Stop it. Do Something Better.

 I don't have a lot of words tonight.  My heart is sick & my stomach is in knots.  Seeing our Country at such a low is unbearable.  I can't check the news any longer.  I cannot make sense of such utter nonsense.

This is what we need people.  Black men & women.  White men & women.  ALL men & women to call for peace & unity.  We need to speak to each other like respectable, reasonable human beings instead of seeking change by means of violence & hatred.  We must love one another & our Nation enough to move forward and make true, lasting change.

Life is precious.  Not ONE MORE man, woman, or child should die because of stupid, senseless violence. Shame on those of us who are saying this is justifiable.  Shame on those of us who sit around & complain on twitter & facebook & social media.  Shame on those of us who add fuel to this horrible fire.  We should demand better of each other.  We MUST be the change we want to see.

Instead of reading all these ignorant comments on social media, we should all look around tomorrow & find ONE WAY to make our communities better.  Give a homeless person a meal.  Bake cookies and take them to a fire station.  Buy a vet a cup of coffee.  Check on an elderly neighbor.  Pray for peace.  Find SOMEONE, ANYONE in need & DO SOMETHING TO HELP.  Be part of a solution, instead of sitting around complaining about the problems.

Comment here.  Let me know what you did.  Inspire each other.  Be a good citizen.  Be a good American.   Be a decent human being.  Love your neighbor.

Give.

All day i've been thinking of what i would write about this evening.  I had several thoughts swirling around in my brain and then something happened tonight that trumped any idea my brain could've  conceived.  And i owe it all to an upcoming piano recital & the sweetest 7-year old girl i've ever known.

This wonderful moment happened several hours ago, as i was tucking our sweet girls in bed.
Pjs were on, teeth were brushed & flossed, hair was braided, prayers were prayed, and i had given the final hugs & kisses as i was turning to walk toward the door.  Our sweet 7-year old, Sophie, said in a very soft voice, "I hope i get an award tomorrow night."

Tomorrow night is no ordinary Saturday night for this Crabby Crew.  Tomorrow night is the Christmas piano recital that 3 of our 4 children have been practicing pieces for since late September.  It may not seem like much to an adult, but to these kids it's an evening they've been waiting for & a performance that daddy made it home from a 3-week TDY just in time to witness.  The outfits & dresses have been chosen, nails polished, hairstyles planned, & in the case of our 8-year old, Nate, his Chuck Taylors & fedora are ready for action.  This is a big deal to these little people.

To say that Nate is a "natural" on piano would be a gross understatement.  I could brag & tell you how he taught himself the first few lines of Fur Elise by ear within the first few months of playing piano before he could even read notes, but i'll spare you all the details.  At last year's recital, Nate received an award and he has cherished this award for the past year.  Sophie was disappointed that she wasn't chosen for an award, but she smiled and hugged her brother and told him how proud of him she was.  But since that day, she has practiced with passion.  She is a girl on a mission...and she whispered that to me this evening.  Of course, i paused & gave her "the mom-speech" about how she doesn't need an award to make us proud, etc, etc, etc...But her response to my speech is what brought tears to my eyes & made my heart swell with joy, love, & unbelievable pride.

While i was talking, Sophie realized that Jimmy has been playing guitar for 3 years but his teacher doesn't do recitals.  This means that he's never played in front of an audience & he's never had the opportunity to receive an award.  In her sweet, scratchy voice Sophie told me that she knew that she was going to ask Santa Claus for.  "I'm going to ask him for a guitar award.  And when i unwrap it, i'm going to give it to Jimmy.  As a present from me to him!"  Let's just say I didn't have a "mom-speech" prepared for that one.

But that's our Sophie.  She's truly a unique child.  She has this gift of generosity.  She's a sweet spirit who yells from the back seat of the van every time she sees a homeless person, begging me to stop and give them a blessing bag.  She will share anything with anyone...including the gift she plans on asking Santa for this year.

