A Note to My Hillary Supporter Friends- This is my coming out letter

Hey friends. I have a secret that is going to require you to use all the amazing attributes that I absolutely love about you.  Understanding, acceptance, love, respect.  The truth is that you are some of the most loving people I know but I'm still a little scared to actually come out to you like this.  Maybe it's the posts I've seen all over social media claiming how stupid I am or how racist and bigoted and judgmental I must be.  But right now I need a friend so here it goes.

I voted for Trump.

There it is.  It's out there and I should feel so much better but I'm scared that you will judge me.  That you will treat me differently.  That you will talk about how stupid I am behind my back.  I'm afraid that you now think the worst of me and that I won't be invited to your holiday party and that you definitely won't trust me with your real feelings and that intimacy we once had will be lost.

I had hoped that we could all get along after the election was over.  I had no idea that this election was more important than all our similarities until it has been pointed out to me over and over again in the last 48 hours.

I am sorry that your candidate didn't win.  I feel for you and the disappointment that you are going through.  To tell you the truth, I thought that I would be feeling that disappointment at the end of the night but the country surprised us all didn't it?

And to say I was jumping up and down when my candidate won would be lying.  I am not political and I was not a fan of either candidate for the longest time.  But when it came down to it I had to make a decision that felt good to me.  I value truth and hold that attribute high.  I picked a non-politician for that very reason.   I concluded that the guy stumbling over the right thing to say and down right saying the wrong thing sometimes is actually telling us more of his truth than the professional lawyer that has been trained to persuade for her benefit.  This is why I voted for Trump.  Not because I agree with everything that he says.  But because I feel that he has good intentions and competent people that can accomplish things that are good for America.

I believe that you voted for your candidate for reasons that speak to you and I respect that.  There is obviously something to be said for both candidates to have the country so torn. 

And that brings me to the real reason for this note.  We are friends.  And if I'm not wrong, you want more than anything to have more love, acceptance, and respect in our country.   And I do too.

This nation needs to put aside our different political stances and just be nice to each other.  We need to develop respect for each others differences, deal with differences like adults and adopt a practice of more love and understanding no matter who the president is.  We, the people, make up this country and if there was ever anything that could bind us during this time, it would be love, love for the country and for each other.  

Let's show the world how amazing Americans really are.  Let's show respect for everyone.  Let's believe in the good of everyone.  Let's not judge others for their beliefs.  Let's raise good kids and create a great future because we all know that what happens in our own house is much more important than what happens in the white house.  Let's do this together as friends.

I hope you feel better soon and I love you!

Em

Just being honest

As I take a personal time out and sit and listen to the chaos around my home I wonder what I was thinking celebrating this time of year.  Screams echo through the home... some happy, some angry, some sad.  The fridge opens and shuts at least six times in the 10 minutes I've been sitting here.  One child clings to my leg like shes hanging onto a rope, dangling above a tank of sharks complaining about how awful this summer is compared to others.   All the while holding a fake blood capsule in her hands pretending to pop it in my all white room, just trying to get my attention.  And then let's not forget the all too familiar, "Mom, I'm bored."  Ahh, the sweet sounds of summer.

As the last day of school approached I can promise you that I was more excited than the kids, but by lunchtime Monday my mind had changed.  I forgot how helpless my children are at finding their own fun!  When I was a kid, summer was a time when you were overjoyed just by the freedom it gave you!  Freedom to do whatever you wanted.  Play outside all day, read a book for hours, run through sprinklers, make forts, imagine.  Now all I get are complaints about how we haven't plan an extravagant expensive field trip every single day and heaven forbid if mom might have some responsibilities to take care of.  When did this happen!?  When did kids get this sense that their parents were responsible for anything more than a trip to the park or an occasional shaved ice if they were lucky?!

I have to confess that I totally fell into it this first week of summer and we did a lot of fun things. I had originally thought this post would highlight all those fun things, but it occurred to me that the reason my kids want to do all these crazy things (and me as well), is because we have seen all the creative summer posts on facebook and read all the blogs from the super moms and feel like some how we aren't doing summer justice if we don't.  So this is not going to be one of those posts.

Instead this post is dedicated to the "crazy" behind the amazing photos we all share.

Here are the cute photos I shared from the outing we took to Farmington trail last Tuesday.  So pretty. Everyone looks so happy.  That's because just hours before this mom was at the end of her rope and after yelling at the kids about how she was not going to do anything else fun for them this week, shipping one of the kids off to a friends house, and stressing through an orthodontists appointment with  4 crazy kids, she just needed them out of the car.  Kids are happy because they are not stuck in their rooms like I had threatened earlier. And what you didn't see in these photos is how our cute five year old decided she just couldn't walk anymore and how I pulled her behind me the entire way back to the car.  See, doesn't that inspire you to walk that same trail!?

Here are the photos of our amazing trip to Carver Cove petting farm.  It really was a ton of fun, but what you don't see is our 18 month old being pulled off their tractor a dozen times, all the sneezing from the cotton flying around (that was at the trail as well), and lets not forget jack throwing up the next day from what all we can guess is a case of not washing his hands well enough before eating lunch.  Yuck!

And this ones for the moms.

 Let's not forget the cute selflies that make us all want to get our hair done, put on make up and pretend to causally take photos that look like we just woke up perfectly put together.








 "Yeah, we just happened to be wasting time, so we snapped a random shot, looked beautiful, and shared it with the world."









No.








Lets not hide the fact that there are a dozen bad selfies...










for every one...

that we share.





haha  :)





So this summer lets set a good example to all our kids and be grateful and happy with who we are and what's in front of us.


And absolutely go out and have fun but don't do it because you feel like you have to.






Let's do it for ourselves...






 and let's try to cut out some of the "crazy" this summer!