- Teaching us to clean the house. Not just to make us have chores, but she taught us that if we worked as a team, each doing our part, the job was done quickly and the job was done better
- Letting us help cook even though I now know it slowed her down and made her job harder
- Mowing the yard with us. She didn't have to take her turns, but she did. The whole team thing.
- Bringing us out a nice cold glass of ice water when we were mowing
- Teaching us to garden, along with Dad. Also, teaching us how to graze in the garden (yum) :-)
- Staying in the kitchen to cook dinner, some meals, while the rest of the family ate until we were all done. Then she would sit down to eat.
- Pitching to us out in the yard so we could practice baseball
- Letting us have pets when we were growing up
- Loving our pets as much as we did
- Always knowing what to say to break up sibling fights; usually by telling us to go outside if we were going to fight.
- Not getting too mad when we wrecked her cars
- Playing board games with us a lot. She was so much fun but, yet, competitive
- Putting puzzles together with us
- Reading her Bible every morning and leaving it out on the kitchen table so that we could read it when we got up to eat breakfast
- Passing along her love of flowers and her love of cardinals and hummingbirds
- Being an example of living a healthy life by walking every morning or riding her bike
- Passing along the joy of listening to music
- Passing along how good it feels to laugh, especially the laughs where you can't stop and you can't breath
- Helping us study for tests
- With Dad, always making sure we had what we needed without us being aware that we didn't have a whole lot of money
- Making us feel special by having us take turns going to get groceries with her and letting us pick out a special cereal when it was our turn to go
- Going to almost every sporting event, band concert or parade, theater event, or awards banquet that we had
- Sitting in all sorts of nasty weather or hot weather to cheer me on in track and cross country
- Being my "statistician" by keeping my splits for every race I ran in track and giving me the little notebooks that had all of this in them (I still remember going to pick out a nice stopwatch with her that she could use)
- Coming to my jr high and freshman basketball games even when she knew I would likely never see action on the court
- Passing along her excitement for the Christmas season and Christmas morning
- Passing along her ability to go through all of my brothers' and sisters' names, and sometimes the pet's name, before getting to mine when she was calling me down from upstairs
- Agreeing to buy me a drum set when I was in high school even though there would be the known consequences
- Giving me my love for ice cream
- Giving me my love for popcorn and how to properly make it on the stove
- Teaching me how to be fiscally responsible no matter how much money one has
- Teaching me how to joyfully serve others and how to help those that need help or support
- Being a prime example of how to be a parent so that I could try to be the best Dad that I could be
- Being hard on me when I needed it the most
- Always letting me lay my head on her shoulder or lay in her lap
- Always giving me kisses
- Always telling me that she loved me
- No matter the circumstances, no matter what I did, no matter how much I rebelled, no matter how rude I was to her, no matter the decisions I made that she didn't agree with, always being my Mom....
I love you, Bonnie Lou