Word to my Mother

The Boy and I kind of skipped Father's Day this year, and also kind of skipped Mother's Day. Yesterday kind of blew up in our faces, and I need to get some words out to my Mother, because I have a hard time with face-to-face communication*.

Mom,
thank you for:

• teaching me to be a smart, independent woman
• teaching me not to back down for something I want, or I know is right
• letting me develop my own set of morals, albeit different from yours
  
• giving me the tools to get started in life.
• teaching me that where ever I go, there is a different culture, and to embrace that culture
• for sending your baby to Germany for 10 and 1/2 months. I know that that was scary for the both of us
• I'm trying to be a good responsible human, while being a college kid. I'm trying to enjoy my life
• dragging me up mountains (hike in the summer, ski in the winter), teaching me to canoe & kayak rivers, and showing me how to use binoculars, all by the age of 14 - so that I would grow up to love the outdoors
  
• Thank you most, for letting me go. I need to be me. ( I know it wasn't/isn't easy)
  

I love you Mom.

(This is us before the Little Red Riding Hood race we did together.)

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*Just ask either The Boy, or The Roomie. Or anyone for that matter. They'll all confirm. Hahaha. The Boy is slowly beating his pacifism into my brain, while at times I make him more vocal than he ever has been. You guys know how long I had to provoke him before he yelled at me? It took probably about a year and a half, which took serious patience on my part! I love him though. :)