Life is an adventure!

Written by Sylvia Blimes

44 years and 9 months ago I began an amazing adventure.  It was also the day that I met Bill.  Coincidence?  Hardly.  Within 3 days of this meeting I was an engaged BYU coed and 3 months later I was a married BYU coed.  Bill convinced me that life was not about what we accumulated but about the adventures we experience along the way.  Having no idea what these adventures might be I jumped right in and my amazing new life began.

Raising 3 children in the Ohio countryside and working full time I didn’t stop to ponder what an adventure I was having.  Not all adventures are fun but they all are enlightening.  Being a mother, I learned patience, self-sacrifice, service without rewards and how to be a juggler.  I learned how to pack up a house and move everyone and everything in it with very little notice - and once all by myself.  

Adventures take all types of forms.  Touring five European countries this summer-wow!  Traveling to South Africa and going on safari was outstanding, but at times very scary.  England was beautiful but Wales was outstanding.  Nothing could rival the fear I experienced in a raft on the Parana River in Paraguay.  Oh yes, and then there was our trip across Canada in our little gold datsun.  That datsun was totaled by millions of hail balls in the Canadian wilderness.  We invited a poor hailed-on motorcycle rider to sit in the small space we called our back seat.  Adventures are more memorable when you get wet.

My adventures included so many unique characters.  My dear friend, Mary Merwin, my children, Mindi, Chad and Katie, our adopted grandsons, Axal and Dillon and numerous teen-age girls at the girl’s homes where we were house parents, disabled students from across the United States and my favorite character, my Bill.  

 

Mothers get to learn so many subjects.  Heart malfunctions and how to repair them with Mindi, the gift of dyslexia with Katie and “how to be rebellious without anyone guessing you are”, courtesy of Chad.  The young woman who threw up all over herself and her bed after a day of drinking.  The other young woman who stuffed her clothes to look like she was in her bed one night so I wouldn’t know that she wasn’t.  Several of my favorite girls seeing Disney princesses for the first time.  My South Carolina girl flying off to Paris by herself.  So many amazing adventures.

Are my adventures done?  Not on your tintype.  There is always one on the horizon.  What is next?  Oh no, not now.  Check back soon. 

Life is an adventure!