Friday, November 18, 2011

Thankful

I cannot believe that Thanksgiving is 2 days away. I am so glad that I didn't commit to blogging everyday about being thankful this month because I would have failed miserably if I had made that commitment. I also realized that I could not make my only post about thankfulness be about indoor plumbing. :-) So, I am back to write about some more of the important things for which I am thankful. In no particular order, here are the top 10 things that I am thankful for.

1. MY LITTLE ANNA BANANA-I am so bless
ed by this little girl. She is so much fun and such a joy to Mark and I. It is so neat to see her personality develop and hear the things that she says every day. I am so thankful that God saw fit to bless us with such a sweet and amazing little girl

2. MY AMAZING HUSBAND MARK-He is great husband, father and he puts up with me and all my craziness. That alone should make him eligible for sainthood. Love you honey!

3. MY WONDERFUL SISTER MINDY-She is awesome and does th
ings like bring back cool gifts from trips she has been on (which makes me like her even more) and offers to come for a visit just to watch Anna so Mark and I can have a date night (which doesn't happen too frequently.) She is super cool and I try not to introduce her to many of my friends because people will like her better than me.

4. MY MOM, MARILYN-She is a great friend, grandma and mom. I am blessed to have her as a mom.

5. MY EXTENDED FAMILY-I come from a huge extended family and they are the reason that my favorite movie is "My Big Fat Greek Wedding" because it there are so many similarities between the family in that movie and my family.

6. MY JOB-I love working at Living Stones Church and serving as the Children's Minister. I have a great team of people I work with and can't wait for some of the things on that are planned for the immediate future...both in Children's Ministry and across the church as a whole.

7. MODERN TECHNOLOGY-I love my gadgets...my Nook, Smart Phone, Laptop, GPS, HDTV and all the other technology out there. I still have a hard time figuring out how radio and TV work, but I love it all!

8. FOOD-It is obvious by looking at me that I enjoy food and lots of it. However, I am so thankful that I have ample food to eat because there are so many people who have a food shortage.

9. MY FRIENDS-I have a great group of friends who are supportive and encouraging.

10. THE CREATIVE GENIUS OF WALT DISNEY-So many of my favorite things in the world were created by Walt...particularly the Happiest Place on Earth in Florida (which as a side note if anyone wants to give me a Christmas gift, a trip to Disney is a great suggestion.)

I hope all of you have a wonderful Thanksgiving!

Thursday, November 3, 2011

Love You More

I am loving this booksneeze thing. I get free books to read for an honest review on my blog. Awesome!!

The most recent book I have read is "Love You More: The Divine Surprise of Adopting My Daughter" written by Jennifer Grant. As the title implies, this is the author's story of the journey their family took in adopting their youngest daughter from Guatemala.

I thoroughly enjoyed this book. I felt that the author was very honest of regarding the joys and struggles that the adoption process brings. As someone who is currently considering whether adoption is right for our family, this book has caused me (and my family) to think through some things that I had never even thought to consider in regard to the adoption process. There were also some interesting facts that she outlined regarding adoptions in different countries. I also liked the fact that she was very clear that adoption is not something for everyone and outlined many different ways that people could obey the Biblical command to care for orphans.

Even if adoption is not something that is being considered by someone, I think this would still be an enjoyable and captivating read. It was an interesting and inspirational story. I would highly recommend this book!

Happy Reading!!

Wednesday, November 2, 2011

Indoor Plumbing!!

How is that for a blog title? :-) I know lots of people are doing the 25 days of thankfulness on their Facebook/Twitter/Blog this month and at first I considered it, but knowing how busy my life is I decided not to commit to an every day post about Thankfulness. Not that I don't have a million things to be for which to be thankful. I just know that I am super busy and it is already a day into November so I am already behind. :-) Anyway...I do plan to post several times regarding my thankfulness this month...just not committing to any number of days.

Let me share a story....Over the weekend, we had a big plumbing issue come up in one of our bathrooms. So as not to pay the ridiculous weekend rates for a plumber, we were able to stop the immediate problem and just not use that bathroom. We scheduled the plumber to come out yesterday at 12:30. However, he didn't arrive until 4:45 PM which was a huge frustration because I had to rearrange a meeting and leave work early to meet him and then he didn't show up until 4 hours after the scheduled time. He had to access the pipes through a wall in the kitchen behind the fridge. Because the fridge had to be moved, it blocked the stove and I couldn't cook dinner (which was not such a bad thing) so we decided that we would probably have to eat out. I had to be somewhere at 6:30 but we couldn't leave the house to go out until the plumber left. We were hoping to avoid fast food, but ended up at Taco Bell at 6:05 (probably the grossest of the gross as far as fast food goes) where I inhaled my 2 fresco tacos and ran out the door to my meeting at 6:30.

You may be thinking that this sounds a lot more like complaining than thankfulness. However, once I got over my frustration and thought about it, I realized just how lucky I am. I have not one, but two, working bathrooms in my house. I don't have to dig a hole, go to an outhouse or anything else. I can get water from several different faucets in my house any time I want. There are people all over the world who do not have clean water to drink AT ALL and I have enough water in my house that I can completely close off a bathroom and it not phase me at all.

So, there you have it! I am thankful for indoor plumbing. Maybe not the most conventional thing to be thankful for, but I realized yesterday how much I took it for granted.