Gratituesday-NanaHood’s Mother of the Year Winner!

I am so grateful today for all the wonderful nominees and the people who nominated them. I continue to be inspired by their stories. Thank you again for taking the time to write them. Every mom mentioned here is an awesome mom! Blessings to them all and to all who know and love them!

Congratulations to Nominee #9, Carol is our Mother of the Year!

If you didn’t get a chance to meet her, here is her story again.

My Skydiving Mother

By Jennifer

My mother is the woman I want to be when I grow up.  She is kind to all, generous to a fault, adventuresome beyond belief, and more loving than any of us deserve!

Growing up, my mom was never too busy to sit and talk, to go fishing, or to help with a schoolwork assignment.  She supported my brother and me in all we did, even when this meant taking a hunter’s safety course to earn her hunting license so she could go hunting with my brother.

Today, my mom encourages her grandchildren in the same way.   She helps the grandkids complete Scout badges and belt loops by sewing, baking, drilling, and sawing with them when no one else has the time.  Last year, she spent the hottest week of the summer at Webelos camp with our son, Ryan, and while there agreed to be the Pack Grandma (that’s 60 grandsons!) from there on out.

She’ll drive five hours just to see her grandsons perform in a violin recital, or to pick them up to take them to a “really wonderful” event that is happening in her hometown.  Because of grandma, the boys have seen a Broadway show, gone to LEGO camp, and spent countless long-weekends with their only cousin, who lives close to grandma.  As if that weren’t enough, she takes her grandkids (and their parents) all sorts of cool places we’d never be able to take travel on our own:  some close, some far away.

To top it all off, my mom does really cool things like jump out of an airplane, travel to Kenya and Zambia to do mission work, and rebuild houses destroyed by Hurricane Katrina.  My friends are always asking, “So, what’s your mom up to now?,”  and then following up with, “That is SO COOL!”

But above all, my mom loves her family unconditionally.   She tells them she loves them, listens to them in a way NO ONE else does, asks them about their interests, and tells them repeatedly how cute they are (and not just the grandkids).

This Mother’s Day will be bitter-sweet for my mom.   May 8th, Mother’s Day, is the 2-year anniversary of my brother’s unexpected passing at 33.  For all the love my mom gives to others, and all the love she receives in return, I know there is nothing that will ever fill the hole my brother’s death has left in her heart, and this to me makes her all the more amazing.  That she continues to love and to give the way she does is a true testimony to her loving, God-filled spirit.

There was a time, when I was much younger, that my grandmother observed how similar my mom and I were in so many ways.  I was mortified.  Today, I can think of no greater compliment someone could pay me.  My mom is my best-friend, and the woman I’d most like to be like.  Happy Mother’s Day, Mom!  I LOVE YOU!