My Girls and I

The active group I participate in is my family. I am a single mom of 3 girls. My oldest is 15 and a Sophomore in high school. My middle daughter is 12 and in 7th grade, and my youngest is 9 and in 3rd grade. Needless to say, we are very busy, but I will get into that in a minute.

Here is some back ground info......I was married in July of 1997 and a year later, my oldest was born. This turned us from being just a couple, to being a parent. Our main focus for years was how to be a parent, run a house hold, work, and be a couple. This took a lot of trial and error.

My husband and I took on separate roles. His role was to work, 50 plus hours a week, and take care of the outside of the house and fix things in the house. My role was a mom, take care of the kids, take care of the cleaning, pay the bills, and the disciplining of our girls. They were, and still are, my full time job.

The girls at this stage were very young. My task was to nurture and teach them. Their task was to seek and destroy and throw tantrums. This was a very challenging time because I had to learn what discipline worked the best. Generally time-outs were very effective.

As the girls got older, new tasks came to be. We had school and school activities. There were also play-dates with friends and slumber parties to be had. My role was to make sure everyone did their homework, got to their activities, cheer them on during a volleyball game, and host a slumber party. My husbands role never really changed except to help out when I asked.

I guess maybe I was the dominate one, but in reality I don't think either one of us were dominate over the other. We understood our roles and if conflict arose, we generally talked it out. However, things changed in 2008.

My husband became very sick. Not only was I the primary caregiver of our girls, but now I had to take care of him. Unfortunately he passed away in 2008 from an illness he'd been battling for years.

This threw me into being the sole...