For My Mother.

 When l was applying to colleges, I couldn't wait to get out of the house, grow up, and make something of myself. But if someone would have told me that becoming your own person and growing up means you don't get to see your family for four and a half months when the long summer days have been replaced with cold winter nights, I probably wouldn't have been so quick to sign up. I owe everything I have, am, and will become to my wonderful parents. I'm the luckiest girl alive because I have had the privilege to be raised by them. Parents who love my siblings, me, and most importantly, each other. They have taught me what to strive for in a marriage, and guided me to become the type of person that's deserving of a man who loves The Lord, loves his family, and will take care of me.

Mom,
Thank you for everything. You're the most selfless, kind, funny, spontaneous, beautiful, loving woman I know. You have taught me so many important things already, and life is really only just beginning. Thank you for taking me bra shopping even when I didn't need a bra yet, for forgiving me after I threw a phone at your head in fifth grade, for buying me name brand tampons when I was thirteen and the generic kind were not good enough, thank you for French braiding my hair every night before bed sophomore year, and for letting me come home from school when I had a bad day. Thank you for taking the family to New York City for spring break two years ago so that I could tour the French Culinary Institute and figure out my future. Thank you for sitting through countless nights of meltdowns as I cried over where I should go to college. Thank you for encouraging me to get a job, to work hard  & save. Thank you for teaching me how to cook, and for encouraging me to follow  my dreams. Thank you for taking me out for dinner when I came home from work starving, and for offering to rub my feet after I had worked an eight hour day, even though you had so many other things to do. Thank you for moving twice in ten months, just to get our family into a good school district. Thank you for driving us twenty miles to school, so I didn't have to sit alone at the lunch table. Thank you for letting me have my own bedroom, even though I didn't keep it clean like I promised. Thank you for washing my work clothes at a moments notice, and for driving to school and putting them in my car when I forgot. Thank you for waking up at five in the morning to make green smoothies, scrape ice off my car windshield, and send us off to early morning seminary. Thank you for coming shopping with me, for always being a good listener, for staying young and fun. Thank you for letting me cook dinner and feed the family food with strange ingredients, for letting me come to the decision that New York isn't right for me right now on my own. Thank you for doing my hair for me every morning for six weeks senior year when I broke my wrist and couldn't do it myself. Thank you for eating pints of chunky monkey with me, just because. Thank you for listening to my complain about school, about my problems, about everything at one point. Thank you for doing my dishes after I made dinner or cupcakes, even though I said I would. Thank you for letting me take over an entire cabinet in our tiny kitchen so I had a place to keep my baking supplies. Thank you for calling the nurse and telling her I had a doctors appointment when I forgot to get a note for the pep rallies. Thank you for letting me borrow and most of the time not return all your super cute clothes. Thank you for driving me to work on days I did not feel like driving myself. Thank you for letting me  cry after a bad day, and for letting me come home from school when I would get bad cramps. Thank you for helping me put ombré in my hair even though I'm already blonde  and you knew it wouldn't work. Thank you for taking me to New York City just hours after graduation to avoid my senior party, thank you for letting me pretend we were locals, and for coming with me to all the strange places the locals loved. Thank you for getting a hotel by JFK on our last night instead of waiting at the airport, thank you for letting me work through my emotions of not being able to live in the city right now, for being loving and supporting and so much fun. Thank you for buying my college stuff, and for paying for my housing. Thank you for encouraging me to fly down here early for a job interview, thank you for driving my stuff down here, and for always being a good listener. Thank you for helping me carry my stuff up four flights of stairs to my apartment. Thank you for helping me down those same four flights of stairs when I stabbed myself in the leg while unpacking my kitchen knives. Thank you for taking me to the emergency room. I know that I can take care of myself, that i can cook and clean and do my homework, but i'm going to miss seeing you everyday, i'll miss our late night ice cream runs, always having someone to talk to, i'll miss all of it. This list doesn't even begin to cover everything you have done for me, and I promise I'll let you and dad live with me when you're old and have grey hair and can't go to the bathroom by yourselves. Lastly, I wanted to thank you for being my best friend, it's the most wonderful thing in the world, and I'm going to miss you so much while I'm at school. I love you so much, mom.

 

 

 
 

xoxo.
Sarah