Wood + White Entertainment Center...

 We finally finished up the project that we've been working on for the past 3+ months. Our TV stand is done!!! We finished it on Monday and I'm still giddy about having it in the living room...

Really, it's better than I thought it would be. It's always scary (for me anyway) to build something yourself. We are amatures at this for sure, but it turned out so great!

I'm still a little shocked that Trent agreed that we could do the white frame with the different colored wood doors. We have very, very different tastes in style. He likes natural colored wood, and is one of those people who thinks it's a sin to paint over nice wood. When I first showed him a picture of what I really wanted (similar to this) he said no way! So when I brought it up again when we got serious about building something and he said, "Sure, why not" I was really surprised. I kept asking if he was sure he was okay with it... and he said he was. So we drew out our plans and made it happen.

We wanted it to be very simple. Two opened slots at the top for the DVD player and current VCR we have (hoping to swap that out for something to play games on at some point here). We also wanted closed cabinets with space to store toys/blankets/games and some hidden drawers for DVD's. 

We've been going out to his dad's about once a week for the past 3 months to work on it. It took longer than I thought it would, but part of what's nice about building things with Trent's dad is that we get to spend lots of good quality time with him.

Trent cut the wood for the cabinet doors and brought them home for me to stain. Can I just say how much I love staining wood? It's kind of an addiction for me. I love it! I love taking something that I sort of like and making it into something I love with just a little stain. I went with Jacobean for the dark, Early American for the lighter brown, and made a homemade stain of steel wool soaked in vinegar for the gray/barn wood color (what I did was put a steel wool pad in a glass bottle and covered it in white vinegar for 24 hours. Then I took out the pad, wrung it out a little, and rubbed the pad onto the wood). 

Let me just show you how cool the vinegar stain turned out. These two panels are both stained with that, but they are two totally different colors because of the type of wood that was used. The wood on the left is a soft pine and the wood on the right is a hard maple. The hardwood came out GRAY! And the soft wood a light/dark brown. It was an awesome science experiment! Pretty sure this is my new favorite stain.

Simple knobs (that can be tied together for future baby-proofing)...

Simple hinges... I really think it's the simplicity of it all that makes it so pretty to me.

Here is our inside storage area.

I still need to fill in those spaces, once the boy decides to quit playing hide and seek in them...

I'm just so happy with how it turned out. We really needed to have some good functional furniture in our livingroom. It's nice to have something that looks great and provides storage that we really need.

 I love working on projects like this with my husband. Building something out of nothing for our family to enjoy.

Valentines...

I'm sticking to my guns about no resolutions this year... but that doesn't mean that I don't have goals I would like to accomplish. I really would like to do a better job at decorating for the holidays... no pressure though! Just one thing/month/holiday at a time and see how it goes, right?

I realized over Christmas that part of the reason I have a hard time decorating for holiday's is because I don't have a lot of flat surface space to decorate on. I really only have this one little window seal.

So I think I need to work on more flat spaces, but until then I will try to fill the window seal up!

I made this heart garland with the boy a few years ago. It's simply just felt hearts all sewn in a row.

We made a few conversation hearts (idea from here) to go by our hugs and kisses block that we have.

I try to plant paper whites in the winter. It's something that my mother in law did and so I try to do it to remind my husband of his mom. We had to go to 4 nurseries to find paper white bulbs this year, but we found some and they are beautiful!!

 The arrow print is from this lovely blog, and I love how simple it is. I know that my yellow honeycomb vase isn't very Valentine-y, but I love it anyway. Plus it matches the centers of my pretty flowers.

I've wanted to make this burlap banner ever since I spied it in the background here.  I think it turned out super cute!

Burlap + typewriter font + sweet little heart... love it!

I feel like I've redeemed myself a little bit from my failed Halloween attempts. It feels good in here right now...

White daisies...

When I was a senior in high school I was competing to be the Sterling Scholar in Dance at my school. It was between me and one other girl, and I really wanted to win this. I started thinking about this when I was a sophomore and wanted it so badly. I worked hard on my application, I choreographed my solo routine, this was what I had wanted more than anything at that time in my life. It would look great on my college applications. It would be a complete honor to me to have been chosen and receive this scholarship.

The girl that I was competing against for this was either my good friend or my arch nemeses (it really depended on the day). We were neck in neck so to speak as to who would win the award. We were both on Dance Company, Drill Team, and had danced together for all of our high school days. I remember that I was sitting in my English class when the intercom squeaked on and they were going to announce to the school all of the Sterling Scholar winners for that year.

