I fell off the gratitude wagon - and it wasn't pretty...

On Friday I had one of those days when nothing seemed to be going right. I was working hard all day - but didn't feel like I was accomplishing much. I never went for my run because I wimped out at the cold and felt really blah. So then I felt stir crazy after being in the house working for so many hours every day all week. Everything on my to-do list led to some other little thing that had to be done and nothing satisfying got accomplished. I made a nice dinner and there were too many complaints. The movie we watched for family movie night was pretty lame. And I never got around to doing my gratitude post.

Then Saturday I was just in a bad mood - one of those days when nothing seems like it can go right. I wanted get a few projects done around the house and have a fun family day since I'll be gone for the AZ retreat next Saturday. Family cleaning was a big pain with lots of whining in the morning. And it started snowing - a lot. I was really sad when I saw that snow. I'm not ready!  Seriously! I need to see the pretty fall leaves a bit longer and I haven't even had a chance to crunch through all the leaves that have fallen rapidly since last Saturday's snowfall. I felt a bit robbed of the tail end of my favorite season.


I tried to snap us all into "fun" mode with a brisk jog in the snow with Eliza and Ashton to to the nearby school where the twins had a basketball game. We caught big flakes on our tongues and it really was fun. Then after the basketball game, we all went to what proved to be a pretty awesome "Science Saturday" series of kids workshops, experiments and planetarium shows at Weber State - those couple of hours were great. Things were looking up. But then on the way home, the kids were being whiny and I allowed myself to get thinking about all the things I didn't accomplish over the past couple days and a few stray comments from various family members didn't help my mood one bit. I realize now that some of it was my darn hormones but seriously, by Saturday night I was a stressed out mess with a woe-is-me attitude about everything and just about drove myself and my dear husband to the brink. 


Maybe these gratitude posts are more important than I realized. Friday and Saturday sure could have used a good shot in the arm of gratitude.

So looking back and focusing on the good, here's my quick gratitude for the past three days:

Gratitude Day 11 - Friday
I'm grateful for good teachers who go the extra mile and really care. We had a good meeting with the teachers of one of our children and they were so loving and helpful. We came away with more understanding on all sides, good solutions, and renewed hope - plus strengthened relationships with these good people who really do care about our child. Things are going better with our other kids who were struggling as well. Our kids' academic futures are definitely looking up (see a few posts ago to know what I'm talking about).

Gratitude Day 12 - Saturday: Great Free Programs
I'm grateful we live by a university that offers a lot of great free stuff to families in our community.  Last Saturday, we went to this great arts-and-crafts day the art department at Weber State put on. The kids made fun Thanksgiving decorations and loved exploring the art studios they had open and the interesting sculptures they had on display plus we went through this fascinating exhibit of photography by Burtinski on the "Industrial Sublime" and had a great time talking about "juxtapositioning" and about how oddly, beauty and ugliness can be joined at the hip.  Then yesterday, the "Science Saturday" was really impressive and fun. The kids got to learn all about different types of rocks, about what smoking does to your lungs (they had pigs' lungs - some nice pink ones and some black ones that had been exposed to second hand smoke), about hovercrafts, about how cavities form on their teeth, about chemical reactions, about theories on what the Star of Bethlehem might have been (a comet? a super nova? two bright planets almost on top of each other as they were recorded to have been back in the year 1 BC?).  They each got a bag to take home with more experiments we could do. And it was all FREE.  Love this stuff!  I'm so grateful for the good people who put in so much effort to provide this great stuff.

Gratitude Day 13 - Sunday: The Atonement
When I stop counting blessings and let down my guard, I can become pretty depressingly pessimistic pretty darn quickly. Sometimes (like last night) I really mess things up and say the wrong things and stress myself and everyone else around me out way too much.

I'm so grateful for the Atonement of Jesus Christ and the chance I have to repent and start fresh. I'm so grateful that when I actually think to do it, I really can "cast my burdens" on the Lord and he'll "make crooked things straight" for me.

I'm also so grateful for the way the Lord lets me know that He's very aware of me and tells me what I need to do. The lessons at church seemed to be written just for me today. And the Sunday email that went out to all Bloom Game players today seemed to be designed for me as well. The subject line was "Mastering the Art of Starting Over."

I'm so grateful I get to start over when I fall down. I'm so grateful there's Someone up there who makes His love for me so obvious when I need it so desperately. I'm so grateful for unconditional love when I don't feel like I deserve it much at all.