Happy Monday...

Sharing some quotes I love...
and some photos....

It doesn't happen all at once. You become. It takes a long time. That's why it doesn't happen often to people who break easily, or have sharp edges, or have to be carefully kept. Margery Wilson--
The Velveteen Rabbit

When Katelyn tells me she loves me and wraps me in a hug, she tells me You're soft. 

I'm still becoming.  I'm still learning how to love bigger and better and more. I'm learning that you can never give too much love. Love is meant to be shared and showered on those around you. You'll never ever regret sharing your love; when you do, it multiplies; it's passed on; it grows.

Kind words can be short and easy to speak, but their echos are truly endless.---Mother Teresa

I'm learning that my patience and kindness and empathy for my oldest and youngest has to be endless these days. They are both anxious and sensitive and need some extra doses of love and kind words to see them through some rough patches. Some days my patience cup overflows...and some days it runs on fumes. But, never ever do I regret giving them an extra hug or telling them I'm sorry when I'm a little too short with them. Never ever do they go to bed at night doubting if they are loved or not.

Kindness is a language that the deaf can hear and the blind can see.--Mark Twain

Our trip to the pumpkin patch wasn't really a pumpkin patch. It was tables and tables of pumpkins set up on the side of a road. And the kids were fighting, and yelling, and if anyone else was around they were probably thinking we were crazy. One picture of all four of them was all I wanted. It didn't happen. One of them was pouting at all times; one of them was screaming at the top of his lungs; one of them refused to budge on the size of the pumpkin she wanted; and one didn't really care if we got any pumpkins at all. My cup o'patience happened to be overflowing this day, though, and we managed to pick out pumpkins and donuts and apples and I gave a hug and a smile and held hands and said that's OK and everyone got back in the car happy. Becoming...

I hope you're smiling today; I hope you can make someone else smile today. Plant some seeds and watch them grow...become...spread some love wherever you go.