Looking Forward to Looking Back

This was considered the theme, motto sounds better in my opinion, of my yearbook the year I graduated high school.   I remember seeing those words emblazoned across the front cover and scoffing my first thought being “who thinks up this crap”. 

I for one wasn’t considering looking back in fact I recall thinking that I had absolutely no intention of ever looking back.  Those days would be done and my plan was to never stop looking forward. I didn’t have the happiest of school years nor did I have the worst and it is only with experience that I’ve realized it.

As time went by and my school years became further and further behind me I lost much of the early cynicism that I’d had towards those years and I found that sometimes in the natural course of life that you had to look back.  It also become apparent to me that taking a glance over my shoulder from time to time in no way prevented me from staying focused on looking forward the other 99% of the time.

Perhaps I realized that by denying those looks back was kin to denying who I am and where I came from.  That wasn’t the intention behind the original thought, that I would not look back, but was an apparent by-product of that mind-set.

We can’t nor should we leave it all behind.  

Our lives and everything good, bad or in-between which happens to us must be embraced as a part of us, a part of our memories, before looking forward can be done with strength and conviction.  To accept it, forgive those who wronged us, admit to our own mistakes and look back at our lives with the new perspectives which are gained with each years knowledge is vital to looking forward.

So now I am looking forward to looking back from time to time....I still think the phrasing sound kind of stupid though. 



My graduating class on the steps of the Manitoba Legislative.
I'm on the bottom row farthest to the left in blue.



100 word ramble - Weekend Breakfast

I’m usually a very simple breakfast person but weekends hold a special place.  At least one morning each week will find us gathered around the table in robes, pj’s and slippers to enjoy a much more sumptuous breakfast than the fast and simple weekday ones.  It has become a bit of a habit and the one meal which is guaranteed to gather us all together regardless of what else the coming day holds.   In our busy lives these lazy, tasty breakfasts are a special moment of peace and rest, our families bond strengthened each week over waffles and pancakes galore.   

Picture Day - Disneyland Past

Two "projects" have come together this week.  One my continued scanning of pictures from my childhood and secondly my own kids trip to Disney World.  While still unaware of that trip sharing pictures from this trip has been one of many little things my husband and I have been subtly bringing up knowing perfectly well that it is making our kids oh so desperate to go.  We've been "flaming the fire" so to speak so that the day we tell them the day will hold as much excitement and anticipation as possible.

Each of these little hints have been given in such a way that it hasn't made them suspicious in the least. They've been small hints after all and always related to actual going ons in our house.  Individually they don't mean much but I'm sure when they've found out they will look back on all these little hints with dawning recognition.

Now onto the pictures of the week, my first and only Disney trip to Disneyland with my family and Aunt.  

Despite having few memories the overall feeling I get when I think back to this trip is happiness and I know I had fun.  From all the pictures it's clear that we really did love each and every minute of it.   Fingers crossed that this years Disney trip results in just as much joy.

Painting The Moon

Once upon a time there was a very special group of girls with a very special, very secret job to do.  This job was so secret that they didn’t even tell their mommies and daddies.  There job was to paint the moon.

These very special girls would one night wake up shortly before the moon rose to find a mysterious bucket of silvery shimmery paint set beside them.

Somehow they always knew just what to do and never once did a little girl find her bucket of paint and not do her job just right.

Out of their beds they would climb, pick up their bucket of paint, sneak from their houses and run to the moon just as it reached the horizon.

They would dip both hands into their bucket of silvery shimmery paint and smear two great big handfuls all over the moon.

Day after day more and more little girls would smear their share of silvery shimmery paint onto the moon and each night as it rose higher into the sky it was a little bit more shimmery, a little bit more silvery.

Soon the whole of the moon would be covered in silvery shimmery paint and it would glow it’s very brightest of all.

Then little by little, the work of the little girls would fade, each day more and more paint would fade away until the moon couldn’t be seen in the night sky at all.

Every time the moon would disappear from the night sky the little girls would set to work once more, painting the moon in silvery shimmery paint handful by handful.