When I was driving down the road yesterday, I was admiring the sunset. The whole thing was spectacular, but I particularly found this moment intriguing. Luckily, it was right as I was at an intersection. Do you see how one pillar of light goes straight up through the sky? Magnificent.
God Loves us. He also keeps us interested.
I’m famous! I’m a movie star fairy! Who knew!?! We were hanging out at the book store the other day, and my daughter pointed out this book. I don’t actually like how popular my name is getting, actually. But at least they’re spelling it right…
While I was up visiting for the funeral, Mom asked me to help her with a project. Before she died, My grandmother gave my mom a task and a bag of old jewelry. She asked mom to put the jewelry on mirrors, because my mom etched mirrors for all of her nieces and nephews when they got married. She wanted her granddaughters to look in the mirror, see a piece of her, and think of Grandma telling them how much she loved them.
Ranger and I ran to the store later that day, and they had a cool snow-sculpture community event out front of the senior center (That my grandma helped get there). We took a few minutes just to walk around and enjoy something beautiful. It was refreshing.
Happy New year, everyone!
I had an amazing New Year’s Eve party. It consisted of the whopping crowd of 2. It was actually supposed to be a crowd of 1, but Ranger surprised me.
New Year’s Eve is actually quite special to us. We got engaged on New Year’s Eve, three whole splendid years ago. Come to find out, it would have been Christmas, but I made a comment about how a ring as a Christmas present was tacky, and he had to think outside the box a little harder… oops! Especially, since I had been quite clear that that’s what I wanted in a blog post many of you will probably remember (It’s no longer there, if you were wondering).
we camped out in our front room this New year, brought up a TV to watch Fantastic Four (it’s what I wanted. We made it a marathon), and reminisced about all that has happened in 3 years and all that we hope the future holds for us. We had other places we could have gone, but I’m completely comfortable just being alone. In fact, I crave it sometimes.
Actually having a husband home wasn’t the only surprise he gave me. I got another ring, too. It was sweet. He kept hinting that I would get one for Christmas, and then he got me a necklace. It’s 3 years ago all over again! Except this time I didn’t say it was tacky, and actually asked if we could afford it. My fingers have gotten smaller over this past year (I lost my other one in the Christmas tree for a few months until I decided to open that box in hopes of finding it), and my ring was not staying on! Since I don’t want to get my old one resized, and then needing a bigger size when I am actually able to keep some meat on my bones (what a problem to have, huh?), I just asked for a new one. He brought it in, all cute, and brought flashbacks of the nervous kid sitting across from me three years ago. It’s amazing how much things can change all the while nothing does!
How’s that for a mixed language title.
So I broke down and put up the other tree. And I’m happy I did. I stole some ornaments from the front tree and moved them to the back and both look much better. I also managed to use up every ornament and I’m happy about that, too! Why do I have so many ornaments!? Oh yeah, it’s because I hate decorating the tree the exact same way twice.
Here’s our old tree, now in the kitchen. It makes the house super festive even without too much decor.
Who knew red and purple made such a cute Christmas tree? I strung colored lights to help with the dead spot. You can still see the dead, but at least there’s a twinkle there now. And I’ve never had a tree with colored lights since I’ve had my own tree. It is whimsical. I think it only works because the ornaments are red and gold and purple.
I stole all the red ornaments off the front tree and loaded it with more blue instead, and I’m much happier with it now. The red was just too much. But with only one tree, the red had memories I didn’t want to leave off. With 2 trees I could just divide the memories. Problem solved.
(okay, there is still one red on the front tree, but I decided it needed to be there. Too special of memories).
Let me tell you about my night. My husband hit a deer. At midnight. I think my challenge is teaching me hard-core today. The interesting thing is, instead of getting frustrated, my thoughts sound like this:
Thank heavens that the “commuter” car needed repaired, or he would have taken it and this would have been much worse.
We just checked on our insurance. That’s interesting.
Ranger wanted new lights anyway.
I’m so glad he was in enough control to not swerve to avoid the deer. Swerving creates so many more problems. I’m grateful he had his wits about him.
We’re so lucky the airbags didn’t go off.
At least I didn’t buy the new headlights for Christmas, yet.
Any more to the front and it would have been serious damage. Any more to the side and it would have caused way more problems.
It’s nice to have good insurance.
Thank heavens deer collisions count as incidents and not accidents, so our rates wont increase.
Naturally, I’m grateful he’s up and walking around. Probably a little stiff today, and his nerves are probably on edge, and I understand that. But I’m so glad he’s not unconscious on a road somewhere. And let’s not even get into anything worse.
At first, Ranger was pretty frustrated and “why did this have to happen,” and I can see his point of view extremely well. I’m selfishly glad it was him and not me. It’s his “baby” as far as cars go. But so much has come up the past 48 hrs that could have come up any other time, so if he was really supposed to avoid the deer, he would have. Maybe it was to teach me about being grateful for the negatives. Who really knows. But I can say that if we were supposed to hit a deer, this was probably the best possible way to do it.
