My Mom Wins Medals.

So, yesterday Jordan and I were driving around Houston collecting supplies to decorate her bike trailer for the 4th of July bike parade in our neighborhood. It was a fantastic day and all around town I could hear her giggling and babbling nonstop from the backseat. We stopped at a few craft stores and on our way to Arne's as we turned down Studemont from 11th St., this nostalgic emotion and sense of pride welled up inside of me.

Initially I thought, "Oh, that Amos Lee, he's an emotion stirrer!" He was on the radio right then singing about windows being rolled down. But this actually happens a lot, the sense of pride and love for this city that washes over me each time I turn onto a street that I feel I owned, where I committed one of the greatest accomplishments of my life. I ran a marathon on that street.

Last year I was about 8 months pregnant on Mother's Day and DK gifted me with this children's book titled "My Mom". In it are pictures and details from the little girl's perspective listing the coolest things about her mom. Reading the book that morning for the first time, emotional as ever, I turned the page to find this mom bursting through a finish line as the little girl exclaimed "She's got lots of medals for winning first place!"

Silly as it is, this has remained a motivating and inspiring visual for me as a mom, to always have wild personal goals and focus, even aside from my accomplishments as a mom. I want so badly for Jordan to be proud of me. But I also want to be proud of me.

Hey Mt. Elbert, in 2013, I'm coming for you.