On Blessing Your Kids–and Sharing Embarrassing Photos

My girls and I have been on a bit of a road trip this week!

And today I thought I’d give you a bit of an update (plus share some super funny embarrassing pictures I found!)

Last week my friend Tammy, who works with me, picked me up and loaded all my stuff in her van and we drove down to Indiana, where I gave a Girl Talk in Highland. A MOPS group had organized it (those are always the best events!) and we had a blast.

By the way, if your church may be interested in hosting a Girl Talk, just let me know! It’s a super fun evening where I talk about sex and marriage, and it goes over really well as an outreach, too! We’re even bringing it on tour to Australia and New Zealand in May (and if you’re Down Under and you’d like to get in on the tour, there’s time!). You can find more about it here. (We’re hoping to come back to Alberta next fall, and then hit the middle and eastern states next year in our RV!)

Then Tammy and I holed up in a hotel last weekend, doing some work and also some serious shopping (I got four pairs of boots and shoes for the price of the black boots I was wearing in that picture), and waited for this week to arrive.

On Monday we picked my girls up at the Chicago airport and headed south, because Tuesday night we were giving our Mother Daughter Event in Moberly, Missouri. I don’t have the good pictures of it yet, but it was so much fun!

We’ve designed the event so that the purpose is to help daughters understand that their mom is really on their side, and to help improve communication. It’s for moms with daughters in junior high and high school, and we spend the first half helping daughters understand where moms are coming from and helping moms understand where daughters are coming from. We each talk and tell funny stories, and then we have little mini-projects that the mom and daughter can discuss amongst themselves, to start those conversations.

In the second half, we talk about how to improve communication. And we end with having the moms give their daughters a blessing which I always model. It’s actually quite a powerful evening! On Monday night, after I told about the blessing and then told the moms to try it, I saw one girl hop into her mom’s lap and say, “I’m ready!” It was so cute.

We don’t make the daughters open up that much (though we do have little things they can share with their moms) because the purpose is to have the daughters see, “I can trust my mom.” I really like this event, and I hope we do more of them!

We decided that yesterday, on our long drive back home, we’d spend the morning at the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library, since we were going right through Springfield, Illinois.

Katie is the Queen of Selfies!

Keith and I visited the museum on our way through two years ago, and I really wanted to see it with the girls. It’s so well done. And you get this tremendous sense of how burdened Lincoln was. He had these big things he totally believed in and wanted to accomplish, but he was opposed at every turn, even from those within his own party. When you know something is the right thing to do, how do you keep on when everyone is telling you it’s not practical or you’re wrong? Plus he endured such personal tragedy, too.

The statistics on slavery were just so sobering. 186,000 children sold away from their parents between 1820 and the Civil War. 226,000 adults sold away from their spouses. Just imagine the scale of misery. It’s really astounding. And what’s even more astounding is that Christians justified it.

May we never be so blind in our own time.

We visited the Abraham Lincoln Tomb after that, just to pay our respects.

It was very sobering. And very well done.

We may be Canadian, but when we homeschooled our kids we made them memorize the Gettysburg address. Some things are universal and belong to the ages, not just to the United States. Lincoln’s principles and courage are such things.

And now we come to my embarrassing pictures…

After that we had eight hours in a car yesterday, not getting into our hotel until after midnight (I’m seriously tired this morning as I type this!). We’re crossing the border soon and heading back home today.

During long car rides I like to organize my pictures on my Mac, deleting useless ones, tagging photos, and marking everyone’s faces so I can easily find pictures later.

And I came across a photo that made me laugh out loud, so hard that I woke up the girls who were sleeping in the back seat.

Taken on our trip to Ireland last year, Keith and I came across a candy shop named “Sheila’s”. So I stopped for a picture.

I swear, on everything I hold dear, I THOUGHT I WAS POINTING AT MY NAME.

I don’t even know what that expression on my face is supposed to be!

And we’ve been joking that my husband needs glasses, but I think this confirms it. Because why did he not say something when he was taking that picture? As far as I know, he didn’t notice anything amiss!

Anyway, as we were going through the pictures, after seeing that one, I came across another one that Tammy took of me while we were shopping last weekend.

You have to realize, we had all spent an hour laughing at the photo above. And then we saw this one:

Tammy and I had been walking through the store and saw the abominable snowman, and I decided I needed a picture. BUT I HAD NO IDEA WHAT THIS WOULD LOOK LIKE. I mean, what is my hand doing? According to his expression, it’s having an effect.

But I swear, it’s totally innocent.

I was just holding my phone! But because the phone is black and my coat is black, you can’t really see the phone on first glance. But that’s why my hand is like that.

Anyway, maybe it’s because we had been driving so far yesterday and were bored and overtired, but I thought my daughters were going to pass out they were laughing so hard. They want to turn this into the family Christmas card. They immediately wanted to text it all to their husbands (or soon-to-be-husband), but decided they wanted to present it while live, in person.

So I thought I’d share it with you, and I hope you’ll all take it in fun. I really am tired right now, so I have no idea if my judgment is seriously off. But that’s what we’ve been doing all week (and that’s why I haven’t been as active in the comments!)

We’re leaving our last hotel and heading home in a few minutes, and I’m getting ready for a seriously fun week next week when we FIGHT THE FRUMP! It will be a great series. And join me tomorrow for our third instalment in caring for aging parents, because that’s had such feedback I’ve decided to keep it going for a bit!

Ever realized you took a seriously embarrassing photo, inadvertently? Tell me about it in the comments so I don’t feel like the only one!

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