That generous child.  That sweet, giving spirit.  Tonight she taught her mother a thing or two about how to put others first....even when your heart is aching for its own desires.  I know she's just being who God created her to be...but i pray she never allows the world to change her.  Because she may never be rich in the eyes of the world, but that little princess is storing up her treasures in heaven.

Pen Pals and Postcards

Pen Pals rock!  Did you ever have a pen pal as a child?  Our 3 youngest children have recently embraced the dying art of letter writing as a means of keeping in touch with some friends who moved several weeks ago.  And today they received their first letters in the mail!  To say that they were thrilled is a ridiculous understatement.   There was screaming and squealing and ripping of paper as they tore the envelope open and devoured those words.  It was a thing of pure beauty, i tell you.  They laughed.  They sighed.  And when it was all over they ran upstairs and piled up on one bed and compared letters and shared "remember when" stories and giggled.  About an hour later, i found them there...with notebooks and clipboards and pencils, spelling words for each other and arguing over who was going to write the address on the envelope.  They even asked if we could include postcards with the next set of letters we send!

Unlocking the mailbox and finding that envelope that contained those letters made this afternoon like Christmas morning in our home.  And for those few brief moments, the sadness of missing friends that has followed them like a black cloud these past 2 weeks was finally lifted.  They found joy in just remembering what a precious gift it is to find friends and make memories.  Good, true friends can be hard to find in this world where people come and go and change their convictions like Hollywood celebrities change spouses.  I'm hoping that the thrill of these letters will strengthen their resolve to maintain relationships with the people who touch their little lives and hearts in this sometimes hard, always crazy journey we call "military life."

This military lifestyle is both a blessing and a curse;  full of big surprises and little ironies.  I pray that at the end of the road our kids are better, more compassionate people who live lives of service and sacrifice...and that they share those lives with a few dozen pen pals along the way.

We've interrupted this regularly scheduled life & blog....to have the flu.  Yep.  that's right.  pretty sure that's why for the past 3 days I have ached all day & all night from my eyelids all the way down to my toenails.  Which also explains also why blogging has been much lower on the priority list than say, blowing my nose or better yet....sleep!

Before i get into what i wanted to share tonight, i wanted to give an update on our Noticing November jar.  We've done it every day.  Without fail.  Sometimes twice a day.  Because the funny thing about gratitude is that the more time you spend intentionally looking for things you can be grateful for, the more things you actually notice.  Our jar is filling up fast & it's going great; except for the part where they act like they're casting some top secret ballot every time they sit down to write out a card.  They're all like:

"hey!!  don't peek at my card.  NOBODY PEEK AT MY CARD!"  

"Moooom!!  Nate's trying to read my caaaaaard!" 

(& my personal favorite was from Ella)  "mommy?  how do you spell bwain?  like, 'i'm thankful for my bwain.'  But i'm NOT writing that boys!!" 

Apparently they've embraced the "no reading them till New Year's Eve" mandate.  It's just whatever.

In other news, the past few days have made me VERY grateful for some incredible people in my life.  Yesterday, one friend (who has her own houseful of kids that she homeschools and NUMEROUS responsibilities in our squadron) took my kids for almost 2 hours.  She baked cookies with the girls, let her son & my boys load up on minecraft, & ordered me to nap.  In silence.  It was everything to me.  Another friend went to the store to get me lemon for my tea today & a box of cereal to make tomorrow a little easier.  Another friend offered to make me soup.  And my phone literally buzzed all morning while friends, both military and civilian, both in Alaska & other states, texted me checking in to see if i needed anything & letting me know that they were praying for me.  

Then there is the matter of these marvelous human beings i call our children.  I woke up to our oldest, Jimmy, sitting at the foot of my bed telling me to go back to sleep while he took "the kids" downstairs to feed them breakfast.  About an hour later, i stepped out of the shower, to find Nate & Sophie planting this surprise in my room:

This almost melted me into a puddle of mommy mush.  Don't get me wrong, the card & the stickers & the "perfect penmanship" that they used to sign their names inside were great.  But the bag of candy & what it represented was what did it to me.  They proudly announced that they wanted to give me a get well present, but they didn't have anything to give....except Halloween candy.  So they all chose my favorites out of their stash & loaded up a ziploc bag & affectionately signed it, "The Carrabbia kids."  That may not look like much to you.  But to me it meant the world because they gave generously from what they had. This is the kind of generosity that we strive to put in their hearts.  The kind that says "i may not have much to give, but what i do have i give with a smile on my face & love in my heart."

