Sometimes I take my mom for granted, but raising four kids to the best of her abilities with a husband that only comes home on the weekends is something that I am truly amazed by. I admire my mom because she has truly made me who I am today, both physical and personality wise. She gave me my long brownish blonde hair and my athletic build. But the characteristic I love the most that she has given me, is my ability to put others before myself. My mom is a very altruistic person that tries her best at raising her kids. It can get very hard to handle us kids because we are all in sports. She knows much of the game and understands what it takes in order to be good. From working out in the off-season to going to nationals for softball, my mom has always been there for me. A girl on my softball team, Brittany, was scared of my mom because of the way she yells. I understand getting scared of my mothers voice, because she was a drill sergeant in the military for seven years, but looking at my mom you would never know it. She stands at a whole 5’4” but could kick some butt if she wanted to. One day my mother told me about a time where she was running a drill and these two men got into a fist fight. My mom, against instruction, jumped into the middle of the fight to stop it. My mom has always taught me to stand up for myself and others because that’s what she was taught both as a kid and in the military. To me, my mom is an awesome motivator and an amazing person in general. My mother is an amazing person because she does anything and everything for us kids.

A few years back, my mom decided that she was going to do the Dirty Girl Mud Run. This goal was very realistic for her because at 43 she still got up early every morning and ran one to three miles, depending on conditions and mood. She did the mud run with her sister, Beth, who wasn’t in the best of shape, but would push herself until she finished. About halfway through the race, my mom got a harsh pain in her leg. She continued to try to run but it hurt to much. my mom saying, “I’ll be fine,” then started to try to walk the rest of the 5K but her leg started hurting so bad that she couldn’t walk on it anymore. At the next obstacle, about a half a mile away from where she actually hurt her leg, my mother and her sister informed one of the workers that my mom could no longer finish the race. They put my mom in a golf cart and drove her to the finish line where she waited for Beth. After the race, my mom had Beth drive her to the hospital because her leg had started to swell up and hurt even more. When the doctor finally figured out what was wrong, he informed my mom that she had torn both her MCL and her meniscus in her right leg. And if that wasn’t enough, she also had a Baker’s Cyst in the back of her knee. A few weeks later she went into surgery to repair her knee. She wasn’t supposed to walk on it for the next few days, but the very next day my mom was driving to work and acting as if nothing ever happened. Even with crutches, because she couldn’t walk on her leg alone, she took me to my softball games and sat there cheering me on. My mom has always been pretty tough when it came to pain, and she passed it on to all of us kids. If we get hurt in sports, my mom is the first person you will hear yelling, “rub some dirt on it.” Continuing to push forward and finish playing the game is very important to my mom. She always wants us to finish what we start and do a good job finishing it.

Driving all of us kids to different games, practices, clinics, and workouts can be very difficult for my mother, primarily because during the week she doesn’t have another person to help her with all the driving. During the week, and one weekend every month, my dad is not home to help out. My dad, who is currently in the military, was transferred to Iowa for work. He has only been there for a couple of months so far, but before he was transferred to Iowa, he lived near Peoria, Illinois. He was working down in Peoria for five years before he got moved to Iowa. Him not being around during the week complicates everything because there is only one parent to do the cooking, cleaning, and driving. My dad tries his best to come home on the weekends he doesn’t have drill, but during the winter it has been difficult because of road conditions. My mom has nights where only one kid needs to be picked up and dropped off, but then she also has nights where all three kids need to be in a different place around the same time. For example, Thursday nights my little sister has to be at tumbling from six to seven, my little brother has a hitting lesson seven to seven-thirty, and I have DIPT from seven to nine. With only one driver in the house it is very difficult to get to all of our events on time. With all the running my mom has to do, she rarely ever has time for herself. When she does take time for herself, she decides to use that time to clean house or finish work that she will have to do tomorrow, so that she can leave work early enough to get us to our sports.

I look up to my mother because she always seems to have a level head even though I know she just wants to sit down and relax. I have learned many important lessons from my mom and I hope I continue to learn and grow because of her. To me, my mom is amazing in her own way. Other people may think that she doesn’t spend enough time at home with us kids or that she doesn’t keep the house clean enough, but in reality she is putting all of her plans and chores aside to allow us kids to participate in the sports that we want to be in. My mom is amazing because she works herself to exhaustion just to ensure that us kids get as many opportunities as we can in order to succeed. Because of this, I love all 5’4” of that push over drill sergeant that is my mother.