Hope and Gratitude

This morning I was reading blogs. In my sister-in-law's blog, she talked about a woman named Stephanie who had been in a plane crash and suffered severe burns. My sister-in-law also included a video of Stephanie's story and it was a huge inspiration to me.

There are many days that I struggle with the challenges I face. Those challenges vary from day to day and some are as simple as struggling to find stuff to occupy my time so that I feel like I've been productive or trying to reassure myself that it's alright to have a day where I just read. Some are more extreme like trying to deal with an abuse that happened years ago and not being able to have kids.

As I watched Stephanie's story, I was impressed with her courage, faith, and optimism. I felt hope for my life and gratitude. I felt a reassurance that every day does not have to go perfectly for things to be alright. I don't have to be perfect for me to be alright. There is always room for improvement, but that improvement does not have to happen all at once or even in a short period of time. I felt that things would work out even when it doesn't seem like it ever will.

Some days, I struggle with all of these trials, but other days I only struggle with a few. I'm grateful for the days that I don't struggle so much; for the days that I feel great and can conquer the world. I'm even grateful for the days that I really struggled to do anything, including getting out of bed. I'm grateful for those days because they've helped me get to this point where most days, I feel good. Through all of this, I was reminded of this quote (I need a plaque with this quote on it so that I can read it every day):

"Gratitude unlocks the fullness of life. It turns what we have into enough, and more. It turns denial into acceptance, chaos into order, confusion into clarity. It turns problems into gifts, failures into success, the unexpected into perfect timing, and mistakes into important events. Gratitude makes sense of our past, brings peace for today and creates a vision for tomorrow." -Melody Beattie

Faith, Hope, and Charity

There are so many things that I've been meaning to write about. So many thoughts, too little time. Recently though, I've started watching Glenn Beck on Fox News. Usually, I don't get into politics, but the things that have been happening lately have been worrisome enough to me for me to watch Glenn Beck every day and look up some of the stuff that he's talking about. The part that I find even more interesting is how to fix the problems that we have. Mainly, he subscribes to faith, hope, and charity as the general principles that will help guide us back to safety, along with individual rights, equal justice, knowledge of the Constitution, love of our Founding Fathers, and faith in God.

The reason that I find the solutions to the problem interesting is because no matter what you think the problem with our country is, if we go to these principles, I think we'll find our answers. Also, these principles are simple solutions. They are not the complex solutions that Congress and the White House try to bring with 2,000 page bills that no one has really read. These simple principles, particularly faith, hope, and charity, are easy to define and understand. I don't think it's too much to ask for our laws to be easy to define and understand.

One of my favorite days on the Glenn Beck show is Friday because Fridays are Founding Fridays, where Beck talks about one of the Founding Fathers. Now, I love history so I love hearing about these men and how the influenced our country. I'm sad that I don't remember more about them from school because they are truly inspired men who were incredible and had a great vision of what this country should and could be. They were not perfect, but what I love about them is that they tried to live the best they could according to their faith in God.

I scribble down every book about these men that Beck recommends that were written by historians, and I wish that I had the money to buy every one of them. What I love about history is that the truth is the truth. When you have the facts, and when you look at what people actually said, in their own words, you can see why things happened the way they did, whether the consequences were intended or not. Unfortunately, there are those who try to "rewrite" history by giving a skewed perspective on it; telling only one side of the story. When we narrow our scope of vision, we miss out on the big picture. Looking at the other side does not necessarily mean that you have to believe that side, but at least you know what it is.

No matter what we believe in, when we come together with faith, hope, and charity, we can find solutions for the problems we face. We may not always agree on the way there, but we need to find the truth and come together for a solution.

By Popular Demand...

So I've had people ask me to take pictures of our apartment for a while, and well it's been a bit of a mess, still is, but I decided to take the pictures anyways. Please don't judge me, too harshly anyways. I still have to get Ashton to finish putting up the rest of the pictures on the walls. The slacker, but he has had a cold the past couple days and has been all stuffed up. So I guess we'll give him a break.

This is the living room. A little hard to see, but it's a good size. This is what you see when you walk through the door. The door that you see in the picture goes out to our balcony.

"Dining room" and you can see a little bit of the kitchen and the outside door. The folding doors behind the table are where the washer and dryer is. I was so happy that my piano fit underneath the kitchen bar!

This is the kitchen. It's usually cleaner then this but oh well. The door that you see goes to the pantry. I love our pantry!

Hallway. You can see how the rooms fit together.

Bedroom. We're missing the headboard to our bedroom set because it's too big to fit in our car.

Our closet. It's a little stuffed.

The other side of our bedroom. Like I said, Ashton still has to put up the rest of the pictures.

Bathroom! There wasn't any good angle to take this picture and particularly not without getting me in the mirror, so that's all you get!

Pictures!

Since getting back from Maine with a bunch of pictures to play with, I've been spending a lot of time working on my pictures. It's so much fun. I seriously spend pretty much all day doing this, only taking a break to eat or do something else when my eyes start to hurt from staring at the computer. I'll post some of the pictures that I've been working on, but I also wanted to mention one picture in particular that I've worked on.

