m grateful for it the way I’m grateful for the ocean.” And that is the same way I am grateful for my mom.