10 Things that I am incredibly grateful for

Thanksgiving is tomorrow, I just can’t hardly believe it!  This month has flown by ya’ll and I just need to pause a moment and remember that while we should always feel grateful and appreciative, that is what this month in particular is all about.  I know tomorrow when we get together with our friends around the table to share a meal, I will be feeling extra thankful, there are some very specific things I am especially thankful for right now and I wanted to share them with you here!

I feel like if we don’t share them out loud, whether that’s talking them over with family member or friends, or even writing them down on paper then we can’t truly acknowledge them!  There’s such power to putting things out there into the world!

So here are 10 things I’m most thankful for:  some of course are obvious and other’s not so much!  These aren’t in any order ya’ll!

1. The health of my family!  This is one thing that will always top my list!  Right now everyone is sick with a cold or some little tiny bug  but we are blessed that we are all relatively healthy and I am incredibly thankful for that right now.  We are all able to move and go and do the things we love. We can chat with one another, hug one another, play with one another and we have the ability to tell each other we love you, every day!  While we all have our aches and pains and we may not be in perfect health, we are in good health and that is what counts!
2. Lincoln!  I will always be thankful for my crazy, wild man, strong willed kiddo!  Not a day goes by that I don’t remember how difficult it was for us to have him and how difficult a road it is for others!  Not one person’s story is the same and everyone has their struggles.  I’m thankful that he is with us.  He teaches me new things every day and I am becoming a better person because of him.  Every day is a new challenge.  No day is perfect and some days are tougher than others but I thank God every day that I get to start fresh with him and that I was chosen to be his Mom!
3. Great friends:  When I hit 35 this year I realized something, great friends, TRULY GREAT friends are hard to come by and they are like rare gems.  So when you find them, hold on to them.  I also learned that you are incredibly blessed if you have only a small handful of really great friends and we do!  It’s about the quality and not the quantity~!  Stick close to the people who feel like sunlight!  I read that somewhere and man is that ever the truth!  We have a handful of people that feel like sunlight!  It’s easy to be with them and there is absolutely no drama!  You feel uplifted and light after seeing them and those are the relationships you cultivate and nurture.  The others, well they are what they are!
4. A place that feels like home!  Celebration is a small town that just feels like home in my heart!  It’s hard to explain unless you have moved away from home to another place that feels “right”.  Maybe it’s the people, maybe it’s the fact that I can walk or bike anywhere I need to go.  Maybe it’s because the weather is just right for me, or the parks and the pools everywhere, or the community spirit.  I like to think it’s all of it combined because it feels exactly like how I grew up!  Whatever it is, this place and community just feels right.  And I won’t lie, having Disney down the street doesn’t hurt either!
5. Being able to go home:  Sweet Home Alabama put it best:  “you can have roots and wings”!  There is no better feeling than knowing I can go home whenever I need to.  I’m incredibly close to my mom and dad and knowing that “home” is a short flight away and there when I need it is very comforting.  I spent almost the entire month of October flying home this year.  Sometimes, you need to have both.. roots and wings!
6. Marriage:  I am thankful for a strong marriage and when I say strong I don’t mean perfect or wonderful!  I say strong because we work hard!  We’ve been through tough things but we choose each other.  When we got married a friend of ours who spoke at the wedding gave us some strong advice.  It’s written on a plaque above our bed.  He said “Choose your love and love your choice”.  Read that statement over to yourself if your married.  The second part is where I think we fail sometimes in our society.  We choose who we love all the time, but sometimes when things get hard we forget to love our choice, and we forget it IS a choice.  I’m thankful for a strong husband, a wonderful partner, who I get to do this life with everyday.  Someone who continually chooses me although I’m not perfect and we aren’t perfect!  Marriage is a choice everyday!  It’s not roses, and picnics and date nights!  Gosh with kids it’s super hard to get a date night!  Most of the time for us our “date night” is reading books with Linc and praying we don’t fall asleep in bed with him!  Sometimes our date night is netflix and chill!  And I kind of love that!  But I’m incredibly grateful for this stage in our life and I’m madly in love with my partner that I’m in it with!
