A little bit of baking involved

Well, one of my New Years resolutions was to blog more frequent, and so far I have not followed through. :( But it is still a goal!

I will start off first with a puppy update. I think that we are past the honeymoon stage... We started off with Meko pretty much potty training himself. I think in total, we have only had maybe 10 accidents in the house. Otherwise, he is going to the door to tell us when he needs to go. He still has not learned to bark...YEAH!!! And as a puppy, he really is great! But, this weekend, I caught him pulling up the carpet. I almost threw him across the room...I didn't...I was able to take a breath...but oh my goodness, he is lucky. So tonight I am off to buy something with an apple bitter taste to spray on the area. Hopefully this will help!

We have been working the last couple of weeks on a 'Creative Cooks' for our 4H group. Bayle is still too young to compete but they are letting his age group still participate. And this will be Taylor's first year competing, and we are still way behind on being 'ready'. Taylor has chosen to make chili as her dish and to dress her table as if she were eating in a log cabin. She is having quite a bit of fun decorating and making things not to matchy matchy. And Bayle has chosen to make brownies in the shape of Dragons to which I do not know how I am going to pull it off. But the competition is this Saturday, so we still have this week to prepare and do a couple of test runs. And the hubby is happy about that because it means extra brownies hanging around for him to taste test! So wish them luck!!

Oh, those teen years

Growing up, I had my share of good friends and not so good friends. I had friends that would start out sweet only to cut ties and gossip about my dreams and secrets as a joke to other girls. I had friends that would only call me when their 'other friends' were unavailable. I also had friends that would steal from me, and still continue to act as a friend. But I also had some amazing friends that stuck up for each other. And yes, unfortunately, I also found myself playing small/large parts in all of these scenarios. Hindsight is definitely 20/20.

Without these friends, both good and bad, hopefully we gals realize how to treat people and appreciate one another. And we have learned from our mistakes...hopefully.

So anyway, the reason I bring this up, is I have found myself trying to give advice to my teenage daughter. She is having some issues with a few of her friends. She is also very moody and distant. Brent and I have noticed something changing for a few weeks now, and last night I was able to sit her down and talk about some of the things going on in school and such. And she finally opened up. It seems that she is fighting what she knows morally knows is right vs. peer pressure. She is also being accused of something that started with a misunderstanding.

And I am fighting every inch of myself not to tell her what to do. She knows what is right, and all I can do is listen and give advice. She will need to make the decisions herself, right or wrong.

It kills me to know what she is going to go through and the hurt feelings that she will have. Am I a bad mother for 'letting' her go through this? I guess I don't see it this way. Without those girlfriends of mine who wronged me in some way, I would not have learned how to be a good person. And without me making some wrong decisions, and hurting others, I would not have learned the pain of seeing their faces. We all need to go through that to a point. I just need to be a good listener so she feels that she will always have someone to talk to.