Mackenna Hope

Tomorrow is my second to the youngest child's 14th birthday!  Mackenna Hope is the most precious almost 14 year old you could ever meet. She is fun, caring, beautiful, loving and adorable! I just can't believe she is growing up. I stay in denial about her getting older because I'm just not sure I can cope with it very well.


When Mackenna was little, she was extremely shy. I remember when we first came to the church we now serve in, she was 3 years old. An older man came up and was introducing himself to all of us and he tweaked her nose like he was pretending that he grabbed her nose off of the front of her face. She was scared to death. She spent the rest of the trip holding her nose so that no one else tried to take it.  Actually, she covered her nose around older men for the next year or so. I loved how literal she was about it. It's one of those memories that I'll never forget.   She still takes things pretty literally, but she doesn't' hold onto her nose anymore to protect it...


If you don't know my precious Mackenna, you are definitely missing out, but that's ok because I kind of like keeping her to myself. Its kind of like I get to personally know the world's best kept secret, Mackenna Hope. I guess I really shouldn't be too selfish with her because she isn't really mine. She belongs to the Lord.  I'm so thankful, though, that He chose to  allow me the privilege of raising her. Mackenna is growing into a wonderful, Godly young woman and I see Christ working in her. As she is growing and maturing, I often see her encouraging and praying with others.She is awesome like that.


Other random Mackenna facts: 


She is a constant help with Violet, her niece, (my grandchild). She gives her constant, faithful, love and attention. If ever there was the perfect caregiver, it would be her.... 


She is an awesome photographer.


She HAS to be the last one to tell me goodnight. Everyone in the family knows and accepts this fact.


She loves to play games, just like me.


She hates to shop, just like me.


She does almost ALL of the laundry at our house (which is quite a lot)!


She is still my quietest child...but begin a conversation with her late at night and you would never notice that she is the quiet one.


I adore my daughter, Mackenna Hope Pecoraro!  Can you tell?

The last day of single digits

Today is quite possibly going to be a bit of a hard day for me. I'm not a big fan of my children growing up and today is the last day for my baby, Destiny, to be nine years old. Tomorrow she will be having her tenth birthday and I am just not ready for all of my children to be in the double digits, I know I probably have written about this before, but I miss my babies being babies. I miss the slow pace of parenting young children and I miss the position that I held in their lives when they were younger and they thought I knew everything.  I miss the days when no one had a job or college classes and we all got to spend the days together in the same room enjoying life together. I guess I like that my children are all responsible young people and they all work and pay their own way to all the things that they want to do, but I hate that, in order for them to be so responsible, I've had to give up my time with them. I wish I could make time slow down so that I could really remember every moment because so much of it is starting to blur together....I hate wasting the precious time that I have left with them and I'm starting to feel like that is what is always happening around here. Time is wasted on TV and on computers and on iphones and ipods. We are all very good at wasting time and, in some ways, I think that it is Satan's way of robbing from me, so that I always feel like I have missed out on potential precious moments.....With all of that said, we are all going to try to make today and tomorrow very social days for Destiny, the birthday girl. Right now, we (those of us still at home) are going to play some games and do a few special activities with Destiny. Then, tonight, we are going to all go see a movie together and try to get home so that we can have our midnight celebration for her birthday. Destiny has always been such a wonderful little girl. She is always ready to make me feel loved and appreciated and I can't even begin to think of what my life would have been like without her. I think I'll have to write another note later about my precious Destiny, but for now I have to go. A precious moment is happening and I don't want to miss any more of it...