Presents/Presence-Take your pick!

This week has been so FULL! First I had yet another doctor's appointment and will be taking even more tests....which I am actually undecided on at the moment. Then three of my children had an assignment for school that I was honestly dreading.

They are all three in Spanish I. We've been doing PowerGlide Spanish for years but needed more "immersion" so I signed them up for classes. They love it! This particular day they were to make a dish from a country where Spanish is the primary language. This meant a recipe, a grocery list, and cooking...one of my least favorite things. But do you know how you sort of dread something and then you do it and discover that it was actually GREAT? This was one of those times.

It wasn't the cooking that changed my mind. It was the time together. They are such great kids, and I say this humbly because so often I believe it is "in spite of me", not because of me. We just had a wonderful seven hours. Yes, 7 hours from the time we chose the recipe, went shopping and cooked the dishes. Later I will post the details. This morning I have somewhere to go.

I am going to the SMA walk. You can read more about it here: http://www.tuscaloosacuresma.com/ and here: http://www.curesma.com.

I am walking in honor and memory of my nephew who passed away at 9.5 months.

And that brings me to presents and presence, the title of this post, can you guess why?

In life we often wonder "why" these things happen, illnesses and deaths in particular, whatever the cause.

But I decided that I am going to try to live life like it's Christmas morning. Remember when you were a child and you ran to the Christmas tree on Christmas morning? Remember opening the presents and being amazed? I don't remember a single Christmas where I sat and felt bad that Santa had left something off of the list. I wasn't a perfect kid, not by a long stretch, but I was so amazed that I had all of those things, whether it was three or ten, large or small and then what was the best part? After opening those presents, one of us remembered the stockings!

We took each thing out of the stocking and looked at it, marveled at it and took bites out of the edibles, enjoying every second.

What else did we do? Well, we yelled for our siblings to see and even our parents. Remember that Santa brought it so they had not seen it yet!

Then one of us remembered it still wasn't over. There was Grandmother and Granddaddy's house. There were more presents there! But better yet, there were the cousins to play with all day!

So I'm going to look around for the presents today. Whether it is a hug, a cute thing a child says, a lone flower, or a meal.

I am also going to cry today. We will see children and families affected by SMA. Families that have to say goodbye to a small baby long before "time" and yet we will know that our small baby is in heaven! And yes, another present to look forward to at the end of this journey!