That is all finding the silver lining. That was a previous challenge. But being downright grateful for the negatives like today’s challenge is ironically in place for (Yes, I mean situationally ironic; or cosmically ironic, you choose… Grammar Nazi still resides in my head)? It is a bit tougher but still quite doable.
Interestingly enough, after working on gratitude and charity all month, it’s pretty easy to be grateful for the negatives. Here’s why: When you’re more focused on gratitude, you’re willing to look past yourself. You’re willing to trust that the higher power knows what he’s doing, that there is a force stronger than yourself that has watched over every step you’ve taken and won’t set you up for a fall that you can’t rise higher from. When you’ve spent all month working on gratitude, it’s even possible to see potential outcomes. This may take care of some problem in the vehicle that we were currently unaware of, or might have saved us from some bigger woe. Who knows. I’m not far enough away from the life event to see anything in focus, but I can see that this was not just some fluke in life. There are blessings I can’t see yet.
And then there’s the other vehicle. Finding out that it needed to stay home for repairs was a pretty big bummer. But look what a blessing it is now with a little more perspective. It had a lower profile and a curvier front end. It wasn’t as highly insured. It has less-responsive breaks. The list is pretty intense.
Needless to say, instead of teaching gratitude, today, life taught me.
So, it’s day 14. I’ve been sort of keeping up… Meaning I’ve fallen behind on writing, but I’m all caught up now. At any rate, I just wanted to weigh in. How is the challenge working for anyone else? Is anyone even doing it?
I wanted to share an anecdote from my day. Testimonial from the source. It’s lunch time, and I’d had a bowl of soup already (I love soup. fyi. In case you really wanted to know), but I was still hungry. So I made myself a peanut butter sandwich. I reached in and got a butterknife, looked over at all of the dishes I’d managed to get dirty just by feeding my family breakfast and lunch, and instead of thinking ugh. Dishes. It stinks that so many get dirty. I thought,
I am so blessed to have clean dishes when I go to reach for some.
No joke! Score a point for the home team, it’s working!
also, here are some excerpts of what I am thankful for. I haven’t posted them on here, because I wanted the chance to actually get personal with them, but I’ve chosen some to share here. I thought it was appropriate.
[warning]This first one might be gruesome for some. [/warning]
I am blessed to have people I can rely on in an emergency. Tonight at the Relief Society activity, my daughter’s nose started bleeding rampantly. This is her 4th nosebleed in 36 hours. I rushed her to the bathroom to clean it up and get it to stop bleeding. I couldn’t get it to stop. And then, as we were pulling the tissue away, we pulled out a 2” clump (seriously, not an exaggeration), that wasn’t attached to anything, just clotting in her nose since there was so much blood and the stuff on the walls of the nose was still fresh and oozing. So I opened the door in the RS room, asked the first person I saw if they had a vehicle and if they could drive us to our house. Instead, we bypassed the house and went straight for the ER. She even stayed with us and gave us a ride back home. I was so grateful! We got the nose all cleared up… right before the doc walks in, naturally. I’m pretty sure that it was about an hour’s worth of bleeding. He checked for anemia, didn’t see any signs. Needless to say, we’re adapting to the Vaseline in the nose routine at our house. I think I’ve perfected it, because she doesn’t hate it nearly as much as I used to. It’s all about breathing out while you’re stuffing that cue tip up your nose.
I’m blessed for soup. My friend gave me the recipe last year, and it has been such a blessing to my life! I have been able to share it with others, and it has blessed their lives as well. Something about this soup made from ingredients I grew, that is hearty and healthy… It’s soul food. I’m so lucky to have such an amazing resource at my disposal. It’s also quick and easy to grab in nights that we’re in a hurry.
I am blessed to have a husband that encourages me to take time off. The world makes husbands out to be a “what did you do all day” sort of person, but Ranger has never even implied that I was lazy; quite the contrary. He often rejoices in a day taken just for myself. I am so grateful that he encourages me in resting. He makes me feel accomplished even when I didn’t do anything, because it meant I was taking care of myself. And I love him for that.
I am blessed by bears that say prayers. My daughter had her bear kneel down with us during prayers tonight. I didn’t see her do it, I just opened my eyes, and he was there. That is a childhood memory I want to keep. So sweet and innocent. She is such a breath of fresh air.
I’m blessed to have a past. Because of my past, I see things in others. Because of my past, I have warning signs to notify me of danger. But I can also show a level of compassion not available from a soul that has not also suffered. The human existence needs other humans to succeed. We need to be understood, and I’m grateful to have that level of understanding.
It’s Halloween, but most of the festivities here are already done.
The mummy hotdogs and pizza are eaten. The witch has a nose pinned back on, the fish are all “caught”, and the “potions” are strewn around. The costumes are set aside for tonight, and the punch bowl is empty. That being said, there’s still a brain mold full of jello sitting in my fridge because I forgot all about it.
Yeah, I wish I could say that was out of the norm for me… But oh well. We’ll just have a family game night tonight.
These mob bosses and one adorable Hello Kitty are looking forward to a night full of treats, tricks, and freezing temperatures.
