immediate family
Blood makes you related, loyalty makes you family.
So Much More!
Motherhood entails so much more than I imagined. We cherish all the precious moments of our child’s life. We watch and help them through their days and continue to nurture throughout their milestones. Motherhood is full of experiences. It requires making changes, determination, patience, compassion and a lifetime of support.
By LaBree Johnson4 years ago in Families
Beauty Queen
“Darn it! I can’t believe I killed another one.” Mom laughed. “Don’t worry. I’ll try and revive it for you.” I have no idea how she managed it, but she actually resurrected the plant. Its new life didn’t last too long but the plant lived for a few months before it decided it was better off without me.
By Margaret Brennan4 years ago in Families
The Dream Wedding
It was a month before Jane's dream wedding. She had envisioned it since she was six after reading one of her mother's wedding magazines. She imagined having a destination wedding in the country where she would have it in her family vacation home, with the perfect gown, a sixteen layer cake with vanilla frosting and handwritten vows. She had shared these ideas with her mother, Frances, who helped her with what was needed and putting money aside. Frances believed that her own first wedding to Jane's father, Ralph, was a disaster. In the morning hours before the wedding, he had finished two beer bottles. Frances could smell the beer under his breath as they were exchanging vows. Then at the reception, he drank three glasses of wine with the steak dinner. To Frances' embarrassment and horror, Ralph interrupted the toast spoken by Rose, Frances' long time friend and bridesmaid and Jane's godmother. He then went into a drunken slurred speech with what Frances believed that may have been insults towards her father, who knew they were directed at him. After walking off, he accidentally bumped into the waiter, knocking him over and spilling two plates of steaks onto Frances' mother. Frances was not happy about the incident and did not speak to him during the beginning of their honeymoon. By the end of the honeymoon, they went back home and Ralph apologized to her parents for the reception fiasco wanted to fix things between all of them. However nearly half a year after Jane was born, Frances and Ralph were still living with her parents and the tension between him and them had gotten worse. It was mostly that Jane was thrown into the mix, as Ralph was sleeping off a couple of beer cans on the couch and Jane was crying from upstairs. Frances came home from shopping and quickly ran upstairs to tend to Jane. She was not happy with Ralph and nearly tripped over a beer can. She thought it was time to take Jane and find a new place to live until she and Ralph patched up things between them. A couple of years later, their second daughter Jessica was born and Frances had secured a job as a elementary school teacher while Ralph went to work as a sportswriter. But he would sometimes come home drunk and asleep on the couch after away games. This was frustrating for Frances, especially after one night when they had a argument and he left after throwing a bottle against the wall. The whole event had Jane thinking different about love and marriage and was concerned about how things were going to be for her and Jessica. By the time she entered ninth grade, Jane fell in love with Daniel who was in her first period algebra class. They called each other almost every weekend and Frances received the bill. Eventually she got over the bill upon Jane telling her about Daniel and invited him to dinner to meet him for the first time. It was the summer after their freshman year of college when Daniel proposed to her and she accepted. By the time Jane, Jessica, Frances, Daniel, Rose and several groomsmen and bridesmaids went to the vacation house, they were surprised to see who would be coming. There was a knock on the door and Daniel thought it was his family as they took a flight from New York. Instead it was Ralph who was ready to walk Jane down the aisle. Jane hold nothing against him after those years but Frances was very upset and concerned. The whole family were able to look past those events and Ralph got to know Daniel better. The next day was the wedding and Ralph walked her down the aisle and she and Daniel exchange vows. Jane finally had the wedding of her dreams.
By Forest Green4 years ago in Families
Childhood Summer Vacations
When I was almost eleven years old, we moved from Milwaukee, Wisconsin where I was born to Kansas City, Missouri. We moved because my father had to have hip surgery, and this caused him not to be able to work his decent paying construction job. His family was in Kansas City, Missouri and my mom’s relatives were about 130 miles away in Junction City, Kansas and about another 100 or so miles away in Wichita, Kansas. This meant we would be close to family. My father was concerned about us being in Wisconsin, with him not at his best without any family near us. He had to go on disability, and this caused him a lot of mental anguish for a while. My father was a proud man and not working his regular job to provide for us bothered him.
