When you are younger, you waste a lot of time wishing you were other people. Sometimes they are people in your life who seem to have it easier than you (but rarely do), but often they are famous people that we want to be like.

For me, growing up loving all things music, these people were always singers. I would grab a hairbrush or anything else I could turn into a microphone and sing my heart out with the occasional break to accept my numerous awards.

At some point, and I am not sure when, we kind of stop such silliness and settle into ourselves. It isn’t that we necessarily love ourselves, but we gain the wisdom to recognize that being someone else isn’t going to fix anything.

That being said, there are still people we become giddy over meeting. Odd how much those people change as we become parents. A few weeks ago I got to meet one of my idols.

In case you haven’t discovered Laurie Berkner, let me introduce you. She makes some of the most delightful kid’s music that we have been listening to since Lily was little. We love her. So, I was super excited to hear she was coming to Grand Rapids. Her show was so much fun and did not disappoint one bit.

Even more exciting, the hubby had been assigned to help welcome her and her band. I begged him to arrange a meet and greet. I mean for the KIDS of course. But as you can see from my smile I couldn’t hide my excitement when we finally got to meet her. She even sang a few of our favorites that didn’t make it into the show.

I love my life and wouldn’t change it for the world. But if she needed a tambourine player to tour the countryside with her, I might reconsider……

Who would you love to meet now that you are a mom?

I am technically on a mini-spring break vacation so I am trying to stay unplugged with varied success. Those darn smart phones!! Actually my smart phone has saved me with my white noise app, otherwise these kids would probably not sleep.

Anywho, I am in my favorite city on earth, Chicago, staying yards away from my least favorite place on earth, The American Girl store. Thankfully, my girls are oblivious to it, but I can’t help but wander by thinking how disgusting the scene in there would look to large parts of the impoverished world. Stepping down from that soapbox before a riot ensues.

In other news, I decided to take my kids to the zoo via bus. I love the Chicago bus system and when I lived here used it all the time. But I forgot about the occasional “colorful” person who hops on. Today we had a woman who looked like a typical Chicago housewife get on and eye my children wistfully. She offered them each a package of those florescent orange crackers, which we politely declined. She proceeded to yell, “More crackers for me and my wine, cracker and cheese party” and started manically laughing. She continued quite the conversation with herself until we rushed past her several stops later to get off. Good times.

Really, I am just popping on quickly to let you know about a great opportunity available to anyone who missed Blissdom this year. All the content is now available through Blissdom At Home. I think I mentioned that I go to Blissdom every year but this year flat out knocked my socks off. So much great content I could barely stand it. Click on the banner to get it for $99. Seriously so worth the cost if you consider you are getting all the content at a fraction of the conference cost without paying for flight, hotel and babysitting.

Today I saw this on Facebook.

Studies over the last 15 years have consistently shown that in the US and Europe, approx. 90% of babies diagnosed with Down Syndrome in utero are electively aborted. On this World Down Syndrome Awareness Day, let’s pray that our hearts will be opened to the gift every life has to share. Praying we also realize that we are each uniquely perfect yet broken by God’s design…not just those we outwardly deem broken and imperfect.

I don’t like getting political and soapboxy on this blog. Not because I don’t have strong opinions about things. If you are married to me you KNOW I have some strong opinions. But because I don’t feel like using my blog in that way and I don’t want to argue with people in the comments, I just don’t really get controversial around here.

So I will just say this. As a society we are robbing the world of a group of beautiful people. And when we have parents willing to stand up and say their children are less than desirable even after they have spent 4 beautiful years with them? Something is very, very wrong.

Showing the world that people with Down Syndrome are more than worth being born will be really hard when there are none of them left. It breaks my heart.