One hundred Gifts and counting

I thought I'd write an update on my one thousand gifts.

I feel as though it's been a year since I wrote that blog.

It's been almost a year since Greg moved in. And it's been two and a half months since he moved out.

It has only been seven months since I started my list.

I have reached one hundred things for which I'm thankful. That's in my journal. I've blogged 176 times about being thankful. If I put them together I'm almost to three hundred. That's much better then the one hundred.

I have a long way to go.

I'll have to add my math skills to my list. Ha!

That's my update. Have you been keeping track?

the not-on-my-bucket-list list

Jumping out of an airplane (parachuting, not suicide).

Holding a camera while jumping out of the airplane.

There's probably more, but I thought of this while watching a commercial on tv.

So I thought I'd make a not-on-my-bucket-list list.

Other things I don't ever care to do:

reread "Vanity Fair" (the novel, not the magazine)
tightrope walk across anything

swim across the English Channel
swim with sharks
stand in the clear windows at the Sears Tower (or whatever it's called now)
star in a Broadway musical


Maybe I can add to it. Maybe that's it for now.

top ten list

This is my "Why I Like Winter" Top Ten list in honor of the last day of winter

10. sitting in front of a fire in the fireplace
9. watching Christmas movies during the "normal" time of year
8. Christmas
7. my birthday
6. I like wearing layers and sweaters
5. I don't have to shave my legs
4. the snow fills in all the potholes
3. I like shoveling snow
2. I like watching snow fall
1. I like snow/cold weather

For Friday

I didn't blog yesterday.

I was busy. I had a list of things to accomplish, and I'll proudly tell you that I crossed all of them off.

I baked an oatmeal cake for Emil (Gary has also requested an oatmeal cake, that will get baked next week), I cleaned the bathrooms, ran the vacuum, read my Bible study, wrote note cards, washed dishes, took my walk, did my yoga and other exercises, made dinner (petite filets with goat cheese and angel hair pasta with homemade alfredo) and went to a wedding rehearsal.

I'll let the cat out of the bag: I'm training (shadowing, apprenticing) to be the Wedding Coordinator at our church. It was sort of a secret because the woman who has been doing it would like to retire. But she's met with some disagreement. Since she's training me it's no surprise that she (like me) does what she wants. She is 100% behind my training. But she needed to let the appropriate people know ahead of time. I think they all know now. If not, I don't think they read my blog and if they do, they know now.

I am going to post-post this, because I have a Saturday post. I don't want you to be confused because I wrote it today (Saturday), not yesterday (Friday), but I posted it to look like it was done on Friday, but it was really posted Saturday...

nine, devo, sketch, blog

You've probably heard of the book "Eat Pray Love". I read it and truly enjoyed it. I was enamored by the story. If you haven't read it, I will warn you that you might not feel the same way. It was one of those times when the stars aligned or something because I was definitely in the right mood to understand Elizabeth Gilbert's adventures (minus the break-up).

As you know, I use a lot of post-it notes to keep my life sane and in some sort of order. If you don't remember the story, you can read about it here. There are times when I don't have a post-it near by, mostly at night when I'm almost ready to fall asleep. Or when I'm in the car and can't write anything down (don't think it hasn't crossed my mind to stash a pad of post-its in my center console). I resort to the memory-game. Repeat the things I have to do, shortening them to one word phrases, until I can remember the three or four things. Thus the "Eat Pray Love" reference. My memory-games start to sound like the title of a book, or a blog.

This happened last night, so I thought I should share because I actually thought of this entire blog. I even went as far as writing it in my head, however since I was sans paper, this is not exactly how it went last night. But it's close enough and I'm running out of things from the mission trip to recap. I also realized that if I'm blogging every day for a year, maybe I should be sharing more about my days instead of just random thoughts (that's what Bill's blog is for).

So I'm not going to tell you what the title of this post means. It was just my memory-game so that I could remember to do those four things and it worked, although not in order. I should also point out that six is the magic number, anything more than six and I can't remember them. Usually it's just three or four things. I've made grocery lists and to-do lists like this and since post-its aren't safe in our house, this is a more effective way to remember things.