So while I may not feel physically well, in my heart i feel better than i have in days.  I get to live everyday of my life with 4 little people that are turning into 4 amazing big people with even bigger hearts.  i can't think of a better reason than that to be grateful today.

Noticing November

There's a new sheriff in town.  Well, in all honesty, since my husband is TDY for a while i'm the ONLY sheriff in town.  And every military wife will add a resounding "Amen" when i explain why this is one of the bonuses of military life.  If you've gotta be without your spouse for ANY amount of time, you've gotta look for "perks" to keep from getting resentful in the times when you shoulder the burden of the household alone.  One of these "perks" happens to be getting to be the only boss in the house.  I think i speak for a great number of ladies i know when i say that THIS is the exact time we rearrange the furniture, reconfigure chore charts, and rethink the day-to-day operating procedures in our homes.  Some may see this as a power trip of sorts.  If we are getting really raw and honest this is our way of "controlling" an area of our lives when we find ourselves in a situation where we have very little control.

So, now that we've established that i'm a control freak during times like these, let me share with you what i'm "controlling" today.  I taught a lesson this morning at church about gratitude...funny thing, since this topic has been popping up all over my thought/prayer life lately.  I've made a decision to "control" the entire month of November by deliberately and purposefully cultivating a daily attitude of gratitude and thankfulness in my life and the lives of our children.  Lately i've been feeling like November is just a stepping stone.  It's that funky month between GETTING free candy for Halloween and GETTING more stuff for Christmas.  And i've decided to single-handedly shut that nonsense down in the Crabb Shack.

So, henceforth, this month shall be known as Noticing November (thanks to my super cool friend Sarah for her awesome alliteration!).  We are gonna spend this whole month noticing the things we have to be thankful for every day.  And it's gonna start with this jar:

Every day, for the remainder of the month, the kids and i are each going to write down something that we are thankful for that day.  And every day, for the remainder of the month, we are going to pray together and ask the Lord to show us ways that we can bless others.  Between now and New Year's Eve my deepest desire is that we take time every day to notice the ways that we are blessed and to keep our eyes wide open to notice ways that we can bless others.  Before we head into 2015 on the holiday high that often comes with receiving the gifts of our dreams, i want us to spend some serious time deliberately focused on what we already have and on what we can give to others between now and then.  Then, on New Year's Eve, i would like for us to open these little notes & count our blessings one by one so that we can usher in the new year with joy and thanksgiving and hopefully a commitment to serving and giving in 2015.   I want the cornerstones of our family to be joy and contentment.  And it just so happens that this sheriff thinks that gratefulness is a great place to start.

No-sayer. And proud of it.

I'm a big No-sayer.  Just ask my kids.  On any given day my kids know that if they want a "yes" answer about video games, or tv, or french fries, or candy they should probably ask their dad first.  Don't worry, i've read all the books all the so-called experts have written about how emotionally unhealthy it is for kids to always hear the word "no."  Personally, i think they're full of crap.  Disappointment is part of life.  We don't always get what we want when we want it.  & i think there's something to be said for being able to accept "no" as an answer.  Funny thing i've noticed lately is that I often say "no" when the answer should probably be "i don't know" or "maybe" or "wait."   In my reasoning, the advantage to doing this is twofold.  First,  i can avoid all of the nagging that inevitably accompanies a "maybe" answer.  And second, it buys me time to ponder the request & i always know that i reserve the right to change my mind later because, after all, i'm a girl.  And i happen to be the mom.

