What Life Is All About

After Monday night, I woke up stiff and tired, with a more than full day ahead of me. When I have nights like this, I often spend most of the day resting, unable to do much. But, for some reason, yesterday was different. There were so many blessings! That morning, I received a recording of an amazing fireside I had owned long ago, but since lost. I spent the day running errands with my family, which ended up being a very enjoyable experience. When we got home, I received a comforting book from an old friend in the mail. I ran off to activity days, and left after half an hour to get home to turn around and head straight off to the temple.

I am sure I was running on auto-pilot at that point, but I was still doing OK. The temple ended up being the sweetest experience I can remember. We were there with several friends in a small session, and everywhere we turned there were temple workers we knew. Later, standing in the prayer circle, surrounded by dear friends, I felt a taste of what heaven will be like. I’ve read descriptions of how amazingly beautiful the celestial kingdom is, but I realized that what will make it sweet is being there with people I love.

I realized my experience as really an analogy for life. There will be storms and rough times, and we may not be sure how we will make it through. But there will be strength and blessings and love from our Heavenly Father to support and sustain us. And at the end, there will be the sweetest joy as we see the dreams of our mortal lives fulfilled. There can be nothing better than being together with our families and friends, having fought the good fight, knowing that it was all worth it.

The Window

In December of 2008, we spent a couple of weeks buried in snow. It was possible to go out on the roads, but between the ruts and all the cars in the ditches it didn't seem like a good idea. However, my husband needed to go into work, so I was stuck at home with the girls--and I got bored.

That is when I rearranged our whole bedroom by myself...king-size bed, armoire...I admit, it was a moment of insanity. It was a good change, though, and our room has stayed the way it is since then. Or maybe it's just that without getting snowed in for a couple of weeks, my insanity has stayed away.

When I moved the furniture, we discovered that our master bedroom window was foggy. Thankfully, a friend suggested we call the manufacturer, and the company replaced our window for free. That was a happy moment while we were facing job loss early last year.

We've loved our new window, but we did notice that when it gets windy a piece of molding on the outside rattles. It is annoying, but since we seldom have windy days, it hasn't been a big deal.

Or so I thought.

Last night was our second windy night in a row. The first night sent an entire tree down onto a house in the area. Last night wasn't much different. I was soundly sleeping through it, however, until the rattle woke me up. It was loud, like a motorcycle right out my window. My body really wanted to get back to sleep, but each time I started to relax, the noise woke me up again. Finally, at 1:30, I surrendered. I grabbed my blanket and pillow and headed to the couch. My husband sleepily promised to fix it in the morning, but it didn't mean much as I looked forward to a night downstairs.

As I tried to get comfortable on the couch, I realized I could stew about the whole situation, or I could be thankful. For the ability to hear the rattles. For a comfortable, weatherproof house. For my whole little family safely asleep. For a healthy body. For heating to keep our house comfortable in a storm. For the magic of wind (which I have always thought of as God's broom....).

In a time when so many are suffering such tremendous loss and grief, I cannot be grumpy about a rattling window. I am so thankful for that window, rattles and all.

My Vacation, 2010

It's been a crazy week around our house. Last Sunday, I gave our dog the bone out of our pork roast. He is always happier when he gets a good chew in, and that evening was no exception. The next day, however, he started throwing up bone chunks. I knew that wasn't a good sign. He threw up multiple times, and I used up all the Nature's Miracle in the house.

That Tuesday, he continued to throw up, but he was only having dry heaves. He was himself, but he wasn't overly bothered while I cut his nails during his bath. I got worried and searched on the net about problems with dogs eating bones. The list was not good. Punctured intestines, abscesses,....

I was really concerned so I headed down to the vet without waiting for my husband to get home from the gym. He met us at the vet and we took the little guy in. When Tucker didn't even flinch when he had a thermometer put in his rear end, I knew he wasn't feeling good. The vet took an x-ray and we waited.

I should have known something was up when he didn't bring our little guy back out with him. The x-ray showed a ball of bone slivers in his stomach. Fortunately, that is the only place they were at, meaning a relatively simple surgery, as far as these things go. The one thing the vet brought back in was an estimate for the treatment.

That's when I was sure my husband was really not happy with me. I had given the dog the bone, and now we were looking at a $1000+ surgery. And what could we do? If we had the surgery done, our dog would be back to normal life within a couple of weeks. If we didn't, he would die. I guess we could have put him down, but I could not have lived with myself for putting a dog down for something so easily fixable.

So our little guy had surgery shortly after we took him in. He has an incision several inches long and 10 stitches to show for it. But by last Sunday evening, he was back to his old self. He continues to get stronger and stronger. We are so grateful to have him back.

Of course, there went our vacations for the year. But at least I can sleep at night, knowing our little furball is all right.

Snow Day

Megan's creations from our snowstorm. We got several inches, but it didn't hang around more than a day or so. Much better than last year where we got a foot and were frozen in for a couple of weeks. ;)