My name was not called.

I lost. I was not chosen to be the dance Sterling Scholar.

I found out later that the judges were having a hard time deciding who to give the award to. What their final decision came down to was that her GPA was 0.01 points higher than mine. So she won.

I was devastated. I had worked so hard and long for this. I felt like I deserved this award. I sat there in class trying to hold myself together as I felt the pain of the loss. The bell rang and it was lunch time. I knew that once lunch ended the next class was dance and I would have to face her... the girl who had won what I had wanted so badly.

I thought about what I should do. Should I get in my car and drive home and avoid her all together? Should I go but ignore her and be smug? Or should I congratulate her?

I didn't go to lunch that day. Instead I walked across the street to the grocery store and I bought a bouquet of white daisies. I came back to school and I found her sitting by her locker eating lunch. I gave her the flowers and a big hug and told her congratulations. It hurt. I was very happy for her but very sad for me that I was not the one chosen for this. I felt (a little bit) better after this. I was grateful that even though I was so upset about losing, that I was able to think of her and to congratulate her and celebrate her victory with her, even though it was hard for me.

That was 12 years ago. In my adult life I have found that there have been many situations where I've needed to give hugs and congratulations and pass out some white daisies so to speak. Times where I have longed for something so badly, but it doesn't happen for me.

I found myself this week in yet another situation... where it was necessary to put on a smile, say congratulations, give a hug (and an imaginary bouquet of white daisies) and then go along my way. It hurts. It never gets easier, but I know that it is necessary. I gave my congratulations and hug to my dear friend who knew that what she had just told me was a shock and must have hurt. It was a shock to her as well, something that she was not planning either. "Thanks for being brave, I'm trying to be brave too, " she said as our parting words.

As I got into my car I let myself feel the pain. I try to hold it together in front of people but I never deny myself the right to work through my emotions when I feel them. I offered up a prayer of sorts to my Heavenly Father,  Why? Really? Is this some kind of a joke? Why her and not me? Why never me?

As soon as I had offered up the prayer I received my answer. It wasn't the answer that I was expecting, rather it was the answer to a prayer that I had uttered 12 years before.

Why her Heavenly Father? Why not me? I worked so hard for this! Why not me?

This is why. This is why she won and not you.

I had not thought of this situation in years and years yet suddenly it was fresh in my mind. Life moved on from high school and it really didn't matter that I was not chosen to be the Sterling Scholar for Dance. Or did it?

It suddenly made perfect sense to me. This is why I was not chosen for that award. My life has gone in a way that there have been many opportunities where I have had to be told no. Not now. Nope. It's not your turn. And pass out bouquet after bouquet of daisies. I needed to learn back then how to be this type of person. How to be happy for others even when they have what you long to have. This is why.

I was suddenly filled with gratitude for not winning the scholarship I so longed for in high school. I realized that I had won a far greater prize, I had learned a lesson that day at lunch time in a crowded hallway with a simple bouquet of daisies that I have had to use over and over again. Had I won that award, it would have really done nothing that remarkable for my adult life.

But not winning, has made all the difference in the world.

Post written November 2012

Snow!!!

 Sorry if you've already seen these pictures on Facebook/Instagram, I know I'm being repetitive... but I just can't even believe all of this snow!!!

On Thursday it was a beautiful WARM (44 degrees) day with a blue sky! But the news kept saying that a big winter storm would hit by 3 PM. Sure enough, 3 PM came and the flakes started to fall. All night it snowed and when we woke up the next morning it was a winter wonderland out there!

 I measured the snow that had collected on top of our garbage cans... 21 inches! That's nuts! I don't remember ever getting that much snow in one day before! When I was little I remember it snowing a lot and we were out of school, but that was a long long time ago.

I braved it to get a shot of the root cellar, buried in snow! Up to my knees...

But it didn't stop there! It kept on coming down and by the next morning we had 9 more inches!!!

So yes, we are currently hibernating in this snowy cold place. We live right up by the mountain so I think we get more snow than other parts of Utah does. It's been so long since I've been around snow like this. Part of me is missing Hawaii/Vegas right now and that warm winters that I had gotten used to. But another part of me is like a giddy little kid, sitting by the window for hours watching the snow! It's been fun to see our little boy and the snow. I had forgotten that he has not lived around snow his whole life, so this is a different kind of winter for him. We were here last year but it was a really mild winter and we didn't get much snow at all.

White night gown...