So, when my daughter approached and BEGGED me for a bottle of "big girl perfume" i gave my initial, obligatory "no" answer.  I gave the same response when she asked for sparkly eyeshadow, Colored lip gloss, dangle earrings, and shiny shoes with a "little high heel."  Don't get me wrong, i remember being a little girl and dreaming of someday having a life that was full of these things. As a matter of fact, i still remember requesting my first bottle of Love's Baby Soft perfume.  I  vividly recall having this page torn out of Seventeen Magazine & scotch taped into my middle school locker because of course this hottie was talking about ME....whether or not he knew how to spell my name....

When it comes to grown-up things for little kids, i'm not really sure how popular my opinion is.  Quite honestly it makes no difference if people agree or disagree with me.  I think there's wisdom in learning to accept disappointment and wisdom in learning to wait.  Our daughter Sophie "waited" until her 6th birthday for her first bottle of Love's Baby Soft (big girl) perfume.  And on her 7th birthday she finally got her first pair of dangle earrings.  Our son Jimmy waited until he was 12 to be allowed to play certain video games rated "T" for teen and even though his 2 years of waiting for his own cell phone may be coming to a close this Christmas, the answer to his request for an iphone with unlimited  everything and no restrictions will ABSOLUTELY be a firm & very definitive NO.

For kids as well as adults, it's nice to have something to look forward to.  Sometimes when we get our heart's desire we realize it was so much more than we ever dreamed and other times we discover it's not all it was cracked up to be.  And then there are those times that the desire just remains unfulfilled.  No matter how it ends up I think there's wisdom to be gleaned along the way.  If we are unwilling to indulge in self-pity, we are sure to end up a little more wise and a whole lot more grateful.

Several hours ago, I learned something that has blown my mind and rocked my world.  Never in a million years would i have thought that this could be true.  Apparently i've been in a bubble for 20+ years...or at least in a state of denial.  Tonight i learned that there are actually people in the world who HATE Winnie-the-Pooh.  

I could understand "dislike".  Or maybe that particular bear not being someone's favorite...but "hate" was the word my friend used when Pooh came up in casual conversation...and don't act like you've never had a casual conversation about Pooh!  I hate poverty.  I hate animal cruelty.  I hate child abuse.  But hate Winnie-the-Pooh? I can't even.

I've loved many cartoons from my childhood but none have i felt such an affinity for as i do for Pooh Bear.  As a child i found the gang in the hundred acre wood silly & sweet; but as an adult i see so much more.  I see this group of friends, some of them misfits, all with their strengths and weaknesses & quirks.  Frightened little Piglet, OCD Rabbit, free-spirited Tigger, Roo the optimist, gloomy good-hearted Eyeore, and simple-minded yet ridiculously profound Pooh Bear.  All of these various personalities somehow mesh together into the wisest, strongest group of friends...the weaknesses of one so complimentary to the strengths of another.

I probably read way too much into this simple cartoon.  But i can't help but think of all the people that have touched my life over the years.  I've been an adventurous soul for as long as i can remember.  I've left the comfort & familiarity of my "hundred acre wood" many times.  Sometimes my adventures have been on another continents, sometimes across state lines...but every time without fail once i've settled into a new place i've met new, incredible, amazing people.  Some are very different than me.  All of them have their quirks.  And there have even been a few misfits along the way.  But regardless, I've managed to become stronger & wiser because each of them has entered my life.  And i feel so incredibly blessed to call so many of them my true, honest-to-goodness friends.

Maybe i'm biased when it comes to Pooh.  I'll be the first to admit i'm the girl who cannot make it through the Heffalump soundtrack without going through a whole box of kleenex.  The second Carly Simon sings, "i think i feel more like myself when i'm with you" in the Shoulder to Shoulder song i dissolve into a puddle of i-miss-my-friends-who-are-scattered-all-over-the-globe mush.  It's whatever, i guess.  All i know is that friendship has always lightened my load & brightened my skies.  On the gloomiest of days, when the time has come to say goodbye to the people i've cherished, gratitude is always the thing that is left behind in my heart.  Because, in the words of a very famous (and perhaps the wisest) bear who ever 'lived', "it's so much friendlier with two."