Tag Archives: gratitude

Leave a comment
Christmas, Gratitude, Life is short. Go Play., Saturday - play day!
, , , , , , , ,

Be here

Christmas, Gratitude, Life is short. Go Play., Saturday - play day! Leave a comment

Good morning, Mommy! Happy Saturday! What do you have teed up for the day? Cookies? Cards? Lounging around the house with the kids?

I hope, I really hope that today you can take a minute from the crazy, maybe even take sixty minutes, and just soak up your kids today. You don’t have to do do do every single minute of every day. I know, there is so much to day, but today, my hope for you is that you’ll take some time to do nothing.

I should let you know that I found out this morning that a friend’s cancer is back. Young mom. Great husband. Two kids, grade school and preschool. That kind of news will make you a little introspective, Mamma. And it will, and should, inform the passion with which you appreciate your own life today.

Carve out an hour. Turn off the phone, forget the laundry, just be there with that precious family. You can spare an hour, no matter what’s going on. Maybe snuggle on the sofa and read books… maybe fall asleep on the sofa while reading books. Maybe sit by your tree, ask your kids what they remember from last Christmas, tell them what it was like when you were a kid. Get to know each other a little bit.

Whatever your delicious, relaxing nothing looks like, enjoy.

You get to be here, you lucky, lucky woman.

Life is short. Life is precious. And blessings surround you.

See them.

With love,

Leave a comment
Gratitude

Feel blessed!

Gratitude Leave a comment

Hey Mammas. My lovely daughter is getting me up at 3 AM tomorrow. Three. Ay. Em. OY.

We’ll be at a local school by 4 AM preparing Thanksgiving meals for the Meals on Wheels folks in our area. Daughter’s idea and yes, I am so proud, and no, I would not miss it for the world.(Thank you, dear God, for caffeine.) It’s is going to be early, even for me. Since I don’t anticipate having time to post in the early AM (besides, posting pre-caffeine uptake is dangerous) I’ll say it now:

Happy, beautiful, blessed Thanksgiving to you and yours this weekend. Happy happy, happy! And who cares if the pie isn’t perfect or if the turkey doesn’t carve like Martha’s does. LOVE IT ALL, SISTER. Be there! Laugh! Top your coffee with whipped cream. Watch your kids run around. Have your family talk about what they are thankful for when you sit down together at the table.

And if Auntie Snarky says something, let it roll right on by. Auntie Snarky is not a happy woman. But she can’t touch you. Not today.

Feel feel feel how blessed you are. Kids, food, job, life. Feel blessed! Because you are.

With love,

Leave a comment
Gratitude

Happy Thanksgiving!

Gratitude Leave a comment

Hello, dear. Good morning. Getting ready for your gratitude weekend? I love this time of year.

So much to be grateful for. My Black Friday commercial overload antidote.

I am a mother. Changed forever, blessed beyond words, grateful to my core that I get to go through life with these amazing people. And that they like me. So grateful.

We have a home. Four sturdy walls, a warm place to put my kids to bed at night, a safe place to come back to at the end of the day. Hyper aware these days that not everyone is so lucky.

There is food in the fridge, electricity on demand and nobody is shooting at me. Thank You, God.

My legs work and my eyes work and my brain works. I take these miracles for granted every day, and I shouldn’t. I am blessed.

I have a husband who does dishes and who makes me laugh. I am grateful for that strong, generous man. Even if he does like 80s music.

I have a job I enjoy and that I feel competent at. Huge blessing. Having a job at all is reason to celebrate, having a job you like is a total score.

And then there are the fun silly blessings that are blessings none-the-less. The dogs, the flowers in my living room, comfy warm slippers. Silly string, silly putty, the Sunday comics. Turkey and dressing and mashed potatoes and cranberry sauce. And pie. Much pie. With ice cream.

And family and friends and laughter and talking and glasses of wine and warm hugs after not seeing each other for far too long.

It could take all day to count all my blessings. All weekend even.

