Talena Winters

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Reading my Rights

When I became a mom, I gave up the right to:
  • A full night's sleep
  • An uninterrupted bathroom break
  • Wear dresses for six or more months at a time
  • Eat whatever I wanted, because I was eating for two
  • Be selfish with my time
  • Be selfish with my money
  • Be selfish with my body
  • Be selfish with my husband's time
However, I earned the privilege of:
  • Getting to read bedtime stories to precious little minds
  • Pudgy arms giving me hugs and kisses, childish voices whispering "I love you."
  • Serving little boys by training them up into godly men
  • Being called "Mommy"
  • Worrying over every little thing that my little men might injure themselves on, in, or while doing, but
  • Learning to let go anyway. Little boys will never be men unless they are allowed to be little men while still boys.
Thank you to my husband, who gave me the children that made me a mother. And thank you to my mother and Jason's mother, who gave up rights of their own when they had us so we may have the privilege of raising our family together.

Thank you to my friends who gave out Mother's Day greetings, and right back at ya! (Although a little belated.) Of my blogging friends, I would like to send the greetings out to Amanda, Rohini and Beth.

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My kids, with a whole heckuvalota help from Jason, gave me the most amazing Mother's Day gift.

They let me sleep in.

It was absolutely DIVINE. (I guess there are perks to Jabin being on the bottle now.)

And then, as if that wasn't enough, they surprised me with a brand spankin' new Canon Pixma All-In-One, Borderless Printing, Photo-Lab Quality Printer/Scanner/Copier! No, it's not the most expensive printer out there, but the quality for photo printing is leaps and bounds over the Lexmark I've owned since 2001!

To flex my newly-empowered scrapbooking muscles, I started a layout of Jabin last night, the first layout I've done of him so far. I've been holding off, because my current project is technically our 2003 family album, which I am about half done. However, of late, I've been saying "To heck with scrapbooking chronologically!" and scrapping whatever photos inspire me. Now I have a wildly ranging time-period of photos that have been scrapped, which doesn't help the organization issue. So I really do need to finish 2003, then start on Baby Album #3 after that. (Not that I am going to give up my new non-chronological ways completely. I find there is something to be said about journaling a current or recent picture, because your thoughts can be so much more personal and revealing about the time-and-place in the photo.)

Back to the printer. I enlarged. I reduced. I printed colour. I printed black and white. I played around with the software. I felt an unexplainable force, a wild, irrepressible laughter, (maniacal, even!) welling up from somewhere deep in my gut, ready to erupt with the POWER that was now in my grasp! (Fortunately, I was able to contain it before I woke up the kids and Jason started wondering how long it would take those guys from Ponoka to respond to an emergency call from Peace River, anyway?)

Although this printer will replace my Lexmark Z53 completely, my trusty HP ScanJet still has a home on my desk, due to the small size of the scanner bed on the new Canon. It's not long enough to scan in a 12" long scrapbook layout, so the other one still has its niche.

I'm not usually the type of person to name inanimate objects, but I think the Canon shall henceforth be known as Dagmar, "day maid"--although she is going to be used at all hours, I can tell, she is going to be my workhorse. But still, somehow, so sleek and pretty.

I guess Jason is not as disinterested in my scrapbooking hobby as I had always taken him to be. (Either that, or he's just being super-supportive because he knows I love it!)