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I kidnapped my little sister today. It ended up being incredibly complicated figuring out how to get her to me. She only lives an hour and a half away but figuring out rides even halfway to me was just, well complicated. Everything to do with my family is complicated actually. Sometimes I think if I didn’t practically kill myself to make things happen nothing ever would. That’s probably not totally true. I do however feel like the effort to see them is very one sided. I try and not let it get to me. I love my family an extreme amount so I refuse to give up. I’m not going to just let things go and not see them for months. I’m not ok with that.

I tweeted earlier today that I really have two choices when it comes to my family. I can either get aggravated and pull my hair out because it takes 14 phone calls just to figure out that yes she’s coming and yes my dad will bring her halfway so I don’t have to drive for three hours. And no you can’t make an hour detour because I’m already in the car like we talked about. And yes she can go home with Mom tomorrow. Oh wait, no she can’t…. and on and on. Or I can shake my head, repeat myself for the 20th time and laugh that something so simple can be made this hard.

I won’t ever stop trying though. Most of the time I’m pretty ok with being the family coordinator. Most of the time. Sometimes I’d love to let someone else take over… but when no one steps up and it’s between stuff not happening or me taking over I just suck it up and take over. Because there is nothing more important than family. Friends are great, church is fine, work is important but family is the only thing that lasts forever. Ever since I realized that I decided that no matter how frustrating things get it’s totally worth it.

Life can be so stressful. Right now we’re in the process of me (hopefully) starting a new job soon. We’re trying to find a new place to live. Trying to pay off some credit cards. We had to replace a headlight on our car… you know, just life. However, amid the stressful things life inevitably throws at us there are always the simple little things that make days bright and happy.

This weekend was full of those little things:

-Watching my family gather together in support of my mom

-Getting to see my sister and nephew in from California

-Seeing my Oma from Kansas City and Aunt from Florida

-Spending the entire day today with my mom and Oma. Seriously, my mom and I could talk 24 hours a day, 7 days a week and never run out of things to talk about.

-Finding a gift card from Starbucks in my wallet that had $18 on it. That’s like free money!

-One of the girls from my book club invited me to a Cubs game tomorrow. Third freakin’ row seats. Mind = blown. I’m so excited.

My poor sister sat standby at the airport (on literally no sleep) all day long and didn’t get out. She’s spending the night here and is going to try again tomorrow. The flights don’t look a whole lot better and since her car is parked in San Fransisco she can’t fly in anywhere else. Say a prayer, cross your fingers and hop on one foot that she gets out because spending two long days at airport sucks. Spending two long days at an airport with a five year old (even one that is really well behaved) while your husband just got in from a deployment sucks way worse. She will accept any extra plane tickets to SFO just in case anyone has one laying around. Just saying.

Aside from feeling bad for my sister I’m just so happy. I’m so blessed in so many ways. I have a wonderful life and it’s fun to look back and list things that make my life as great as it is. Optimism for the win!

After four long years of very hard work my mom has officially graduated from the school of nursing.

I am so incredibly proud of her. She worked so hard. While juggling six kids and several grandkids she managed to graduate with honors. Sometimes it felt like she’d never finish, both to herself and to the kids who constantly struggled to get a hold of her while she studied for some test or wrote some paper. She did it though and we’re all super proud of all her hard work. Joel and I are working on a little video with more pictures and some video clips from the day and the ceremony. Hopefully I can get that up tomorrow.

Big thanks to Joel for putting this together for me.

Here is the video we made yesterday. It was such a wonderful day. My sister Liz was very much missed. Why does California have to be so far away? Other than that the day was perfect. I love my family, especially my mother. ::smile::