What are my strawberries

Recently a friend of mine asked me and several of our other friends to help out with a graduation party that she was involved in. It was on a Sunday night and we all came to help with the dessert that was supposed to feed 250 people, there were 5 of us. What happened that night has had me thinking about my life and personality ever since. The person in charge, we'll call her "Jane", has always been a laid back, free flowing, funny, party girl, kind of a gal, but what I saw in that kitchen that night was her alter ego, we'll call "Sasha Fierce".

For starters, she had planned out 250 chocolate mouse desserts perfectly. There was an Oreo crumb crust layered with chocolate mouse then with fresh strawberries, then a chocolate ganache. My friends and I were cutting the strawberries so she could pour the final ganache on them and this is where Sasha really came out to play. She started re-doing our work, she came over several times to watch us cut, she told us when to run, when to walk, she even re-did many of our little tarts. She made a joke about herself, something like, "you guys can talk bad about me when I leave", but to be honest, not once did I think anything bad, I was in complete awe of her and wondering why don't I care about anything that much. I was completely jealous of Jane/Sasha Fierce because she cared about the placement of strawberries so much and I honestly couldn't think about anything in my life that mattered that much to me. And I have been thinking about it ever since, what are my strawberries.....what do I care that much about........

I couldn't care less about the placement of strawberries on a chocolate tart, especially for a church activity, which is sad, because I was the activities committee director or a year. And it's not just that, I don't really care about things like- if my paint job isn't perfect, if the rooms aren't cleaned perfectly, if the kids aren't matched and combed perfectly, the word "perfect" just isn't used a lot in this house. And I could easily say, well it's because I have 3 little kids, but I have to be honest, I have always been this way. Which leads me to my next point. What are my strawberries......

Well, on Monday morning, I figured it out!!! I was getting Warren ready for school and writing in his school journal and I was going to write a quick little note, and thought, "no, that is not how I roll, I am going to do this right", then it hit me, I KEEP GREAT JOURNALS!! AND LOVE IT!!! I LOVE IT AS MUCH AS JANE LOVES THE STRAWBERRIES.
I love the details, I love the memories, I love the light in my kids eyes when they read what I wrote about them 3 years ago. I keep meticulous journals, all dated. When I read them I remember everything that happened on that day as though it were yesterday. I remember how the food tasted, how the house smelled, what clothes I wore, what the weather was like I love keeping records. So below, I have scanned just a few pages of the kids baby books and some from Warrens' journal.

This is from Auri's baby book, it is the menu from her baby blessing dinner. It has all the recipe's including Becky L's tomato soup and the chocolate caramel brownies that I served at all of the kids baby blessings.

Here is her dress that her Grandma Hansen bought her and the matching bracelet, I hope to save them and some how attach them to her wedding dress.

Here is just another page with the meaning of her name, we played with Paxton for a while, but ended up with Auriel, it means Lion of God and Gold.

This is from Max's book, here is his announcement.

There was a page in his book for pictures of his first home, so here are all the pictures.

Max would wake up happy everyday with that green blanket, I had to record that.

These are my journal entries to Warren. This one is about the Smithsonian.

This one is about Baptism.

There were many more, but they don't scan well.

Anyways, I am glad I got to see the Sasha Fierce side to my friend, I wish I had a little more of it in me.