Sunday, November 14, 2010

Just Call My Name and I'll be There...

Last Sunday we had Becca's confirmation.  For those of you counting back, yes it was indeed on Halloween (From the pictures, you can see Bella was Alice in Wonderland and Harry was Elvis).  Now, I found this a little odd myself, as I have heard most confirmations take place in the Spring.  Apparently, our church always does Confirmation on Reformation Sunday, which this year also happened to be Halloween.

During the service there was lots of talk about relying on God and using him to help navigate your path through life.  The Pastor spoke about how you just need to call on God and he will be there for you.  Well, I wish a had a tiny speck of God's wisdom because what I am currently struggling with in the parenting department is not BEING there for my children, but HOW to be there for them...

As a parent, I really want the best for my kids.  What is difficult is seeing them make mistakes that is going to impede their success.  Then I begin to think, are they really making mistakes or are they just doing things differently than I would.  This is where having a "Type A" personality and a bit of a control freak vibe has its downsides.  It is easy for me to blur the lines of WHAT the kids need to do with HOW they need to do it.  Example? OK.  Let's take Harry's recent History test.  I told him how it was a really important test because it was 50% of his grade.  I explained that if I were him, I would start studying a few days prior to the test.  Anyway, the night before the test came and he studied, but it got late and he fell asleep and didn't get a chance to study the map portion.  Guess where he missed a lot of points?  He still got a "B" on the test, but what if he had taken my advice and started studying earlier? 

I have begun to discover what long lines of parents before me have already figured out.  As your kids get older, it begins to be harder to figure out what they need and how to best support them.  Gone are the days when a Princess or Elmo band-aid makes things "all better."  Asking them what they need does not always produce results as most of the time they are either unaware or unwilling to put their needs into words.  Even Bella at the tender age of 8 has begun to adopt a bit of an attitude when she is faced with things that she would rather avoid.

So I guess it is best to take the "put one foot in front of the other" approach.  This is something new for me and let me tell you it is not easy.  Lately our family has faced a lot of transition and not all of it has gone smoothly.  New schools, new classes, and new expectations have produced lots of stress filled discussions.  I am now beginning to see that there is no "quick fix" and that instead it will take a process to change the current battles.  And my motto has been forced to change to "let it begin with me" although I am much more comfortable with the "you fix it" phrase.


One week from now we will be making our annual pilgrimage to Wisconsin Dells to celebrate Thanksgiving with Erick's family and also enjoy some downtime at the Wilderness Resort Waterpark.  Erick just got back from spending the last 10 days in Australia and he has to travel again this week.  I am really looking forward to some downtime with the family...

Monday, November 1, 2010

Music of the Night...

Do I enjoy the spirit of Halloween?  Yes, I do.  Do I like to think it's fun to dress up and pretend to be someone else?  I believe it frees us from our own mundane lives to live as another person/object/creature for a day.  Do I believe that running scared and screaming like a baby in the dark is a good idea?  Although it provides for a bit of an adrenalin rush and an emotional release, I could live without it my entire life.  My sister, on the other hand, loves that kind of thing.  I remember having to bring her to one of the "Nightmare on Elm Street" movies when I was a senior in high school and hating every minute of it.  So what had she never had a chance to do?  Go to one of those scary hayride/mazes where people jump out at you around every corner.  So last Friday, my sister, her step-daughter, Becca, Harry, and I visited "The Trail of Terror."

First stop-the haunted hayride.  Now, I have to admit that I quite enjoyed this part of the trip.  The weather was beautiful for a late October night in MN. Low 50's and no wind.  You could smell the leaves and the bonfire at the event.  As we boarded the hayride, we planned to position ourselves as close to the middle as possible to avoid direct contact with any monsters or bloody creatures we might encounter.  Unfortunately, we ended up sitting on the side of the hayride with our feet dangling off the sides, just waiting for some "freak of nature" to pop out of the dark and attack us.  The good news was the hayride was pretty tame.  Yes there were a few scares here and there, but for the most part it was low key.  If you ask me, it appeared that a lot of the workers had not arrived for their shift yet.  There were long stretches of the hayride with no scares or thrills.  Perhaps as the night went on, the ride became scarier...

