Rah Times

After I migrated to the United States in my late teen years, the holiday season became very difficult for me. It was not until I had children fourteen years later that the holidays became easier. One of the joys of having seven children is that their excitement and nonchalant attitude can sometimes be contagious. They find pleasure at times with the most insignificant things. As toddlers they would gravitate more towards the pots and pans than their own toys. As teens and school-aged children they all want the most expensive gadgets but tend to use one and disregard the others. In my family that is truer of the boys than the girls. My children seem to get more enjoyment out of opening their many gifts on Christmas morning than actually playing with them the rest of the year. I later realized, though, that when some children have a large selection of toys this can confuse them. The end result is that it makes it very difficult for them to be able to make a choice. I know this may not ...

My life is more and more like a juggling act at this time than it has ever been in previous years. The difference now is that I am struggling to be all things to my children and to keep every aspect of my life afloat. In the midst of a crisis I tend to put all my energies into taking care of the chore at hand and tend to drop the ball on the none crisis issues. It was not an easy task meeting the needs of seven children. It was considerably much more challenging because I had special needs children as part of the mix. If the goal was simply to care for the children without providing them a resolution to their difficulties, then yes this would not have been as trying for me as it has been. What made it doubly difficult was when the children were younger my husband was not available to give me a hand as would have been ideal. I had a very faithful husband who was a good provider. On occasion he would take the children to their various after school programs but I was the main careta...

Life constantly changes from day to day and there is no day that is like the day before. It is a lot easier to do nothing and to give up and be over come by defeat but what joy is there in that? I have had to face numerous challenges as a result of the choices I made in life. They were courageous, foolish noble choices and yes my reward has been bitter sweet. Below is an article I wrote several years ago concerning one of the many hurdles I encountered while caring for my children.  In the middle of those challenges, I never fore saw  the possibility that we would have overcome some of those struggles. The idea that the time would come where this child would be applying for an athletic scholarship at that point was inconceivable to me . At the end of this blog there is a link to a video. The purpose of the video is to demonstrate her performance to the schools she is interested in attending. For us to have gotten to this moment it w...