My Very Princess-y Mother's Day

Another Mother's Day has come and gone, and I'm happy to report that I survived with my dignity and self-esteem intact...mostly. (Check out last year's Mother's Day post for more info on that).  I did receive the ever unpredictable Mother's Day card/poem from school, but it painted me in a fairly positive light this year (if fairly positive light = not a total flake). So that was good.

I also got a very special gift.

About a week ago, my 7 year-old started talking about the gift she was making for me at school, ramping up the excitement and anticipation (aka anxiety) each day.  Her comments started on Monday with a little grin and twinkling eyes saying, "I can't wait to give you your Mother's Day present." And by Friday, we had progressed to squeals and clapping and jumping from the furniture with declarations of, "You are going to LOVE your Mother's Day present! It's going to make you feel just like a princess!"

Oh. snap.

Cue heart palpitations and scaly fingers of dread constricting my throat. (Dramatic much?)

What in the world could she have made at school that would make me feel just like a princess? I had no idea.  I mentioned it on Facebook and Twitter and the general consensus among my friends was that...

1.) I should, in fact, be very nervous about this gift.

2.) There was a strong likelihood that at some point on Mother's Day, I would end up in an adult-sized tutu. A tiara was not completely out of the question, either.

The one ray of hope I clung to was that surely an adult-sized tutu couldn't fit in her little backpack. Right? It couldn't, could it?! Please, God, don't let it fit in her backpack.

Looking back, there were a couple of hints that should have clued me in on this princess-inducing gift, but my muddled mommy brain didn't put it all together until afterwards.  One was when she said, "Mom, have you ever had tea in a pouch?" 

"Uh, not that I recall.  Is that like a CapriSun or something?"

"Yeah, I guess. But I think you mix it with water first."

Hmmm. Tea in a pouch?* 

That sounds as though it would make me feel like the exact opposite of a princess, but ok.

Well, Sunday finally arrived and I woke up to Corban's sweet, freckled face beaming with pride as she delivered this to my bedside table...

Breakfast in a Bag! And tea in a pouch! *Turns out, I've completely failed Parenting 101 since my kid has never heard of a tea bag (my English friends are going to be so ashamed of me).

I have never felt closer to being royalty in all my life. I've also never been more relieved to receive a brown paper bag as a gift.

I love that little girl. She's just one of my three amazing reasons to celebrate being a mom.

If you're a mom, I hope you had a beautiful Mother's Day and were treated like a princess, too.


What's your favorite (or most shameful) Mother's Day gift story? 

My Good Friday Song

This song is speaking to me, especially today on Good Friday. I've asked God this question plenty of times...

Where were you?

And He answered with the most mind-blowing, powerful display of love and mercy the world has ever seen. 

I feel unworthy. 

And so very thankful.

How about you? Have you ever felt this way? How is your heart being stirred during the Easter season?

Lessons Learned from Justin Bieber (For Real)

I recently took my tweenage daughter and a couple of her bff's to see the critically-acclaimed Justin Bieber movie Never Say Never. Now, I can stand a little Bieber music on the radio. I've even been known to sing along with the kids in the car, but I really wasn't looking forward to two solid hours of Beiberiffic concert footage. In 3D.

But, I was pleasantly surprised. It wasn't just concert footage, but the story of how he went from regular kid to mega teen heartthrob music spectacular guy (I think that's the title on his business card).  It was a really great story, and I walked away inspired by a kid who chased a dream and caught it.

Here are a few things that stood out to me...


It takes years of hard work to become an overnight success.  
From the outside, it's easy to assume that Justin Bieber posted a video on YouTube and BAM! a music bigwig saw it, signed him to their record label, and the rest is history. In reality, he became a music student at a very early age and continued to learn and improve his craft. Then he started entering local music competitions and performing at every possible opportunity. After he landed an agent, he played waterparks and traveled all over the country to play at radio stations until he finally convinced them he could sell records (the stations didn't want to play music by a "little kid" because they said he wouldn't have a big enough fan base).  Then, after all that hard work and persistence, he became what seemed to be an overnight sensation with gajillions of young girls screaming and fainting for him. If he hadn't put in all the hours of work, he would still be a regular kid.
(This makes me think of the "10,000 hour rule" in Malcolm Gladwell's Outliers. If you haven't read it, you should.)

Don't underestimate the power of social media.

