Just Like Mom's

Around my house, if something you make is deemed "just like Mom's", it's quite the compliment. Maybe at your house it's more of an insult? Kidding of course!

I've been on a quest to duplicate my mom's perfect cookies for years. Not once has that quest been successful, so I've taken a bit of a break...maybe forever. The thing with my mom, though, is that she doesn't keep recipes (this shouldn't really surprise you if you know her.) I've tried many times to encourage this to happen...I've taken a break from that, too. 

It seems minor, but I'll never forget when my little sister was over for dinner one night and tried my chicken noodle soup. "Hey- this is just like Mom's!" SUCCESS! There are lots of ways to make chicken noodle soup, but I've never tasted one I liked better than Mom's. Now it was mine, too.

Last week we had 16 people over to our house for dinner. A big pot of chili and a big pot of chicken noodle was on the menu for the evening. When people compliment the soup, I don't have to confess that it's my mom's recipe because technically it isn't. I thought about sharing it with you all, but that'd just be too easy. I do intend to share some other family favorites with you though.

Someday I hope that my kids will experience the joy and success of completing a recipe and recognizing it as being "just like Mom's"... and have that be a good thing, hopefully!

Lost Days

How would your life look different if there were do-overs? I think it's easy to say we wouldn't do anything differently if given the chance, but is that really true? Maybe in the big picture it's true, but I've been struggling with these thoughts a lot lately. The truth for me is that I would do quite a few things drastically different.

On my third week home with the kids (or maybe the fourth? Shoot - I don't even know what day it is today to be honest!) I came to a startling realization: I had missed the very best part of my kids for four years. Not that the best part of them was gone, but that in our busyness of life, we got the leftovers. We only saw them at the worst, orneriest, most tired moments... and let me tell you- that's not pretty!

It happened one day while Cam was playing with his trains and out of nowhere, stopped what he was doing just to run over and give me the biggest hug and kiss. And then go right back to trains. That was immediately followed by Claire making some sweet comment expressing that she loved me too and was glad we could play today. And those two things were immediately followed by the Niagara of all crying sessions.

Our kids aren't total monsters! They're actually awesome little humans! How much of this goodness had I missed while lecturing about how we were late, and there wasn't time for playing, and mom has a meeting tonight, and we have to get dinner ready so we can get to bed and do it all again. And again. And again. Man, I missed so many hugs, so many chances to kiss ouchies, so many opportunities to ask questions just to get funny answers.

Now I get to treasure it. I keep a mental list all day of things that J would like to know, things that would make him laugh if he were next to me. Because, I'll be honest, sometimes by 5:30 they've converted back to something very monster-like some days and I'm not sure he'll believe me.