By Hadayai Majeed aka Dora Spencer4 years ago in Families
My Mother was a Tea Smuggler
In 1941, when Hitler invaded Russia, my mother, Clara, was in college in Kyiv studying Liberal Arts. She was nineteen. She had ambitions to be a lawyer, and she had been fortunate enough to be able to go to school in Kyiv, about 100 miles from her home in Korosten, a small rural town in Ukraine close to Chernobyl, where her mother, father, two brothers, and younger sister lived.
By Marilyn Davenport5 years ago in Families
Three Stories About My Mother
As a parent, have you ever had trouble getting your offspring out of bed, dressed, fed and off to school, in the morning? If you have, it may be a one-off incident or a regular event. In any case, you will know how difficult and time-consuming (I might even say, time-wasting) experience it can be. That’s without mentioning the psychological questioning you undergo; “am I a bad parent?”, “Could I do things better?”, “Why is this happening to me?”.
By Doug Woods5 years ago in Families
APRIL FOOL!
IT IS THE DAY SET ASIDE FOR LEGITIMATE PRANKING... making fool-hardy jokes set to knock down the unwary at any point of the day. Fun and games a fine thing in family or other social settings. Slight jokes played at work keep humility flowing among co-workers as long as the joke avoids a sour note. A joke gone wrong can end up in injury or death at the worst... emotional upset that develops into resentment or harassment on another turn. A gathering of relatives over a holiday setting... one home from his military stint, others gathering from parent's or their own household of wife and kids find a line to "spoof" the military guy. Get the party going... ribs sizzling in the back on the grill with brats, burgers and hot dogs. The cooler needs a refill of beer and ale... the Mountain Dew is getting low to. Food sides are set as brought to the table by attendees and family memories send laughter through the air until one harsh recall comes to mind. Games get rolling and outside of cards on the table and volleyball or croquette, "shoot the can off the stooge's head" becomes the joke. Who's the stooge? Pull the "odd man out." The one in town from his time off. The one always known to "love a good joke." The Marine is set aside by the other guys and spun around... a can set on his head and feet away is a bb gun pointed at him... at the can being steadied atop his unsteady gait. Caught by surprise he needs to "stand still and stay low... the shooter is good at this." The jostling behind him as he is figuring his way out of a foreseen tragedy at the hand of the teen holding the gun pointing at his face is ended... the trigger flicks and he's on the floor. The jostling behind the holder of the gun is more eager to get his turn at popping the can ... agitated at the man doing his time, perhaps a little better than the time he'd done in his own military enlistment call. His was a forced issue. A "draft call" back in the day when going out to other nations to keep the family in the household thousands of miles away from the front line. His was mandatory to do what he did not want to do, and this one show-boating was in... volunteering to be military when no one was out there to shoot at him. The draft was nothing but going to be shot at on somebody else's call, nudges his arm "Pull the trigger man!" The Emergency Vehicle makes it in time to haul the marine off on the holiday... extra payday for the men push-pulling the body cart and throwing on the siren to clear the road between this family home and the hospital. The pellet lodged in his neck when he turned to check the "who stuck me" behind him before the can fell off his head when the crowd budged and stopped bracing him up for the shoot down because he was "a marine;" something strong enough to withstand being shot and shot at. He was home on leave at his cousin's house visiting them and their kids... they were always doing something and had a larger crowd than his mama's own home. His siblings were scattered away at basic training, one off stationed in Germany... one on a battleship headed for Hawaii, and one stationed in Indianapolis... no time off for leave. He had to be back from this weekend leave on time to keep his good record and continue his privileged training for special forces... he was "the one least likely to."
By CarmenJimersonCross5 years ago in Families
Am I the asshole for insisting we put my 8-month-old baby in a French immersion daycare?
Am I the asshole for insisting we put my 8-month-old baby in a French immersion daycare? I, 30 years old female insisted to put my son, 8 months old in a French immersion daycare even though my husband, 38 old male thinks it is not important that we raise him bilingual. My husband is a skilled worker and a high school graduate while I am a teacher who studied the English language and who English is her second language. This baby, let’s call him Kai, is our first child and he is always fighting me about every little decision and seems to think he knows best about everything.
By Nneka Anieze5 years ago in Families
What is a Home without a House?
It may be true that home is where the heart is, but the heart has to have a body, a vessel, in order to live and love and feel. Now that my family home has been sold, the heart of our home is displaced, literally and figuratively, temporarily held in a box until it can be established in a new place. The walls that have been privy to so much, that have given the heart of our home a body for twenty years will now be the host of a new heart to a different family.
By Jessie McDonald5 years ago in Families