One of the movies that we watched on Christmas Eve was The Odd Life Of Timothy Green. I've been wanting to see this movie for a while but I was a little scared to. Knowing that it was about a couple who couldn't have kids and they end up growing a boy in the garden, etc. I watched it with my little boy and he was so sweet during it. He said, "I know mom, we can write down what we want in a kid and bury it out in our garden! Then maybe we can get a baby!" But I told him that I couldn't do that, because I have already been given the perfect little boy... I'm a lucky mama!

But what I ended up enjoying the most about the movie was the darling farm house that they lived in! Holy cow, I would love to live somewhere like that! The garden that they had outside, what a dream! Okay, I do realize that I live somewhere similar to this, but yes this was right up my alley. But what caught my eye the most was the white night gown that Jennifer Garner wore when the boy showed up.

Oh my, I loved it! Such a pretty night gown. I like the smocked top and how simple it is. I haven't worn a night gown since I was a little girl, but I might have to make me one like this. Best part of the whole movie was the farmhouse and the night gown ;).

I resolve...

to not make any resolutions this year...



WHAT!?!?!?

This is so not like me, to not make any resolutions. I love setting goals, making resolutions, checking things off my to do list, trying to accomplish everything and anything.

Turns out I'm still sort of burned out from the list I made from last year.

The more I think about my life right now and the things that I want to accomplish in life the more I realized that I need to learn to be content with who I am and where I am right now. Not always trying to make things better, make myself better, make my surrounding better, my life better. But to just accept who I am right this second and realize that I don't have to do anything great and wonderful to be of worth. That I don't have to set up unrealistic expectations of myself and then push myself to finish them. I just sort of want to be right now...

So I guess that is my resolution, to not make a resolution. To let January start and not jump on whatever horse I think I should be riding at the time. But to just wake up each morning and breath. Enjoy my boys, enjoy my days, and let them form themselves into whatever they have in store for me. To not rule my life by deadlines or expectations. But to just be happy with who I am and what I have right now. To not always be looking to finish a project or a deadline because I think that's what I'm suppose to do.

Ahhh... I feel better already.

I don't have a great link for this picture. Sorry. I found it here.

Christmas...

 

We had a good Christmas this year. It's always nice to be home with your family at Christmas time, and this was our second Christmas that we have been home since we moved back. It's been good to visit with aunts, uncles, siblings, cousins, parents, grandparents, friends. Our lives have been very full this month.

 

Christmas Eve morning the boy woke up with stomach flu. So we had to cancel our plans for our traditional fondu dinner and we spent the day washing every piece of bedding in the house (yes, he managed to puke on both of our beds...). Thankfully we found a laundry mat that was open and we could get the quilts washed and ready to go. Then husband had to work on Christmas Eve night. He actually volunteered to work the grave shift that night so that one of his fellow nurses could be home with her 3 kids on Christmas Eve. I'm glad he is so giving and willing to do stuff like that, but at the same time we missed him. The boy and I snuggled on the couch most of the night watching redbox movies and looking at the beautiful snow outside.

 

I feel like I spent so much time working on Christmas presents this year but I really didn't. Part of that is because I put together the presents that my mom gave to me and my sisters (more on that later), and the gifts that I was planning on giving to my friends didn't work out at all. I spent a lot of time trying to make these darling ornaments that I found only to have them all end up in the garbage. It was super frustrating. I could never get the dough to not crack and look awful.

 

I was successful at making a few growth charts for friends and family. These are the two different types that I made.

They turned out super cute! I love giving handmade gifts at Christmas, I just wish that all my efforts would have turned out better this year. Oh well... that's the game of crafting, sometimes things turn out cute and sometimes they don't!

The boy was happy with his lot this year. His two favorite gifts...

A whoopie cushion from the dollar store and a Spiderman costume that I found at the DI for $4. If I had known these two things would have made him so happy I could have stopped there!!

Flaming snowballs...

 I'm not exactly sure who started this tradition, but I surely can't let it die with me! It's too much fun! I think that my grandma came up with this, but I'm not entirely sure. It's called a flaming snowball, and this is what it looks like.

 

Basically it's a ball of vanilla ice cream with coconut on the outside. That's the snowball part. The flame is this innocent looking sugar cube on the top... doused in alcohol (we use lemon extract... it has an 85% alcohol content which makes the flame burn longer than say, vanilla extract). 

 

 

Here are the secret ingredients that make this simple dessert so fun.

