Friendship

Thanksgiving

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Thanksgiving for us a house full of all the smells of wonderful foods!

This day is the kick off to the times we spend with family and friends.  These days we cherish as we make each holiday a warm memory.

This year was our first gluten-free holiday meal.  I prepared stuffing, pecan pie, apple streusel pie and cranberry sauce.  Of course the main meal was the traditional Turkey, mashed potatoes, green beans and bread, a turkey shaped bread to boot!

thanksgiving table 2015

We spent the day with friends with kids in our home.  We watched our children play and laugh as we did too.  We ate and drank and ate some more!

Our heart’s are full with gratitude for what we have and our circle of friends and family.

Happy Thanksgiving to you all!

Day 26 #NaBloPoMo #BlogHer

what is a friend?

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friend
noun \ˈfrend\
: a person who you like and enjoy being with

: a person who helps or supports someone or something (such as a cause or charity)

I realize throughout my life I have made many friends.  My friendships go back to those I attended grammar school and high school with.  We have found ourselves reconnected because of social media.  Throughout recent years I have found myself with friends that live in my computer.  What is that you ask?  We met through common interests mainly blogging and adoption.  Why do they live in my computer?  We live across the world and may not ever meet in person.  Why then would I consider them a friend?  Because we have shared interests and converse somewhat regularly and again through social media.

Yet I have in my current life friends.  Friends that I have known through the 22 years I have lived in California, my mommy group friends who I met when our oldest was still a baby,  the friends we made on our shared journey to parenthood through adoption and those who we met when we moved to our neighborhood almost 2-1/2 years ago, and the friends I have made through being with my girls whether it be ballet or their elementary school .  I can say ALL of these people add to our daily lives.

Friends have been able to step in and help and in return I have been able to do the same.  Friends have celebrated with us holidays, birthdays or just a new season and reason to get together.  We are creating fun memories.

I watch my girls form their own friendships separate from those of the families we know together.  I see them create their own independent lives and realize how much they have grown.  When they were little, their immediate friends were the children of the Moms I met from the Mommy Group I had joined. Now they have friends from school, girl scouts, ballet and soccer too.

I thankful we all have these friendships in our lives and share with them interests and time.

friends

Day 17, #NaBloPoMo #BlogHer

 

 

the last few days

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a lot has happened in our family over the last few days/week.  Our beloved Cody Bear passed.  He was nearly 14 years old.  Our girls are sad as we are too. They did find a shiny penny over the weekend and are sure it’s from our Cody up there running around over the rainbow bridge with our Molly.

My oldest daughter’s 3rd grade teacher shared that she too is an adoptee. This turned into a wonderful discussion learning about her life, her reunion with birth family and how an adult adoptee feels.  I love that she shared this knowing our two girls were adopted as well.  My daughter was there in the room during this conversation at the end of the school day.  It was one that I followed up with her in our car as she, her sister and I headed home.  How did they feel knowing a beloved teacher was like them, adopted at birth?  Hearing her life and love for the family that raised her and the relationships she now has later in her life with her birth family.  Without over prodding my girls, I wanted to see what they understood, heard and thought about learning this information about an adult they know. I think we will need a few more days or weeks to process.

Adoption seems to be the “it” subject of our week.  Yesterday we learned a classmate of my older daughter’s was adopted as well.  She from China.  I again followed up the conversation with my daughters in the car on the way home from school.  Wasn’t it interesting to learn a classmate came to her family in a similar way?  This girl’s mom recently became a friend of mine on facebook and had read my posted links of this blog learning about our family’s story.  I don’t want to overdue the conversation with my girls, but how great is it to learn more about the people in our lives through school that have similar family stories!

Adoption is a part of our lives and it is our family story.  It’s something that comes up in conversation within our family often, sometimes just our two girls talking with each other about their families and our family.  Sometimes it’s their planning out their future lives.  They’ve shared with me they too want to adopt a baby into their lives when they are older.  I think is wonderful and shows me how normal our family lives are that they want to have a family in a similar way.

Time and again I realize you never know when or who you will meet that will have a similar story and share it with you.  I appreciate the honesty of people sharing their stories with us. It give us more to talk about and appreciate the life we have and for our girls to have others in their lives with families just like ours.

Make new Friends but keep the old

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friend·shipˈfren(d)SHip/noun as defined by Google
 
  1. the emotions or conduct of friends; the state of being friends.
    synonyms: relationship, close relationship, attachment, mutual attachment,association, bond, tie, link, union;

    informalbromance
    “lasting friendships”
    • a relationship between friends.
      plural noun: friendships
      “she formed close friendships with women”

“Make new friends but keep the old, one is silver and the other gold, a circle’s round and has no end, that’s how long I want to be your friend!” These are the words from a Girl Scout Campfire Song that my girls and I know well as we sing it at camp in the summer and one we sing at the closing of the meeting for each of their troops.

It is also a song that became our mantra for our move a little over a year ago for our family. We were leaving friends that each girl had made in preschool and elementary school and the same was true for my husband and me.  We had lived in our home for nine years so we had made friends with our neighbors and the parents of our girls’ school friends.

We reminded ourselves that we would still see our “old” friends since we were only moving 25 miles away and that we would make new friends where we were moving.  I instilled this mantra in our lives hoping it was true.  I have recently posted about the neighborhood we find ourselves living in now in my post We live in Pleasantville where we have made new friends both for our girls as noted and for ourselves.

I sit here thinking about friendships and think about the valuable friendships I have made through the networks of blogging and social media. Opportunity has presented itself where I’ve met some of my virtual friends in person and I have reconnected with elementary, high school and other friends through social media.  All of these friendships bring great value to my life and I really appreciate the efforts we all make to stay in touch if only online.

I’d like to introduce you to a few of my blogging friends who I had the pleasure of meeting and getting to know and become friends with when I attended #BlogHer over the summer.  They like me have written about Friendship:

Phyllis of Napkin Hoarder who wrote Making Friends #NaBloPoMo 17

Cheryl of Busy Since Birth who wrote First Friend #NaBloPoMo 17

Kimberly of Red Shutters Blog who wrote Musings on Friendship

Danielle of Another Version of Mother who wrote my Phone People

Melissa at A Wide Line who wrote Friendship Squares

This is my 17th contribution to National Blog Posting Month, click #NaBloPoMo to read the many other bloggers contributing for this event, Enjoy!