A couple years ago, we got to go to Sadie's blessing and to a family gathering later on. I brought my camera and had fun taking pictures. Well, I happened to take a picture of Ashton's grandma holding Sadie. I loved the picture and wanted to make it special. I tried various techniques using Gimp (a free photoshop-type program, which I love), but couldn't figure out how to make it work to my liking and gave up. Well, the other day my screen saver was on and the picture popped up. I remembered the disappointment I had in not being able to do what I wanted with it and started thinking of how to make it work. It wasn't until yesterday, while working on some other pictures, that I had an idea to use the same techniques that I was using on other pictures (I'm not telling you what that was so I don't ruin the surprise). It took a little bit of time, but I was happy with the end result. As always, even though I thought it was good, I wanted to make sure that it really was good and showed it to Ashton when he got home from work. He loved it. So, here is that picture and some of the other ones I took and worked on from Maine.

Let me know what you think!

All Over the Place

So, I've fallen behind on blogging. Mostly for a lack of time recently more than anything. This month has been a bit nuts for me.

A couple of weeks after moving into our new place, I left to go to Maine to help my brother Jacob and his family get settled into their new house. The trip out in and of itself was eventful since I missed my connection by a few minutes (thanks to a combination of snow in Colorado while trying to fly out and having to go from concourse C to F in 10 minutes) so I ended up having to sit in the airport for 8 hours while waiting for the next flight. No, I'm not kidding. I was there for 8 hours. Good thing I had brought some books. I was very grateful when I finally got to get on the flight and land in Maine.

There was still construction going on in Jacob and Heather's house while they were trying to get settled, so that made things interesting. Although I got a chance to paint and peel wallpaper off, the wallpaper part isn't always a whole lot of fun when it won't come off easily, those tasks were made all the more difficult while trying to keep little hands out of the paint and away from the putty knife. I didn't think that gouges in the wall would make anyone happy. It's also hard to convince a 2 year old that the new toy she discovered, namely the spray bottle filled with water and vinegar, doesn't need to be used constantly. Although the girls were dedicated to taking wallpaper off, that is until there were only little pieces to be peeled off. I had a great time though. It's always fun to play with the girls and see how big they've gotten since the last time I was out there, although, that part is a little sad too because they get so big so fast. I was definitely tired and ready to sleep for days on end when it came time for me to fly back home.

The trip back out was also stressful since my connection times were a bit short and I had two of them. I made all of my flights though, thanks to making up some lost time in the air on the first flight, and landed on time in Colorado.

That trip alone was enough traveling for me to last a little while, but the next day, Ashton and I left to drive to Utah for Lance's graduation. It was a little strange to unpack some of my clothes only to leave some of them in the suitcase, and pack a few different ones. It was nice to see everyone though even if it was only for a short while since we left Saturday to drive back home. I was happy though to get home, unpack all of my stuff, and put away the suitcase. Living out of a suitcase is fine for a little while, but it's so nice when you don't have to do that anymore. Ashton was also nice enough while I was in Maine to transport the empty boxes and the boxes that were only partially unpacked back to the storage unit. So when I got home, I was pleasantly surprised to not see boxes everywhere.

And of course, I have pictures! What kind of aunt would I be if I didn't take pictures of my nieces? Although, I missed taking pictures of some of my other nephews and nieces when they came up to visit. I missed the boat on that one. Anyways, here's a sampling of the pictures I took. As always, I took more than I can post.

Jane was learning to crawl while I was there, so that was fun to see.
She's much bigger than the tiny baby I remember.

The girls were out riding bikes whenever they could.

Liliana was more interested in taking pictures than having her picture taken, but she let me take this one.

Dress up time! I love Mattie's look. Kind of reminds me of an older woman/tourist.

Such a cute face.

Playing on the playground.

Musical Chairs

So, it's been a while. A lot of things have changed since the last time I wrote. For starters, we moved into an apartment closer to where Ashton works! Ashton is loving the shorter commute and who wouldn't with the commute dropping from an hour down to 10 minutes?

We love the area that we're in. We took a drive Sunday, since it was so nice out, just to go exploring and we had a lot of fun. There were a lot of people out biking, and I mean A LOT, so that made it interesting, especially when we were on windy roads with hardly any shoulder.

Since we moved last weekend, this week has been quite a bit of unpacking. There are still things to be unpacked, but all the essentials are out and in their new homes. I'm discovering things that we need that we'll have to get out of storage, and things that we don't need that can go back in. It's like a big game of musical chairs.

I am happy that we've managed to get everything installed (washer, dryer, internet, etc) without too much hair pulling. Good thing I've had stuff to do while waiting for people to come. Less stressful that way.

On a completely different note, I saw this video and wanted to share it.

One Down, Many More to Go

Well, Ashton's had his first week of work. That's right, I said work! For those of you who haven't heard, Ashton has a job now. He got offered a job last Friday and started Monday. The job is here in Colorado although it's about an hour away. For right now, he's just been commuting down there.

We're pretty excited about the job. Hooray for money coming in! It's been a bit of an adjustment though. For starters, no more sleeping in for him. With the hour commute either way, it's a pretty full day for him and he comes home pretty tired. Of course, for me, it means an empty house to myself. I know for those mothers out there, that sounds pretty good, but believe me, it's not all that it's cracked up to be. Doable, but not preferable.

There are still a lot of things to figure out now that Ashton has a job. Such as, housing. We're still not sure what we're going to do, but we'll be figuring that out soon. Moving into a new place is always pretty exciting, although picking out a place can be a bit of a headache. It's nice though to have progression.

Of course, now that we have income, I can do some much needed shopping! I've been holding off as much as possible so as not to deplete our savings. I still won't go crazy with the shopping, but I do need some new jeans.