Moments of Pure Joy Guest Post

Today I'm excited by two things. The first is a follow up to my 
Do It Anyway post from earlier this week; our daughter earned a spot in the Longhorn Marching Band clarinet section! Because of the schedule conflict, she will have to be an alternate, but she does get to march in the first game for sure. We are so proud of our girl! Second, I'm excited to welcome Nancy Parker to talk about one of my favorite things:  JOY!

Moments of Pure Joy by Nancy Parker 

Have you ever sat down and tried to remember the days in your life when you experienced pure joy? As a parent, the majority of these times center on my children.

I was reminded of a time when my daughter and I went on an adventure. It was the summer before her senior year in high school when she was seventeen. I began to think about her going off to college, thinking of ways that we could spend quality time together. There was an age difference of seven years between my daughter and son, and as you can imagine, they didn’t have the same interests. I decided that my daughter and I would take a road trip together while my son spent some time with grandma.

I presented this idea to my daughter and we started making plans. I wanted to take her so many places that I had enjoyed and it was a difficult decision to choose. We also had a seven-day time frame and a very limited budget. I wanted her to see the mountains in North Carolina and the west coast beaches. We decided we’d take the family mini-van and follow the map to the state parks along the way.

We were starting out from Texas going into Arkansas and ending in Louisiana before returning to Texas. Nine states in seven days! We weren’t staying in all those states, some were just drive through visits, but that was our plan. We set out, my daughter armed with the map, timing our journey out between state parks.

The first couple days of the trip were pretty uneventful, just loads of beauty as we drove through some breathtaking scenery. (There were a few minutes in the Memphis traffic that were a bit disconcerting.) The Smokie Mountains were inspiring; everything was so lush and green. These are the moments that I wanted to share with my girl.

We also had some very bonding experiences, snakes that resulted in piggy backs given by yours truly, a scene from the movie Deliverance in South Carolina, where we mistakenly mapped out a hunting park instead of a state park which ended up on a very dark road in the middle of nowhere. Our hearts pounding, we were hitting the door locks every few seconds as we headed toward the nearest hotel for the night.

We had a wonderful time on the beach… that is until I figured out I’d locked the keys in the van. We had to wait on Panama City Beach’s main strip in our bathing suits with quite a bit of honking, cat calling, and waving going on. She still loved me after that, I wasn’t too sure after the next stop in a Florida park, there were so many mosquitoes and so much fair young skin… *sigh*.

All in all we had a wonderful time, something neither one of us will ever forget. There are stories to tell, beautiful scenery to remember, and memories to share that will last us a lifetime. These are the moments of pure joy that we all strive for. They aren’t all well thought out times of perfection, they can be messy and thrown together, but the goal is to be together and make time for those we love.

Author Bio

Nancy Parker was a professional nanny and she loves to write about wide range of subjects like Health, Parenting, Child Care, Babysitting, Nanny Background Check Tips, and more. You can reach her @ nancy.parker015 @ gmail.com