Treasure Your Memories

 Usually I don't take these days off, but this year I did because it's the weekend directly following inventory in my BigBox store.  But its much easier to be at work, to be busy doing things that keep me from dwelling, from thinking.  

My sister's birthday, my son's birthday, my Dad's birthday all within 12 days of each other.  And all of them have died.  They're gone from my life, but not from my memories.  Most of the time, I'm fine with the memories, from all the good times we've shared.   Doing things as a family when we were growing up was something instilled in me by my parents, and I kept up that tradition with my own kids.  Between holiday traditions, vacation traditions and dinner around the table together every night, we managed to build on our memories. 

I can remember growing up, Dad would make a joke about living the high life because he has not one but *two* dishwashers -- named Linda and Lori.  lol   During summer vacations, my sister and I would challenge ourselves to see how fast we could wash and dry the dishes so we could get back outside to play with the neighbor kids.   Holidays were centered around the family meal.  With my own kids, we followed tradition and ate dinner together around the table.  We learned early on to skip questions like "how was school" getting the proverbial non answer of "fine".  We pushed them with questions like "what did you learn in school today".  It's amazing what answers come out of children when you ask different questions! 

Sometimes we had them picking sips of paper with a quote on it, or a joke, and had them read out loud.  I was always horrible about speaking in front of people, and I didn't want my own kids to have that problem! But the best memories were when they didn't have to be prompted and just spoke their minds on whatever they chose.  

Building memories with your family is something that can -never- be taken away from you, even after your loved ones are gone.  Don't choose things over people, don't choose your work over your family.  You'll treasure those memories even more later in life.