She's home...my mom-in-law is home from the hospital and she sounds really good. That is my gratitude bit for the day. She phoned me today and truly, she was upbeat, relatively happy and quite lively. I'm glad for all that...the test results come back on Friday so that could be a tough day but in the meantime...
I finally got my blood work done so that my specialist doctor can hopefully get it by the time I have to meet him on Thursday. And that is good too. It was a relief as was making the appointment for baby girl and her final immunization. All good things and I am glad.
Paid 3 bills too and that felt very good.
So I am grateful for all this and more that are probably too irrelevent to be shared here.
Friday, January 18, 2008
Thursday, January 17, 2008
The Difficulty with Gratitude
I'm back after 14 days or so of abstaining from my blog. Okay, maybe I was being lazy.
For this entry, I need to find something to be grateful for but I am having difficulty with this. The reality of my mother-in-law's cancer diagnosis is hitting us now. It's real. She has pancreatic, liver and possibly lung cancer. It's real, no longer a maybe and something definitive needs to happen. Yet it's not up to me to make any of these decisions for her. She has to decide what she's up for and we all must abide by that. Grateful...I can be grateful that she has some time...we hope and pray. Time to prepare, time to enjoy the life God has given her, time to make peace with that life and peace with God.
I don't understand the whys and wherefores in this. I just don't. It's one thing that mom and dad died of cancer. They knew God, they loved Him and were assured of where their place was after death. But now? She needs God. She needs to find peace and comfort...but what do you do when she doesn't think she needs any of those things?
I'm grateful for my doctor and his care. I went to see him today, mostly b/c this cough has been dragging on for 3 weeks now and it just needs to go. I'm tired of it and it tires me out. So he gave me an inhaler which I've never used before and am not convinced I even used it properly tonite. However, my doctor is interested in my well-being and I appreciate that. He also wants and needs to know the exact nature of my parents cancer so he can ensure I get the proper screenings if one of the cancers is genetically passed on.
I am grateful that we don't have to pay for healthcare, at least the basics of healthcare. I wouldn't be doing any of these tests for my arthritis or discussing things with the doc if I had to pay for it. so I am grateful for that.
So there you go...guess it wasn't as hard to post about gratitude as I thought it might be.
For this entry, I need to find something to be grateful for but I am having difficulty with this. The reality of my mother-in-law's cancer diagnosis is hitting us now. It's real. She has pancreatic, liver and possibly lung cancer. It's real, no longer a maybe and something definitive needs to happen. Yet it's not up to me to make any of these decisions for her. She has to decide what she's up for and we all must abide by that. Grateful...I can be grateful that she has some time...we hope and pray. Time to prepare, time to enjoy the life God has given her, time to make peace with that life and peace with God.
I don't understand the whys and wherefores in this. I just don't. It's one thing that mom and dad died of cancer. They knew God, they loved Him and were assured of where their place was after death. But now? She needs God. She needs to find peace and comfort...but what do you do when she doesn't think she needs any of those things?
I'm grateful for my doctor and his care. I went to see him today, mostly b/c this cough has been dragging on for 3 weeks now and it just needs to go. I'm tired of it and it tires me out. So he gave me an inhaler which I've never used before and am not convinced I even used it properly tonite. However, my doctor is interested in my well-being and I appreciate that. He also wants and needs to know the exact nature of my parents cancer so he can ensure I get the proper screenings if one of the cancers is genetically passed on.
I am grateful that we don't have to pay for healthcare, at least the basics of healthcare. I wouldn't be doing any of these tests for my arthritis or discussing things with the doc if I had to pay for it. so I am grateful for that.
So there you go...guess it wasn't as hard to post about gratitude as I thought it might be.
Tuesday, January 1, 2008
Game Playing
Today's blog about gratitude is an easy one...playing a board game with my family. I am grateful that the kids want to play games with their parents; I am thankful that husband likes to play with his kids and I am glad that these game playing nights don't end in hot tempers and fist fights.
Today it was Daddy's pick for game night and as is his usual method of picking, he went around the room asking what everyone's favourite game was. Despite the two very vocal picks for the new Disney DVD Pictionary game we were given for Christmas, Daddy picked CandyLand. Yes, Candy Land which sent Baby Girl into fits of "Yeah! Yeah that's my game!"
I have never played this game. I have heard plenty about it, particularly from a former good friend of mine whose girls absolutely, utterly loved this game. Not knowing anything about it, I think I was expecting far more from this game than the simplified Snakes & Ladders game that it was. I do wonder what the appeal is but then, I am not a 4 year old girl so there you go...you just go with the flow.
The first round, and we usually only play one round on game nights, we played the standard way. This was fine and was probably made even more exciting by the periodic chucking of jelly bellies at the kids by Daddy. Well, Daddy won and since there were plenty of jelly bellies left, we decided to play again. I highly recommend this second, more challenging way to play, unless of course, you are against candy (but then you probably shouldn't play this game at all since the whole board is one huge reminder of all the candy you don't have readily available to munch on). We each were given three jelly bellies of the same colour and one of these three went on the start space. Play is the same as the standard rules with the following twists: if someone lands on your space, he/she gets to eat your jelly belly and you have to put one from your stash back on the start space. This happened so much to me that the game had barely begun and I was down to my last jelly belly already. The second twist was that if you landed on a licorice space, not only did you miss a turn (as per the rules) you also had to eat your jelly belly, thereby losing another from your stash. When your stash is gone and the last of your jelly bellies in play gets eaten, YOU ARE DONE, game over for you, fini, adios.
Baby Girl had all her stash eaten and she was the only one that actually had to be out of the game this way. She didn't cry which was a change since she hates to lose. And it was a lot of fun. This way of playing the game was hilarious and the kids had a great time. And that is why I made it my reason for being grateful today.
Today it was Daddy's pick for game night and as is his usual method of picking, he went around the room asking what everyone's favourite game was. Despite the two very vocal picks for the new Disney DVD Pictionary game we were given for Christmas, Daddy picked CandyLand. Yes, Candy Land which sent Baby Girl into fits of "Yeah! Yeah that's my game!"
I have never played this game. I have heard plenty about it, particularly from a former good friend of mine whose girls absolutely, utterly loved this game. Not knowing anything about it, I think I was expecting far more from this game than the simplified Snakes & Ladders game that it was. I do wonder what the appeal is but then, I am not a 4 year old girl so there you go...you just go with the flow.
The first round, and we usually only play one round on game nights, we played the standard way. This was fine and was probably made even more exciting by the periodic chucking of jelly bellies at the kids by Daddy. Well, Daddy won and since there were plenty of jelly bellies left, we decided to play again. I highly recommend this second, more challenging way to play, unless of course, you are against candy (but then you probably shouldn't play this game at all since the whole board is one huge reminder of all the candy you don't have readily available to munch on). We each were given three jelly bellies of the same colour and one of these three went on the start space. Play is the same as the standard rules with the following twists: if someone lands on your space, he/she gets to eat your jelly belly and you have to put one from your stash back on the start space. This happened so much to me that the game had barely begun and I was down to my last jelly belly already. The second twist was that if you landed on a licorice space, not only did you miss a turn (as per the rules) you also had to eat your jelly belly, thereby losing another from your stash. When your stash is gone and the last of your jelly bellies in play gets eaten, YOU ARE DONE, game over for you, fini, adios.
Baby Girl had all her stash eaten and she was the only one that actually had to be out of the game this way. She didn't cry which was a change since she hates to lose. And it was a lot of fun. This way of playing the game was hilarious and the kids had a great time. And that is why I made it my reason for being grateful today.
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