every day is a gift ...

"your daughter's had an accident" ...

words to strike fear in the hearts of any parent ... but words, as the parents of our oldest cherub, that we've almost come to expect ... as a toddler, she had pemanent bruises on her forehead ... thankfully we had a great relationship with our doctor so no questions were asked ...

one of her good friends, ryan, she met in kindergarten when they collided out at recess ...

and then there was the bike accident which resulted in two lost front teeth and years of dental and ortho work ...

she wasn't even out of her fifth year when i went outside looking for her ... we have 200 foot cedars on our property and i heard her calling from the tallest branches "oh i'm up here watching the sunset" ... how can i discourage that ...

last night it was a head injury during soccer practice, saturday it was a bloody lip due to a soccer game ...

i'm pretty sure that our health room at elementary school had me on speed dial ...

need i mention the fracture received when her head collided with the metal playtoy at school ...

and so on and so on ...

all i'm trying to say here is that each day with our children is a gift ...

i was driving home from an errand today and eric clapton's heart-wrenching song came on "tears in heaven" and i couldn't help but be thankful for the gift of another day ...

so hug your kids ... take a few moments and find out how their day was ... did they get teased because they have new glasses ... does their mouth hurt because they have an expander ...

and homemade cookies take care of a lot of life's little tragedies and some of the bigger ones too ...