Monday, October 4, 2010

Gratitude Challenge (borrowed from Sharon Cole)

"We often take for granted the very people who most deserve our gratitude. Let us not wait until it's too late for us to express that gratitude...to express gratitude is gracious and honorable... to live with gratitude ever in our hearts is to touch heaven."
~President Thomas S. Monson

There are 27 days left in October. Can you list 27 people in your life that you are grateful for?
I challenge you to express your gratitude to them. You do not have to blog about it.
You can call them, email them, text them, etc...just tell them you how much you appreciate them. 

 
So as to not complete rip off Sharon's post I won't talk about Bobby first...today I'll talk about my mom.

If you have known me since I was a kid/teenager/young adult, you probably know that from the time I was about 15 until I was about 25 my mom and I could not hardly be in the same room together without biting each other's heads off...then something changed.  I'm not sure what it was, maybe my mom suddenly got smarter, maybe we finally learned each other's language...probably it has to do with the reasoning/thinking parts of the adolescent brain not being fully developed until the mid-twenties...which means I got smarter, but suddenly my mom knew more than ever before and I respected that.  My mom and I started hanging out together, we took a Love and Logic class together, we shopped together, we cooked together and we talked together.  She became my best friend when I wasn't even looking.

The next year, I would become reacquainted with and marry the love of my life and his career would take us away from my family.  I miss my mom every day that we are apart.  
She is an amazing woman.  A pillar of strength in our family.  She is a wonderful mother.  My perfect friend, the kind that loves me no matter what, and isn't afraid to call me out on my weaknesses in a loving way.  She is the kind of grandmother that every kid wants to have, the kind that is fast and loose with the cookies, loves to spoil with presents big and small, gets down on the ground to play, and disciplines with love when necessary.  I am grateful for her in my life and in the lives of my children.