Feeling pretty confident after the hayride, we went off to some of the "haunted trailers".   I should have known my fairly calm demeanor was about to change as we encountered a man who appeared to be a "scarecrow with no face."  Now that might not sound scary to you, but faces and eyes are my "scary triggers."  At the age of 8, I watched the movie "Omega Man" with Charlton Heston and I have never been the same since.  All the zombies in the movie had weird eyes with tiny pupils, since they don't go out in the light.  The end of the "Thriller" video when Michael's eyes got weird?  Hated it!  To this day, I can't watch the Blue Men Group, with their strange blues faces and their unnatural blue eyes.  In the picture above, Bella put on some scary eyes and even that freaked me out a little.  Anyway, when we arrived at the first trailer it was called "Phobia Frights".  From the outside, it was just a brown trailer, but inside?  Let's just say I became a different person.  It was like a maze inside the small building with people jumping out at you at every corner and not just jumping out.  They FOLLOWED you as you tried to run away.  It was terrifying!  After the first scary turn, I walked behind Harry, using him as my human shield to protect me from the horrifying displays and characters.  Healthy, right?  Hey, I'm not proud of it.  All those protective mothering instincts kind of flew out the window and I was all about personal survival.  Harry was actually not that scared and proceeded to go into other trailers including the 3D circus and the Butcher house.  I survived part of the 3D circus, but after being chased down one corridor by a bloody clown with a pretend knife, the 5 of us went out the closest door marked "exit", which evidently was not the correct way out.  The scary clown actually tried to tell us she would take her mask off if we wanted to try it again.  Nothing like feeling like a 2 year old who is frightened of Santa.  I did not venture back in to that trailer, mask or no mask...

Taking a break from the scary portions of the event, we all decided to venture into the psychic tent.  Now I am a sucker for a good psychic reading!  I have had several readings during my life.  It's not that I believe everything they say, but some of the stuff is spot on, so who knows?  Becca and Harry have never had a reading so it seemed like as good of time as any.  Becca was told she should stick closer to home to help people (she had talked about joining the peace corps after high school for a year) and Harry was told he was a bit of a math genius who was born too late.  She said he could have invented "Facebook", but that if he works hard to study he will develop something on his own that will be fabulous.  I was told that I should start a charter school for special needs children (that was with me not telling her about Bella and her issues!)  Kind of freaky and not sure what to do with that.  I'm going to keep it a day at a time at this point and not go there.

Final Stop-The trail of terror.  We stood in line for 40 minutes to enter this thing and Harry made a good point to me.  He said, "It's just like one of those trailers we just went in, but super-sized."  Kid had a good point! I spent the rest of the time in line fretting about the experience.  Someone in line asked if it was "scary".  The worker said, "It depends what you think is scary."  So true!  Scary is very subjective and personal.  What scares me (driving in confined parking ramps that spiral around) may not scare you at all.  Still, I think most everyone found something to be frightened of at "the trail of terror."  Once we got inside, we were greeted with spooky music and loud noises such as thunder.  For the next 3/4 of a mile we battled more spooky clowns, black lit rooms with lots of blood splatter, and various other horrific scenes.  At one point a miniature spooky clown started following Harry and every time he stopped to see if she was still behind him, she would shriek in his face.  By the end, Harry was running away to escape her wrath.

Happy to say we all escaped unharmed (in case you were worried).  The last unsettling element of the night was when we couldn't find our car.  Becca and Harry kept saying they were sure the car had been stolen, as we walked up and down the aisles searching.  After 20 minutes of looking, we found the car and were ecstatic to leave the monsters, ghosts, and clowns to scare someone else.