Unconditional Love

--There are many forms/kinds of unconditional love. There's the love of our Heavenly Father, for which I thank Him for everyday & night; there's the love of a parent towards their child; & then there's the love from/for a true best friend for those of us who have been lucky enough to enjoy it.

--As a parent w/unconditional love for my children, I ask you...is there anything more precious than having your sweet angels take Christmas pictures? ARE YOU KIDDING ME?! I LOVE to take pictures but my children pick that day to grow little horns & show sides I've never seen before! They usually spend almost the entire time throwing punches, slapping at each other, pushing each other, etc. I chose an outdoor setting this year & someone was constantly being knocked off of a huge river rock or pushed into a tree. My best friend brought her kids for me to photograph that day also & by the end of our picture day, our angels had grass stains on their clothes, dirt on their faces/hands, & sticks/leaves in their hair. Unconditional love is the correct term b/c no one else but their Mama would've loved those kids after the heck they put us through.

--Then there's our best friends & the unconditional love that comes w/that. Who else can you cry w/, laugh w/, share a dressing room w/(& not think twice), laugh so hard that food comes out of your nose w/, basically feel like a kid again w/, etc. My bestie and I ventured out to the scary, less traveled territory of late-night Walmart this evening to print Christmas cards, using the pictures that I took of my angels & hers at our wonderful outdoor photo shoot the other week. We sat at the picture machine & laughed continuously for about 2 hours (no lie) making those cards, putting our kids' pictures in different scenarios, deciding whether to be comical, religious, angelic, etc. I voted for a religious card that said Peace On Earth & inserted pictures of my kids slapping each other & sticking out their tongues. Wisely, I was over-ruled. After we just couldn't laugh anymore (& the people were looking more sketchy the later it got) we made our decisions, only to be told by the girl in the photo dept that they quit printing cards an hour before. Had we been behaving ourselves, we could've walked out of there w/our cards in hand. But the laughs were well worth it & we will laugh about some of those cards we were playing around w/& some of the people we saw for years to come! The nice girl at the photo counter said they will print our cards 1st thing in the morning & we'll stop by to get them after church.

--Ahhhhhhh...unconditional love. Isn't it a wonderful thing?