 

My mom used to make these with us when we were kids. I always thought she came up with it. Then one day some of my aunts/cousins got into a conversation on facebook about flaming snowballs and I realized that they had all done this too! Kind of fun, I had never done this with my boy before but added it to his advent calendar for something fun to do this month.

We headed over to Trent's sister's house to share our fun snowballs with their kids. Because honestly... the three of us have a rip roaring good time on our own, but some things are just way more fun with other people.

We had a whole lot of snowballs, and a lot of curious kids. I realize that this can be sort of dangerous, so we lined the snowballs down the table and lit them all at once. The kids weren't allowed to touch them until the flame burned out. They only last a few minutes, but the flame gets pretty high when they are burning. It's fun to watch! We turned off the lights and watched the flames flicker until they went out.

The sugar cube caramelizes under the flame and from what I remember they taste pretty good too. The coconut gets a little toasty around the sugar cube, but that's just even better in my book. The whole thing is edible, kind of different, and just a fun experience.

It was really fun and a tradition that I plan on doing each winter. It's funny how different smells can trigger memories. Smelling the lemony burning sugar cubes brought back so many memories of doing this with my siblings when I was a kid. I think my grandma would be proud that the flaming snowball tradition lives on!!!

Tree making with the girls...

We had girls night a few weeks ago with some of my husband's sisters. We wanted to make some festive holiday trees and so I suggested making trees like this gal did. We decided to do five different trees and gathered up our supplies and met one night for some intense glue gunning and girl time.

 



Man these girls know how to work! They are all crafty and talented and there is never a lull in the conversation with them! We had a great night, talking, eating, getting completely covered in feathers... We started by rolling up our saved cereal boxes and then went to town putting our trees together.

We decided to do a book page, pinecone, feather, twine, and white bean tree. It was a very inexpensive craft to make, which I also love. The cereal boxes worked perfectly for our tree cones.

We worked until about 11:30 PM and then called it a night. I got all of mine done except for the bean tree, and finished that one up the next day.

I have to say I loved this craft! You know how crazy I am about trees anyway... these are just perfect for winter! I'm not taking mine down after Christmas, they are staying up until March as far as I'm concerned. They turned out so cute!!!

And here mine are on my little window seal...

I love all the different textures of the trees. They really turned out super cute. I think that I'm going to make a few more for next year. Thanks for the fun night girls!

I'm the dreamer...

I am the dreamer and my husband is the doer. We've needed a new entertainment system ever since we moved. We've been getting by with the tiniest little cabinet that looks so goofy under our TV, it's ridiculous. But I can never seem to fork over the money for something that I want, so we are building a new entertainment center for our living room. I drew the picture in the bottom corner of what I had in mind and husband figured out all the dimensions.

We've been spending almost all of our free time out in his dad's garage for the past week getting it going. We are making progress but still have a ways to go. Here is the skeleton of it.

I showed Trent a picture of what I really wanted and he said, "Sure!" which was so great! He and I have very different tastes on furniture and what we like and I know this is not what he would have picked, but he is making it for me anyway with a smile on his face. Love that man.

It's going to be similar to this, but with two open spaces in the top for the DVD player and something else if we ever move past our beloved VCR (anyone else still love those besides me?). Then it will have to bottom cabinets with barn wood on the doors that will house movies, toys and blankets.

I'm so excited to see how it turns out! I think I should be able to bring it home sometime next week to paint the outside white. It's going to look so great in our space, I can't wait!

...

I've been in bed sick for the past oh.... 4 days or so. I feel like such a baby. I wish that I was out having a fun time with my boys like we had in this picture here. One of my favorite pictures of us ever...

I'm not deathly ill which is why I feel like such a baby. I have a cold. Whoopie. Little dude has the same cold and is chipper and running all over the place. But not me. I'm sleeping 15 hours a day if I can and miserable. I blame it on having cancer. My immune system is just not like it used to be. I feel like I catch everything that comes my way and it hits me hard. Stupid cold.

I just have a hard time being debilitated by sickness. After spending a year of my life in bed I hate having to give anymore of my time to such things. But I know if I will just slow down and take care of myself that this will pass. It is just a stupid cold after all.

I was feeling down this morning. I have a lot on my plate this next week and need to get better so that I can do some things. I skipped out on sacrament meeting so I could rest and went to primary so that we could work on a few songs we need to sing at the Christmas party this week (have I mentioned I'm the primary chorister in my ward... yes I am). I sat down in the back of the room to wait for my time to come up and a lady I have never met before came and sat down beside me.