Social media is a crazy phenomenon and it played a huge role in building Justin Bieber's fan base. He started by posting videos on YouTube. He began to gain a following and that's where his agent discovered him. Later, when he was playing all those waterparks and radio stations, he would tweet about where he was going to be and invite fans to come see him.  One day, ten little girls showed up outside one of the radio stations. Twenty little girls showed up at the next one. Then forty. And the crowd kept growing until he played in a mall somewhere and the fire marshal had to evacuate the place because there were too many people. And then the radio stations decided he might have a decent fan base after all and agreed to play his songs. 

So if you're trying to build a platform or a brand or a fan base, you should be maximizing your potential by using social media. BUT... Use it as a way to genuinely connect with people. Don't just use it to promote your latest product. People hate that. They want to connect with you and like you, then they'll buy your stuff because they've had positive interactions with you online.

Follow your passion.

When you take away all the fancy trappings of Justin Bieber's current lifestyle, you get a kid who simply loves music. I am firmly convinced that we should do what we love. We live in the age of opportunity, so no matter what your passion is, you can make a living doing it. You want to be a glass blower? Do it. Do you love Halo so much you want to marry it? There's a way for you to make money at it. Be an artist, a marathon runner, an entrepreneur. I don't care what your dream is or how crazy it seems. It's your dream for a reason and you should chase it with everything you've got.  It will take a lot of hard work, but won't it be worth it to get to the place where you can say, "I'm living my dream!" Go for it!

(Check out this post by Jon Acuff and this post by Phil Cooke about dream chasing.)     


Never. Say. Never. 
Justin Bieber had a dream to play at Madison Square Garden for a sell-out crowd and he constantly told his agent, "I can do this." Dream big and believe in yourself. If you say it will never happen... it won't.



I guess this post is evidence that I've officially caught the Bieber Fever. Help.

Grocery Store Melt-Down

This song is rocking my world right now. I bought the album a few days ago and started listening to it on the way to the grocery store, which turned out to be a mistake because I ended up a weeping, snotty mess in the parking lot of the Neighborhood Market. I'm not really a crier, so my first reaction when the tears start flowing is, "What's wrong with me?" which is not a question easily answered. 

I finally composed myself enough to go in the store, but the "what's wrong with me?" wouldn't go away. I pushed my cart through the aisles wondering why this song had affected me so much until finally, right there in front of the shampoo and conditioner, it hit me. Death. My heart was breaking over all the death and brokenness in the world and in my own life and the lives of people I love. 

Physical death. Emotional death. The death of hopes and dreams and relationships. Everything is broken and dying.

BUT (here's my favorite part of the song) Jesus trampled over death and calls us to... 

come awake, come awake

come and rise up from the grave.

And there's the hope. Even though we're surrounded by death, we can be alive. 

I don't know about you, but I want to be fully awake and alive. Even though it's Monday. :-)

P.S. My other favorite part is at 2:38. Gives me chills.

Hello Blog World!

Well, here I am in the blogosphere. I've been thinking about starting a blog for a while, but haven't for several reasons, most of which boil down to the fact that I'm an over-thinker.

What am I going to write about?

When am I going to have the time & energy to write it?

And of course,

Who would possibly care to read it?


I've spent several months (yes, months. Over-thinker.) thinking through these questions and have actually had several ideas to write about, so that takes care of the first question. The second question is a little more sketchy and probably will be until my last kid goes to college, so I can't really use that as an excuse. As for the last question, I ended up with two answers:

1. I absolutely LOVE to read other people's blogs! And my favorite ones are about real life and relationships and mom stuff, so if everybody else on the planet can write about their ordinary lives, then so can I, right?

2. I realized that it's really ok if nobody ever reads this. I want this to be a place where I can process and wrestle with stuff in a more substantial way, which is a really healthy discipline for someone with my personality type.


So, after talking myself through those issues, the next step was to actually set up the blog, which is way harder than it sounds because all the good names are already taken. But when "Dreams Are Blooming" was available I knew it was the perfect name for my life journal. More on that later. :)

Now the next step is crucial: MAKE THE BLOG CUTE! Also way harder than it sounds (remember the over-thinking and throw in endless template and color scheme options, headers, footers, separators, backgrounds, etc, etc, etc.) I finally settled on what you see here after my fashion adviser (Jacey, my super cool 11 year-old daughter) gave her seal of approval.

The only thing left was to actually post something, so after proofreading and hitting the delete button about 428 times, here we are!

I feel like I've accomplished something monumental today! Thanks for sharing it with me.

Hello? Is anyone here? :)