Proud Mom!

(Oldest daughter on left, middle daughter on the upper right and son on lower right.)

I got a phone call from my middle daughter yesterday, she and my granddaughter were to live with my hubby and I for fall semester while she did her student teaching. However........she got a teaching job!! She will be able to do her student teaching while she is the teacher, YAY!!!! Now she has to come up with an English curriculum, find a place to live and move all in a month, but she's eager to get started.

For starting motherhood at the age of 16 (almost 17), I think my husband and I did pretty damn good at raising our children! Our oldest daughter has her masters in accounting and is a certified public accountant (CPA), now our middle daughter is an English teacher and our son is in the Army serving in Afghanistan. We are very proud of our children and their accomplishments, they are an inspiration to me!

My children often tell me that they felt we were a close family and spent quality time together. Our kitchen and living room are upstairs, we did not have a TV upstairs, only downstairs. Meals were spent together and we spent a lot of time communicating with each other in the living room.

We had 1 computer and it was in the corner of the living room. We did not allow TV's or computers in the kids' rooms. Thank God cell phone's were not that popular when my kids were young, so we didn't have to deal with that dilemma.

We didn't have a lot of money so we came up with different ways to do things that cost money. My husband and I volunteered with the ski patrol so that our whole family could get season passes for $10.00. We went skiing every weekend and my oldest daughter ended up teaching ski wees on Saturday mornings when she was in high school and as she moved on to college she taught disabled kids to ski.

We live 7 miles from a big lake, so we spent a lot of time boating, camping, water skiing, and knee boarding. My hubby and I also went to almost all of our children's school activities, I usually worked part time so I was able to go and my husbands job allowed him to leave for school programs and return to work if needed (he was very fortunate).

Maybe it's the laid back Montana life that allowed for our type of living, but we were very fortunate to be able to spend quality time as a family and I believe our children benefited from that time together (so did me and my hubby!). I guess I should give my kids some credit also....they all were really good and didn't give us much trouble!

So anyway......I'm a very proud mom!!