Core Truths

Be Patient.  We hear it, we say it.  We tell it to others, we even tell it to ourselves.   Be patient.  But what does that mean?  How do we do it?  And how do we know we’ve been patient long enough? Like many of you, I was asking my family to practice patience this week while we were cooking Thanksgiving day.  My goodness, they were so ready to eat and we weren’t quite finished cooking yet!  But here they would come, their pitiful little faces, asking if it was ready.  And when I kept telling them, “No, not yet,” then they started snooping around, looking for anything that was cooked.  Then they started asking if they could just have a snack!  A snack? After all this, no way! You think I’m going to let days and weeks of planning go down the drain so you can have a few chicken nuggets or a corn dog? I don’t think so! I love my family, and I had worked really hard to make their day as special and delicious as I possibly c...

Be Thankful. Want to know how to get more out of life? Be thankful.  Want to know a secret to happiness? Be thankful. Want to really enjoy this holiday season? Be thankful. This is definitely something I am working on, and something that I have to constantly remind myself to do, but like all other things, I am a work in progress.   I think sometimes it can be easy to worry about what we don’t have or what we didn’t do, but I think everything can change when we instead focus on what we do have and what we can do! So this year, instead of complaining about mopping floors and cleaning toilets as we prepare for our family to arrive this week, instead I will think about how blessed we are there are people in this world who choose to spend their time with us, and I will be thankful. I will not fret and become frustrated with the crowds when I am wrapping up my grocery shopping, instead I will think about how fortunate we are to be grocery shopping in the first place...

“For better or worse, in sickness and in health…” Our marriage vows.  So much said and not said in these few words.  One of the fun things about marriage is learning more about your husband or wife as the years go on.  Things they like and don’t like and all their little fun facts and quirks. Things that maybe seemed like small interests at one point that gradually develop into…well, more than you thought! I guess I should have seen it coming.  I can identify first signs all the way back to before we were even engaged. Heck. We weren’t even dating at the time.  Then over the years this interest of his just got bigger and bigger, more and more.  It’s funny because it’s really only noticeable for about eight weeks out of the year.  The other 10 months it’s like our little secret…boxes stacked in the garage and in closets…tubs in the attic and slid under our bed.  A little secret that is no secret the day he flips the switch. Yes, my husband...

I’ve got three words for you….Keep.  It.  Real.  I am going to take my own advice and keep it real with you now. For the first time since I’ve started blogging, I have hit a writer’s block.  I mean, I have ideas and I have things to say, but they’re just not all coming together.  I start and then I stop.  I write and then I don’t write.  I like it and then I hate it. See, I usually write all during the week, spend some more time on it on Sunday, and then post.  It’s so much fun!  But this week just didn’t allow time for all that writing.  My week started off helping set up a haunted hallway one day and being rear ended another.  The end of the week was wrapped up with all of the kids being out of school for teacher in-service.  That one day somehow threw off everything else.  And surprise, turns out it was already Halloween this week.  I mean, I knew it was coming, and for the most part we had everything all ...