Family Feathers

  Essay for  Real Simple Life Lessons Contest 2014   While millions of dollars have been spent on personality inventories to help people understand themselves better, I've discovered a much better tool for identifying personality types at a local hot spot called Yogurt Mountain.  I had this epiphany one afternoon as I was enjoying some frozen yogurt with my children.  The end product that we each created from the wide variety of choices perfectly described the personality of each maker.   My daughter is always first to jump in.  Her eyes open wide as she sees the new flavors and she races to fill her tester cup with Mango Delight and Triple Chocolate Monkey Crunch. I'll scan the choices several times as I don't want to waste my two chances to use my tester cups and get a free taste of the wrong thing.  My son stands back and checks his watch, sends a text message to a few friends, and simply disconnects from his mother and sister who are riding the roller coaster o

The sounds of home are one of life's greatest blessings and I want my children to remember these things.  From the creak of the back door to the clinking of a tiny metal "A" that hangs on my daughter's door handle and rattles every time her door opens in the middle of the night, these sounds are part of our world.  There is a comfort to be found in the gentle sloshing song of the dishwasher late in the evening and the soft, stretchy yawn of an old dog who sleeps inside now because it is late in life and the outdoors is simply too great of a beast for an old pup.     In the mornings, there is timing to the symphony of sounds that softly wakes each person. There is a rush of water through the pipes in the walls as the first person to shower is greeted with the hottest water of the morning.  The hum of a hair dryer mixed with the scent of cologne is like a soft alarm clock telling us we are late and should have been out of bed before now.   The clinking of