7. Coca-Cola!  Yes ya’ll!  I had to put this in there.  I get migraines, bad ones!  I’m not your typical oh no I have a bad headache it must be a migraine kind of girl.  I have legit, I’ve been seeing a neurologist since I was very little, migraines.  Mine are called hemiplegic migraines where half of my face goes numb and I have paralysis and I look like I’ve had a stroke.  I’m on heavy duty prescription medication for them and sometimes have to be hospitalized.  So, sometimes I get a bit defensive when I hear people say, Oh I have a migraine, I’m going to take excedrin.  No ya’ll… just no!  But when I feel a migraine coming… oh please give me a coke!  A beautiful, fizzy, carbonated, ice cold coke!  Heck ya’ll…. just give me a coke anytime and I will be your best friend!  I don’t really drink alcohol so coca-cola is my go to!  I just love it!  And bonus, if you stick it in the freezer for 15 minutes (seriously though watch it so it doesn’t explode!) yummmm.  It’s like a coke slurpee!
8. A great relationship with my mom!  My mom is one of my best friends and I know not everyone has that!  I’m incredibly lucky.  I talk with her all the time.  I can call her if I have a question about cooking, a problem, a parenting question, really anything.  We call just to catch up.  When I go home, we just hang!  We have certain traditions when we are together.  We can shop together and it’s funny because we like the same things.  Her taste is impeccable and I benefit from that.  We can call each other at any point in the day and even though we don’t live in the same state anymore if I have a migraine, you can bet she has one too.  I know instantly if something is wrong with her and vice versa.  Growing up, my house was like the leave it to Beaver house (I think, I’m not sure because I’ve never seen an episode).  My mom was always waiting for me after school with a homemade snack, usually fresh brownies.  I would sit at the counter and we would talk about my day.  I remember coming home from my first day in middle school crying because I couldn’t open my locker lock.  So she drove me back and we spent an hour working on opening and closing the lock.  Everyone always hung out at my house because my mom was home!  She was everyone’s emergency contact and I would often come home to find a friend laying on our couch watching tv and eating homemade soup and treats!  She would sometimes wake me up early in the mornings and tell me we were going to skip school that day and go on a trip… sometimes it was strawberry picking, some times it was just a beach day, other times it was an adventure!  My mom is kind of awesome!  I hope to be that amazing and magical for Linc!
9. Front Porch Swings:  We have a front porch swing and I love it!  Rise Against has a song and it will forever be an all time favorite… Swing Life Away.  ”  We live on front porch swings and swing life away.  We get by just fine here on minimum wage.  If love is a labor I’ll slave till the end, I won’t cross these streets until you hold my hand… swing life away!”  This is what my vision for our life here and it’s coming true.  It’s been a mind shift for us.  In Virginia Beach it was about the status and we had it.  Big house (although that didn’t matter to us), big back yard, pool and the play set.  But guess what it was my personal trap.  I can be a homebody so I never left.  We had no need to go anywhere.  But here.. we have a smaller house and it’s GREAT!  I love it so much more because we are never inside.  We are hardly ever home.  And that front porch swing, it’s my favorite.  I take a book outside, and swing.  We swing or sit on the front porch chairs and watch Linc play.  Our friends come out and join us as we watch our sons all play together and get into trouble!  I see us swinging and waiting for Linc to come home from school.  I see us swinging and waiting for Linc to come home from dates.  I see us swinging as we grow old and gray.  Swing life away!
10. Family Vacations:  I know this is a luxury but I’m incredibly thankful that we are in a place where we can take family vacations.  We have one child and we have made the decision to have only one child so that we can travel as a family.  I read an article that said family vacations are more valuable to kids than toys.  (You can read the article here )  We live in a place where most families save up their entire lives to vacation.  I know we are incredibly blessed to live where we do and spend even an hour there on a daily basis.  We want to see the world and we want to give that to Linc.  We want him to see different cultures and experience different things outside of his comfort zone.  We notice a huge difference in Linc when we travel and go on family vacations.  We see a huge difference in ourselves.  We can be with each other one hundred percent, in the moment and fully engaged.  There are no i-pads, or checking in on the cell phone every 2 seconds.  We are free!  We are relaxed as parents and we are able to play with him without being stressed or worrying about something else.  My husband isn’t trying to be in two places at once.  We can be totally disconnected to the “outside” world and it’s a breath of fresh air.  This year we are so blessed to be taking three family vacations:  we leave Friday for a Disney Cruise.  In March we are headed to Iceland with family friends which I am over the moon excited about, and in the summer Tuck was selected to do something incredibly amazing, something that he is honored to do and it’s kind of a huge deal in Normandy!

What are you thankful for right now in this moment?  I hope you share with your family and friends or at least put it down on paper!

Happy Thanksgiving friends from my family to yours!  We are headed out on Friday so I will be taking a bit of a break until next week!

xo

B