Adventures and Counting our Blessings...

2014 was the year of illness and injury in our families.  I won't go into all of the mishaps and suffering.  This is a post about adventures and blessings.  Everyday I thank God for putting such amazing people in my life, our lives to help us through the tough times.  I just hope that I can be just as good to them as they are to me.

It was also a year of travel, adventures and counting our blessings.

This year we traveled to Minnesota in February and March for one of my best friends wedding.  We traveled to several places in Montana, Chico Hot Springs, Billings, Havre, Flathead Lutheran Bible Camp, Whitefish, Kalispell and Bozeman.  I hope we can make a trip to Missoula to meet up with a few friends of ours who live in Plains.  We traveled to New Hampshire at the end of June and made day trips to the beach in Maine, the White Mountain region of New Hampshire and Boston.  I traveled to Minnesota by myself at the end of August and visited with friends and family.  It was a great trip.  

My son turned 2 this year.  My little nuclear family grew closer to each other through our trials and adventures.  We are blessed to have each other.  We are blessed to have such amazing, strong people in our families, who inspire us to be strong, better people.  We are blessed to have such wonderful friends, who are such a blessing to me, to us.  I have found a sense of peace about where I am in my life because of texts, facebook messages and phone calls to/with/from friends.  You guys kept me sane this year.  I love you all!

Finding peace about being a stay-at-home mom and not working has been a constant struggle since we left Minnesota.  Not working has been one of the hardest things I've done in my life.  But staying home with my son and raising him has been one of the most rewarding things I've done in my life.  Becoming the token church lady volunteer has been such a blessing too.  Someday I'll get back to work, in a job that I love that allows me to use the gifts God has given me to share with others.  My friends and family have continuously told me these things for 3+ years now and it is finally sinking in.  It is a blessing to be okay with my lot in life at the moment, finally.  There is sometimes pressure from people that I should want more, that I should be able to have and do everything I want to now, but that is just not the case.  Someday I will go back to work.  But for now I am blessed to be a mom to my son and a wife to my husband; a volunteer at our churches; a daughter, sister, friend.  These are great things to be and I know when I look back I will have no regrets.  I suppose I have learned to live my life in a way, that when I am on my deathbed, I will look back and have only a few regrets.

And I've completely digressed from my original intent for this blog post.  I suppose that happens sometimes.  The main point is that through our adventures and travels and the people in our lives, we have found many blessings in 2014 that have overtaken the hardship and struggle that have come in the form of illness and injuries in our families.  Thanks be to God!!! :)

Things I'm working on in 2014

Today while Preston is napping I find myself in a rare position.  I have nothing that is pressing for me to do.  I don't have any magazine reading to catch up on.  I don't have any crucial chores to do around the house.  I just have time until Preston wakes up.  This is very new to me.  I really like it.

I don't make New Year resolutions because I'm bound to fail.  Instead I think about what I'd like to work on each year, or what I'd like to see happen and work on those things throughout the year.  Continuous progress, instead of completing something finite.

What I'll be working on this year for myself (in no particular order):

- become a little more financially stable
- quality time visiting with family and friends
- survive this craptastical winter
- spend as much time as possible enjoying the outdoors on warmer days until spring, summer, fall
- work on not being so bitter about circumstances beyond my control
- work on my amateur landscape photography with copyright and maybe even start my own LLC
- work on writing more often (poetry, music lyrics, short stories, chapters for a novel, etc...)
- read, read, read, read, read and research topics that I am fascinated by.  Intellectual stimulation is a must this year, or I might just crack and lose it
- work on selling Avon to help out my family financially
- work on losing those last few pounds to get to my goal weight that continue to elude me
- work on helping nourish the faith of our youth in our parish and the community
- be better at keeping in contact with friends all over the U.S. and the world (facebook helps, but a phone call, texting, skyping and visiting need to happen more too.)
- being a more emotionally healthy person, which will help in all of my relationships
- continuing in my faith, knowing that I can give over my concerns both good and bad to God in prayer and eventually I will receive an answer, though it might not be an answer I would even have thought of
- being a more patient person, not one of my strongest qualities
- take advantage of whatever alone time I can get, whether Jason takes Preston in the morning for a little bit, or while Preston is napping.
- take advantage of the time I get with Jason, because sometimes it's not much.  I am grateful for the time we do have together each day.
- take advantage of the time I have to get out and be around people.  Book club, our Friday weekly trip as a family to Great Falls, date afternoon/evenings with Jason, Evening Circle Bible study and MOPS with my friend Melissa are a Godsend.

I think that's a pretty long list of things I want to work on throughout the year.  I am doing to start working on the taking advantage of the time I have for myself right now and start reading the book for book club in February.

God bless you all in this new year!!!