It's Grandma Pam's birthday!!

Today is my wonderful mama's birthday, and since I'm not nearly as nice to her in person as I ought to be, I decided that this happy occasion warranted a blog post about her awesomeness.

 I love my mom so, so much. We've been best friends since the very beginning, as we were the only girls in the household and had to stick together. My mom has a long list of really incredible talents, and I flatter myself in thinking that I've inherited a few of them from her. 

I created a funny little handout for RS recently and congratulated myself on its wittiness, and the whole time I was working on it I thought about my mom and how much it seemed like something she would come up with. She's an amazing writer and all of my confidence in my writing has come from her encouragement. I pester her after every blog I write to ask if she liked it; I respect her opinion a great deal. I also pester her to write more herself (here's her blog: Some Things Matter More Than Others. Maybe if we ALL pester her, she'll write!!).

 My mom and I have been through a lot together, lots of good times and some pretty crummy times and everything in between. One thing we're really good at is having adventures together. We can take something pretty mundane, like dropping by the house that my then-boyfriend Chuck is working/painting at to surprise him, and make it into something really fun, like establishing the P&J Detective Agency to use vague clues to find where the heck the house is at, sometimes staking out the wrong house for a really long time. (We eventually had to give up and call him to ask for the exact address. Oh, and we had to call from a nearby nursing home; it was 2003 and the P&J Detective Agency hadn't cleared enough cases to pay for a cell phone yet....)

I can't write about my mom's talents and passions and hobbies without talking about her true love: her grandchildren. She's up to six with two more on the way (courtesy of Terri and Eden, NOT me). My mom loves Clyde, Will, Bailey, Hazel, Jack, and Isaac sooo much. Nothing brings her as much joy as spending time with any and all of them does. She loves being able to be a part of their lives and watch as they grow and learn and become their own little people. It means so much to me that my boys will always be able to look to Grandma Pam as someone who loves and supports them unconditionally. I love knowing that I can text her a picture of something cute they're doing or call her to brag about some impressive skill they've developed and she'll be just as excited and proud as I am, if not more so :).

Jack has had a rough few weeks as his four incisors were coming through, and he'd frequently cry and fuss and reach for me, only to stay grumpy once he got me. Depending on my reserves of patience at the particular moment, it's been pretty frustrating: he ONLY wants me - won't let anyone else hold him - but still fights and cries and doesn't seem at all happy that I've got him! So I'd roll my eyes and make some comment about that's what being a mom is all about and wait for him to calm down, which he eventually always did.

But I think there's a good parallel there for my relationship with my mama. 

Through all of life's uncertainty and difficulty and good times and hard times, my mom has always loved me unconditionally. And I've thoroughly taken advantage of that :). She's been my safe place to go, where I could be grumpy and horrible and melt down and be sad or scared and know that she would still love me. (Although she did have a rule when I was in high school that she wouldn't talk to me after 9pm. I told you she was smart!!)

My goal is to slowly but surely work at not taking so much out on her, because that probably gets old and tiring and, you know, I'm a grown-up who knows better and, also, you know, she deserves better. She's pretty much the best. Definitely differs a bit from the stereotypical mom, but absolutely the mom that I've needed her to be. I'm particularly grateful for the gospel foundation she provided and the example she sets of putting the Lord first and also for the confidence she's given me as I've become a mother. She's the first one to compliment me as I interact with my sons and that helps me more than she knows.

I could go on and on about my mom, but it's late/early and we have exciting plans tomorrow to celebrate her birthday! So, in conclusion: happy happy birthday Mama! Thanks for being smart and brave and devout and funny and outgoing and loving and forgiving and fun and I LOVE YOU!