I'm not bragging, but...

It's easy sometimes to take stuff for granted. You know, some stuff happens everyday, and you get where you just expect that. You forget sometimes how unique it is, or how special or whatever. Then, something happens that makes you realize what's going on.

Your kids are that way. You work hard all their lives to help mold their personality and stuff, and when they get a little older (remember, everything is relative), when they act or behave or whatever in the manner you expect,  ehhh, no big deal. But when you hear of some of the things that other kids do, you begin to appreciate them a bit more.

I'm very blessed with my kids. I have five, which got everybody's attention when I was answering questions during jury selection one time. My two older girls, now 29 and 26 (27 in November), and my three boys, aged 17 (18 in January),16,and 11. Each one is as different as night and day. The oldest has the outgoing personality, the next is the student. The youngest has a silly sense of humor, and enjoys being the youngest (just ask him, he admits it!) At 16, Middle Boy is the prototypical high school nerd, who loves gaming and wants a career in computer software engineering. And the 17-going-on-25 boy is the most like me in terms of his love of sports and such. We have (at least I think we have) a good, strong relationship with all of them. The girls even get along with and seem to like their stepmother (and yes, in deference to all the Disney movies, I often refer to her as the "wicked stepmother", a joke that only I seem to truly appreciate).

I say we're blessed because I don't usually face some of the issues I hear others dealing with. My boys do their chores. They come home and sit down and do their homework. They ask permission to go places. They watch their soda intake (which I understand is a MAJOR problem in a lot of homes). They do their own laundry (more or less...). I was complaining to someone one day a while back about how one of them says "Hello" every time they see me as if they hadn't seen me all day, and they expect me to answer. My complaint was that it was distracting. The other person thought it was nice, and wished their kids would speak to them even just once a day. I've learned to appreciate it more now.

We had a run-in with Honorable Number One Son a couple of weeks back. To be brief, he let us down on something, and Mom and I were pretty upset about it, but, being a Mom, it particularly got to Monica. It took quite a while to get everybody over it, because, as I explained to them at the time, we didn't know how to get over something like this. We'd never had to! We had always been able to sit down, talk over a matter briefly, and be done. And we still can. This one just took a little more work than usual.

That's what I mean about being blessed. #1 has gone back to school to get her degree and improve herself, #2 is about to finish her doctorate and has a good career outlook, #3 has done a great job of looking at colleges, and he has a job and a girlfriend now, #4 continues to do well with his engineering studies and is still on the path to being an Eagle Scout, and #5 still makes me laugh. We all of us can sit around a dinner table, or be riding in a car, or whatever, and carry on a conversation, often intelligent, sometimes cracking each other up (ask the boys about Zoltan the punter.)

Oh yeah, and Monica completes the final course for her Master's degree in Education this weekend. (Had to throw that in. That's quite a blessing as well!)