Let me back up a titch... Trent and I spoke in church last month. My topic was about friendshipping. I kept feeling like I needed to talk about the awesome and amazing friends that I met in Las Vegas that friendshipped me and helped us get through the hardest time in our lives. But in order to do this I felt like I needed to mention to my ward that I had cancer. You see, I had not told anyone in my ward that I was in remission for cancer because I didn't want to be known as "the girl who had cancer". I just wanted to be known as Meg, and have people get to know me. So I resisted this for a while, but then came to the realization that having had cancer is now a part of me. It was such a significant event in my life that it changed me, and has become a part of my life and who I am now. Maybe it wasn't so bad for the people in my new ward to know that we had been through that. So I did talk about it, and when I sat down after my talk I felt a lot of peace and felt good about the message that I had tried to share.

So today as I dragged myself out of bed and sat in the back of the primary room, this lovely lady came and sat by me. She told me the most amazing story. She told me about how she wasn't there the week I spoke in church but that her husband and told her about my talk and she felt like she needed to come and talk to me. She told me her cancer story. She then told me that she doesn't do this often, that she is shy and she doesn't like to talk to people about having cancer very often. She also told me that she felt very strongly when she saw me sitting there today that she needed to tell me about her three miracle babies that she had after she went through her first fight with cancer.

We talked and cried for an hour. Me and this lady who was a stranger before this moment. She has no clue what has happened in my life other than I had cancer. She doesn't know about Clayton or my ectopic pregnancy, or the 4 pills I take each day with the hopes that they will somehow miraculously help me to conceive a baby. It was a huge tender mercy to me to sit and talk to her today.

We even talked about how we both will spend this winter sick more often than we would like because that's just part of the package you know. I get to look into her little children's beautiful faces each week as I teach them primary songs. These three miracle children that came into their lives after doctors told them that they would never be able to have babies again.

I'm grateful that she came out of her comfort zone to talk to me today. To give me a little hope. Because honestly, sometimes I just want to take hope and wad it up in a ball and throw it in the garbage. Sometimes I just want to give up having hope, because hope is so hard. 

I'm grateful for good people. I'm grateful for tender mercies like this that help me to take a deep breath and pull myself out of my funks. I'm grateful that we were lead to this area to live right now. I'm grateful that even though 3 hours of uninterrupted sleep sounded so appealing today, that I went to church to be taught by the spirit. Even though I sluffed sacrament meeting, the spirit was there to teach me in the back corner of the primary room with a new lovely friend.

Wooden advent calendar...

 I've been wanting to make an advent calendar for the boy for a few years now. So I've been keeping my eye out for some good ideas, there are so many cute ones out there! But none of them were exactly what I was looking for. So I combined a few different ideas and came up with this wooden tree advent calendar.

I used this tutorial as my guide for the wooden tree. We used the sticks that fenced off our garden this summer for all the branches. Then I got some match boxes (I found them at Smith's) for each day. With all the extra matches I made some of these.

I would have loved to have covered them all in brown craft paper, but my husband said that was too boring. So I found some other fun paper at Michael's. I went with a stripe and some holly berries.

To hang them on the branches I got some fishing line and poked two little holes in the top of the smaller box with a quilting needle. Then I looped the fishing line inside.

Instead of tying them I just put a dab of hot glue to hold the line in place and snipped off the ends.
This worked perfectly!

Sorry, no pictures of actually putting the branches together. I sawed them using a jigsaw and sanded down the edges so that they were smooth. I tried to leave some of the edges that have been weathered outside for a more rustic look. I found this perfect star at Target. Such a good find! And then I glued it on the tree crooked... so I'll have to fix that later.

The tutorial for the tree says to use string to hold all the pieces together. We used an unbent metal hanger instead. This way we can bend it around so that the tree lays fairly flat. Plus it gave us a loop at the top to hang the tree on the wall.

I used number stamps to put the dates on all the boxes. I also decorated some of the boxes. Not all of them, but some got a special little trinket on the outside. Here are some of my favorites...

There is our lovely advent calendar. I'm so excited to start using it tomorrow! The boy is even more excited. I want to focus on making memories this season instead of just getting "stuff". So inside each box I'm going to put an activity that we can do for that day. To get the slip of paper out you just slide the box like this.

