"I Believe"

"I Believe"
By:  Jane Daugherty

I believe in children's laughter, the sweet perfume of a newborn baby's skin and that every child is entitled to happiness, decent housing, health care, proper nutrition and good education.

I believe that our schools should be places of discovery and growth, not of danger, that teachers should be paid more than lawyers and that parenting should be a required course in every high school.

I believe that "quality time" is a phony notion that cannot substitute for substantial time spent with our children.

I believe that baseball and other children's games can be magical and should be wrestled from screaming, competitive coaches and returned to play.

I believe that childhood should be a time of sand castles and celebration and that the defense of innocence is as important as the defense of our borders.

And I believe that our most urgent mission should be putting the needs of our children first.

Snow, Beautiful Snow

I am not a cold-weather kind of person.  I'd much prefer a warm sunny day to a cold one, yet I loved this weekend's snow...shoveling the driveway, helping my kids in and out of their snow boots, building a snowman, watching my kids go sledding, watching my husband push the kids to get them to go fast while sledding...it all made for a fantastic weekend.

I think we all need a weekend like this once in awhile, where the running around halts, activities are cancelled, and we are all "stuck" hanging out together.  Now, our family spends time together on a fairly regular basis.  We have movie nights and game nights.  We read together and take daytrips.  But there are other times when I feel that even though we all live in the same house, we aren't ever together for more than a few minutes.

So, while I may complain about the cold weather and look forward to the sunshiny days of summer, I'm thankful for the do-nothing weekend we just had, and all the family-time that came with it.

"An aged Christian, with the snow of time upon his head, may remind us that those points of earth are whitest which are nearest to heaven." ~ Edwin Hubbel Chapin