Happy Thanksgiving, Mamma. Blessings upon you.

With love,

Leave a comment
Gratitude, Life is short. Go Play., Stay connected with kids
, , ,

Gratitude wreaths

Gratitude, Life is short. Go Play., Stay connected with kids Leave a comment

Good morning, Mommy! Happy Play Day.

I hope you’ll do something around gratitude with your kids today. Prep for Thanksgiving and an antidote to all the Black Friday gimme gimme gimme ads we’ve been inundated with lately.

I’ll post a picture of a gratitude wreath I made with my kids this year. Years past, we’ve done them on paper; this year I found an inexpensive silk wreath, and we used that. This is one of my favorite annual traditions.

We take a night or an afternoon and pass the wreath around and write things we are grateful for on it. We talk about what we are writing while we do this. It is not only super fun, but also helps you to get to know each other.

My husband, the biker, was grateful for fresh asphalt. My son was grateful for basketball and time together as a family (yes! win!) My daughter was grateful for food and music and that she lives in a country where she is allowed to get an education (yikes, you think about these things, daughter of mine?)

What are you grateful for? What are your kids grateful for? Take a minute today and talk about how very blessed you are. Write it down – on whatever you have on hand – and then post it for the family to see.

Happy Playtime, Mommy. Happy family time.

With love,

Leave a comment
Gratitude
, ,

What are you grateful for?

Gratitude Leave a comment

Hey, girl. Good morning! Gratitude day! What are you grateful for today? Gratitude… that balm to the soul, that attitude changing antidote for all the dark chaos that threatens to weigh down your life and drain you of your energy. Fight back! Focus on the good stuff! There has always been good and evil in the world, and life has continued to roll on.

You are so blessed, Mamma, look around you, see it and be grateful.

I am grateful for the lovely grey-blue of the morning, another day, another fresh start, another chance to live and give and grow. I am grateful for the weekend I had with my godchildren ages 6 and 4. A chance to put little socks on little feet again – something I haven’t gotten to do in ages. So completely charming.

I am grateful for Christmas cookies. For butter and sugar and real vanilla extract. I am grateful for an oven that works, mostly. Grateful that God saw fit to create delicious smells that perfume my house for the whole day of baking. Smells so good I don’t even need to eat the cookies. Well, almost that good.

I am grateful for bare feet. And legs that work. And yummy soft slippers.

I am grateful that our van is still running. 238,000 miles of memories. Love that beast.

Grateful for crisp fall air, thick knit tights, dressy boots. Love my boots. SO much easier to walk in than the heels.

I am grateful for coffee and green tea and chocolate milk in boxes.

I am grateful for smart friends who send me witty texts and make me laugh in the middle of my run, run, run day.

For Grandpa, living up in the woods, grateful we’ll see him again at Christmas when he comes with his dog and his nostalgia and a loaf of home-baked bread.

What are you grateful for? Fill your mind and heart and day with that.

With love,

Leave a comment
God, Gratitude, Husband, Mamma and God
, ,

Sunday morning peace

God, Gratitude, Husband, Mamma and God Leave a comment

A peaceful Sunday morning, snuggled up on the sofa, kids still asleep upstairs. Just sent a grateful husband out for his workout. Tea, toast, liquid dog asleep on the cushion next to me. Sun barely breaking, clock ticking languidly in the quiet of the room as I sit and thank God for my life.

Counting my blessings. Hope you will too.

With love,

Leave a comment
Gratitude, Health, Household Management, Parenting, Work

So much to be grateful for!

Gratitude, Health, Household Management, Parenting, Work Leave a comment

Good morning, Mamma. What are you grateful for today?

Morning sun warming up the chill fall air? That first sip of your hot cuppa in the morning, standing in the kitchen in bare feet and ‘jama pants while your family sleeps around you?

Your favorite riding boots — almost cool enough to start wearing them again!

The colleague at work who just makes everything better? Thank God for him or her, and for all the competent, cheerful people like them.

I’m grateful for all these things.