 

 

Here are a few things we are going to be putting in the boxes this year:

 

 - See the lights at Temple Square

 - Make a gingerbread house (or graham cracker house)

 - Drive around and look at the lights

 - Watch a Christmas movie together

 - Have a campout in the living room and sleep by the twinkling tree

 - Make a Santa Claus craft

 - Build a snowman

 - Make ornaments to put on our tree

 - Go to the church Christmas party

 - Go visit Santa Claus

 - Write a letter to Santa and put it in the mail

 - Make reindeer pancakes

 - Make a nativity scene

 - Get dad a present

 - Go to our family Christmas party

 - Have flaming snowballs (more on this when we do it)

 

I have a few more things to come up with but I'm sure I'll think of something!

 

 



Holiday salad...

I volunteered to bring salad to Thanksgiving this year. I love salad! I love making it, eating it... I guess you can say I'm kind of a salad snob. I came up with this combination last year for Christmas and made it again this year for Thanksgiving. It was just as wonderful as I remembered it! Which was good because there were lots of naughty Thanksgiving foods that could have covered my plate, but I tried to be good and ate a lot of this yummy salad instead.

Here's what's in it:
 - green leaf lettuce (my favorite kind to make salads with)
 - grilled asparagus
 - pomegranate seeds
 - blue cheese
 - candied almonds

The combination was pretty to look at and amazing! To candy the almonds I used about 1 cup of slivered almonds and 1/2 cup of brown sugar (brown sugar is supposedly low glycemic... I don't buy it. It's still sugar! But I did use it and pretended that it was okay to eat). Put those two things in a sauce pan over medium high heat. Stir until the sugar melts and coats the nuts. Make sure you watch them and stir the whole time... they can burn if left unattended. They will be a nice gooey brown. Then spread out over parchment paper and let dry. Break apart into salad.

** A little update on my new eating plan. It's going really great! I'm totally used to eating this way now. I don't feel hungry during the day anymore and I eat when I'm suppose to and eat things that are good for my body. Pretty great if you ask me! I'm kicking myself a little for going on about how the weight was "melting off my body". HA! Seriously, that's when it pretty much ended. I didn't lose another pound until a week ago and now I'm down 9 lbs total. Oh well... it's something right!

Thanksgiving was hard. I reserved my salad plate for the naughty foods and I did eat a few bites of mashed potatoes and gravy and two little delightful candied yams. They were so yummy, but I only let myself eat a little bit. Pie, was another story though. I told myself I could eat one piece of my mom's amazing lemon meringue pie which is my favorite in the whole world. Well... I at two pieces of lemon and one piece of chocolate pie! I know, so super naughty. Oh well. And then the next day I went to a going away party for my best friend who is moving and ate sushi. I was hoping they would have brown rice there for the sushi but they did not. So I totally ate white rice sushi which is a HUGE no no. Oh well. Now I'm back on track and feeling better about slipping last weekend. I feel better too confessing to all of you here. But I guess that's not too bad for 1 1/2 months of eating low glycemic right?

Thankful...

 

Here is the short list of what I'm most thankful for right now in my life:

 

:: I'm thankful for my boys. They are my whole life. I'm very blessed to have a wonderful husband and a wonderful son that love me, take care of me, let me take care of them, and smother me with cuddles and kisses every chance they get.

:: I'm thankful that my husband has a good job. We were jobless this time last year until February, so I'm very grateful for that!

:: I'm thankful for my family. It's been so nice to be around them again.

:: I'm thankful for such amazing friends. Friends from highschool, Brighton friends, old college roommates, our time in Hawaii, Las Vegas, and now new friends from moving back to Utah. I love that I get to keep these friends close and interact with them every single day through modern technology.

:: I'm thankful every second of everyday that I don't have cancer.

:: I'm thankful that we were able to buy my boys new coats this winter and me new boots. A luxury that we could not afford to do last year.

:: I'm thankful for this amazing earth! That I get to plant in her soil and run my fingers through her grass. That she gives and gives to her inhabitants and that I can see miraculous things everyday if I look for them.

:: I'm thankful for yarn, fabric, twine, buttons, shiny silver scissors and soft felt. I'm thankful that I find so much joy in creating things with my hands and am able to do this almost every day.

:: I'm thankful for cardigans, jeans, flip flops, fake diamond earrings, and black mascara. Little things that help me be comfortable with myself everyday.

:: I'm thankful for books and libraries.

:: I'm thankful that we found this little pioneer house and that we get to live here. It has been one of the highlights of my year.

:: I'm thankful for heartache and pain. Because I know that it will make the happy times in my life so much happier and my joy so much sweeter than it could have been otherwise.

::I'm thankful for a loving Heavenly Father. That even though I slack and I pull away sometimes, he's always there welcoming me back with open arms. I know that he knows my heart and that he loves me. Always.