Proud Mom Moments

As a parent there are days when you wonder if you are doing anything right.  Then there are moments that make you so proud and realize you must be doing something right.

Brennen is such a good kid.  There have been a few things that I have noticed about him the past few weeks that I wanted to write about.

We had a really big snow storm, it snowed for about two days.  After it finally quit snowing, Brennen called up a friend of his and they got their shovels and went around the neighborhood shoveling walks of people they didn't know.  They picked some houses that they figured people were out of town or couldn't get to it because it hadn't been shoveled at all.  Most people were shoveling every few hours during the two day storm to try to keep up with it.  There were a few yards that it took them over an hour to shovel.  Nobody asked him to do this and he didn't expect anything in return.  I did make him and his friend some hot chocolate afterward though.

A few days before the big storm he called me after school and asked if he could take the bus home with a friend, he usually walks home.  I said it was fine since we know the family of the friend.  When he returned home around dinner time I asked him what he did at his friend's house.  He told me that he helped him haul firewood from the shed into their house.  His friend lives with his elderly grandparents in an older house without a working furnace.  His friend had told him at school that he needed to bring more wood in the house for his grandparents before the storm hit.  So Brennen promptly volunteered to go over and help him after school.

A few weeks before that on  a Sunday right after church Brennen set off to do fast offerings.  He didn't come back for 2 1/2 hours.  The bishopric was wondering what was going on and was waiting for them.  When we finally tracked him down we found out that another kid had thrown his envelope down on someone's front lawn and said he was not doing it anymore.  Brennen and the kid he was with picked it up and finished their route and then did the other one.  It took a really long time and he was hungry and had a headache.  But, he did it without hesitation.  When I asked him why he made that decision he just told me it was because it needed to be done and he could not just leave it there.

I am proud to be his mom and be able to watch him grow, make mistakes and make good decisions.