Grateful that my sister and I got our Thanksgiving and Christmas feast-travel plans figured out this morning. Grateful that we have the resources to travel, and to buy turkey and that we have people who are still happy to have us sleep on their sofas during the holidays.

Grateful for lists of happy things – gratitude lists, grocery lists, Christmas card lists.

Grateful for laundry — it means I still have kids at home.
Grateful for bills — we have heat, and electricity, and hot and cold running water.
Grateful for schedules — my kids, my friends, my work.

We are so blessed, ladies. I know it feels crazy sometimes. That has been my mantra on more than one just-barely-holding-it-together day… “my life is crazy my life is crazy my life is crazy…”

Remember, life doesn’t have to be perfect, to be wonderful.

With love,

Leave a comment
Uncategorized
, , , , ,

Why should I be grateful?

Uncategorized Leave a comment

Hi! Good morning! Happy Wednesday, Mamma. Gratitude day.

Why do I entreat you, just about every Wednesday, to make a gratitude list? Why do I do it for myself? For the same reason I encourage you to exercise and eat right, because I think it will make your life better.

You may have noticed by now, life is a bit of a mixed gift pack. Hat tip to Mary Chapin Carpenter, sometimes you’re the Louisville slugger, baby, sometimes you’re the ball.

And, as is true with so many things in life, we have a choice as to how we handle this truth every day.

We can focus on everything that is wrong, and I guarantee you there will be plenty to focus on.

Or, we can focus on what is right.

I’m a big fan of focusing on what is right.

We are privileged, you and I. We are blessed to be mothers, blessed to be employed, and, if we are lucky enough to be married to a guy who does dishes or laundry or loves to cook, blessed again.

There are thousands of women who couldn’t have babies, who couldn’t get the job, who didn’t find the right man. There are further hundreds of thousands of women who have been driven from their homes or who spent last night at Children’s Hospital. I don’t care how big the laundry pile is or how awful your boss is, those women would gladly trade places with you.

Look at your children’s faces, smell their hair, be filled with gratitude. Open the fridge and the pantry, look at the food you can fill their tummies with, be grateful again. Turn on the faucet, hot and cold running water. Be grateful again.

I love you, Mamma. We’ve never met, but there is so much I understand about your life. I know the days can get hard, I do.

But there is beauty there, my good woman, in that life of yours, beauty and blessings and goodness, every day.

See the good stuff.

Write it all down.

Read the list.

And smile.

With love,

Leave a comment
God, Gratitude, Health
, , , , , , , , , , , ,

Live

God, Gratitude, Health Leave a comment

Oh-so philosophical this morning. How could I not be? Because of my friend’s wife’s devastating diagnosis, I spent all day yesterday wondering what I would do if I was told I had weeks to months to live. Distills and clarifies life down to what really matters right quickly, doesn’t it?

Mamma, you are so very precious and so crucially important to your family. They need you in their lives today and they need you in their lives for a very, very long time. Much of our health and energy is dependent on us, on our behaviors. Are you taking care of yourself?

We cannot prevent every terrible diagnosis. Heck, we can’t even fight off every cold, but we can BE HERE while we’re here. We can be here at our best energy, at our most aware and joyful and generous. We can make sure that we aren’t giving that precious life energy to cigarettes or Ding-Dongs or hours of sitting mesmerized by a TV.

There are twenty-four hours in every precious day we are given on this earth. How do you want to spend yours?

(Sorry… told you I was feeling philosophical this morning…)

My family plays a game called “Things”. A question is posed, we all write down our answer, and then we take turns trying to guess who answered what. Great game.

This last weekend, one of the questions was “Things I want to do before I die”. My youngest son, my gentle giant who just turned fourteen, my youngest son answered, “Live”.

Go live, Mamma. Go in gratitude and joy and determination. Go hold your kids tight, kiss that man in your bed upstairs, dive into your work with courage and truth.

Taste the apples, breath the sweet air, feel your beautiful body move in space.

Live.

With love,