She's MY mom

My mom is a unique individual. I truly have NEVER met anyone quite like her. I know that no two people are alike and everyone is unique in their own way, but this really applies to my mom. She hates shopping, pedicures, haircuts, and all things that one might call "girly", but the one thing (well two actually) that my mom has always loved is, the beach and sports.

She's also always been so willing to sacrifice what her needs and desires are, to make sure we always had what we needed.

The beach is her home away from home. She used to be a surf crazy woman-- I've heard so many stories of my mom and her surfing days. Then she stopped surfing and started boogie boarding. By the time she was my mom she boogie boarded occasionally, but mostly she sat on the beach and guarded our stuff while we had the time of our lives everyday, all day, every single summer. We'd wake up, she'd have our cooler packed with tons of fruit and sandwiches and probably treats and we load the car and drive to the beach. We'd stay there all day with lots of friends and just play our guts out. My Dad would come straight from work to the beach and we'd have huge bonfires with all our friends and tons of food. It was/is one of the funnest times I remember having with my family.

Growing up my mom was a HUGE sports fan. She was a softball player and she always tried to instill a love of sports in us. I have many a memory involving my mom watching a game on T.V. and screaming at the top of her lungs about a bad call by the ref. My friends always thought it was so funny that my MOM was so into a game. I thought it was funny, that they thought it was funny, cause that's just MY mom.

She used to run her own boot camp, the victims were me and my older brother Josh. We lived on a long, steep (well at least it seems steep when your eight) hill and every morning she would have us do some array of activities. Ranging from running or biking up the hill to making us dribble (soccer) till we dropped. Then it ended with a hefty round of push-ups and sit-ups, each time.

I distinctly remember having a morning of biking up the hill and racing each other. We are REALLY competitive so we were biking our brains out, up the hill and back making a really big circle for each year of our lives, I was nine so I did nine. Then we had our sit-ups. Then she took us to a big field and made us dribble our soccer balls around it A LOT. By this time is was like noon and I was REALLY tired, and hot and MAD at her craziness. I was sweaty and my mom said "I bet you never sweat like that before, huh? I sensed compassion in her voice and thought she was going to let us stop, it gave me hope, I was so excited. But she didn't let us stop quite yet. And know that I look back on that story I'm pretty convinced that she saw my sweatiness as a sign that she was on the right track to giving us a good work-out. She finally let us stop, but it felt like an eternity later. I just remember thinking "mom, you are so crazy!"
I'm glad she made us do stuff like this though. I'm no Olympian, but I think that these little rituals are why I was always the fastest person on my team, I had a lot of practice pushing myself, thanks to you.

When we moved away from everything we loved to a new, scary, weird place with NO familiar faces, my mom took great care to make each of our rooms a special place for us. When the dentist said that we would need braces she got an EARLY morning job at a bakery so she could still be around for us after school. When we didn't have enough to eat, she went without and we didn't even know it until we were older.

That's a little bit of my mom. She's a beach obsessed, crazed sports fan and a caring loving, self-sacrificing mother. I couldn't be more thankful for her. Happy Birthday lady!!!

Mom I love you, thanks for being you.