Ellie waves good-bye

First off, SuperBowl outcome -- NOT AWESOME!  We have a house full of Broncos fans (although, personally I am not a Broncos fan, but I am a huge Peyton Manning fan and at the moment those come out to just about the same thing.)

We recorded the game to watch it on Monday as a family, but I think we will just skip that idea.  Sounds like it was pretty painful for those of us on the Bronco side.  Oh well.

On to happier things.

Every morning Ellie stations herself at the door as her siblings head off to school and waves to them.  It is adorable and I love it.  

First, she waves her little "I love you" sign to Bryce as he trundles out to his car pool.  Later she waves to the rest of the crew as they schlep down the sidewalk on their way to be educated.  

It is nice to see these moments when my kids love each other.  Sometimes with all the screaming and fighting I forget that (ok, they don't scream and fight all the time, but those slivers of sigh-inducing grumpiness do crop up pretty regularly around here).

Glimpses of  the love my kidlets have for each other do pop up at unexpected moments and I am grateful for those specks of caring.  Last night as we drove home from a family event I turned around to see Parker allowing Ellie to lay her head on his lap (an action that could just as easily incite screaming as love) and he gently played with her hair.  While at church Gavin quietly handed a rubber frog he had been playing with over to Parker when he noticed Parker was looking for one.  At home, Bryce voluntarily split a treat he had been given six ways so that everyone could have a bite.  None of these actions was ground breaking or life altering, but I still loved seeing them.

These unscripted moments of love are a beautiful thing to a mother.  Especially because they are juxtaposed against many other moments of yelling and tormenting and harassing and impatience and rudeness and the like.

I need to be better at focusing on these sweet tidbits and remembering that my kids really do adore each other...even if it is a near death match around here at other times.  Maybe my focus on the good will encourage my little ones to give up on the nastiness that sometimes creeps in here.

Maybe.

Well, a girl can dream.