Blessings 2 through 4

Okay, so this is gonna be really short. I just don't want to get too far behind in counting my blessings...

So, Saturday, Jeff and I had such a fun date. We went ice skating which was awesome and so much fun! I realized that I could never be a figure skater, for one because I am just not that graceful or coordinated, but for two because my ankles cannot support me on that thin blade.You can't really tell in this picture, but I was having a really hard time staying stable on these skates... my ankles nearly touched the ground as I tried to walk or skate so I had to trade them in for some different ones.

Anyway, we had a blast skating! I did realize that I am not really in very good shape and that I need to work out more because I did get tired some. But it was so fun and there weren't that many people there so by the end it almost felt like we had the whole ice rink to ourselves.

Afterwards, Jeff and I went and got slurpees which neither of us had had in awhile and we forgot the prevalence of brain freeze. I got brain freeze first, then Jeff. When he did, he grabbed his head and said, "I can't do this. It hurts so bad, I just want to die right now". Ha! After ice skating and slurpees we went to Jeff's parents' house and had dinner and Jeff got a much needed haircut, which was nice.

So for blessing number two- I have a body that I can use in almost anyway that I please, I am able to move my arms and legs, I can ice skate, jump, run, dance, etc. I am grateful for my body and the many uses that it has.

Sunday, Jeff and I went to church and then we went to my dad's house for awhile. We actually ended up staying for several hours. My dad's wife's mom passed away on Thursday morning. Jeff and I went and hung out with Barry, Debbie and Monica. It was nice to be around family (I just love being around my family or Jeff's family). Anyway, of course we talked about Debbie's mom and the afterlife and all kinds of things. Blessing #3- I am grateful for the knowledge that I have of an afterlife, a life with our eternal Father, the possibilities that there are. I am grateful for all of that and I am grateful that we were able to talk about that. It's hard losing a loved one, but I am grateful that it's not like it's the end all, that there is something to rejoice in.
If you asked Jeff what he was grateful for yesterday, he would have said the air conditioner... boy was it hot! :)

Today, it was so wonderful having Jeff home. It was just so nice that we both got to be off today together. We cleaned up some in our home (did some organizing of closets and such) and then went to a cookout. We had so much fun hanging out, eating, playing with babies and playing games. It really was such a good time. Afterwards, Jeff and I came home and read scriptures. I am grateful that I have a husband that has priorities and that reminds me (mind you, I let him) to make sure we have family scripture time and prayers.
But really, blessing 4 is that I am blessed to have wonderful friends with the same values and principles that I have. I am blessed.

Okay, I know I snuck in a couple of other blessings in there, but I don't think that hurts anything. :)

Anyway, as my friend would say, "I am pretty dang blessed!" And if anyone is reading this, please feel free to add your own blessings!

Stay tuned for more!

NY, Observations and Blessings

So, I haven't written in awhile, even though I wanted to, because I never finished my New York trip... and that's not what I wanted to write about...

I will say quickly, that the rest of our trip was amazing... overall, we saw a broadway musical (West Side Story... surprised with how much innuendo there was, I mean really? You're letting your 9 year old watch this?) and a broadway play (Lend Me a Tenor... hilarious... the guy from Monk was in it and he was sooo good). We got our faces drawn in Charcoal on the side of the street in Times Square, spent a lot of time in Times Square, went on a tour of lower east side manhattan, well mostly just wall street (which was awesome! so rich in history there), ground zero, some old churches (which I really like actually and graveyards... maybe that makes me weird). We rode the subway everywhere, which was wonderful, so easy and so close to where we were staying. We walked up and down 5th avenue, went into some fun stores and got to go to F.A.O Schwarz and Trump towers (is that what it's called?). We missed Central Park and all of the museums that I wanted to go to, so I guess that means we'll have to go back, right? :)


Okay, now I can stop feeling so guilty. So the real reason that I want to post, well, I wanted to do a month long of observations that I made, just simple little observations, like how I always thought and still say that I am not good at time and figuring out how much time has passed, but how the other week at work, I was able to give a child a one -minute warning that their break was ending and I was accurate and then I was accurate again at 30 seconds. I guess all day long, my day is run on timers and so now I am better at it. Or one day I was driving down the interstate and I noticed that there was a car beside me (slightly ahead of me) that had a license plate that said, "Author".... well, I wondered, "what does a driving author look like?", so I sped up a little so I could peer into their window. What did I see? This older woman with died, red hair sitting up to the steering wheel, cigarette in hand (both hands on the wheel). She looked a little eccentric, maybe just nervous or feeling rushed. Her hair was short and messy. She kind of fit my idea of what an author might look like when trying to meet a deadline... one that uses not a computer, but an old type-writer. I could just see her sitting at her desk, type-writer clickety clacking away in low light, cigarette smoke blurring her vision of what's she's writing....

... Anyway, so that was one idea, but again I never got to it because of that New York post. Then today, I decided that maybe I would write 100 blessings that I recieve. I tend to compare myself to others. I always think that others are smarter, richer, prettier, thinner, luckier, more graceful, funnier, farther along in life, farther along in school, happier... no, no, they can't be happier, can they, than me. And while it may be true that I know people that are all of those things, I am still sooo incredibly blessed!! So blessed! And really, my happiness cannot depend on other people or their fortunes versus my misfortunes, so I thought the best way for me to remember that I really am blessed (and not that I forget... in fact I am always thanking Heavenly Father for them), but just to sort of have a journal of them, you know so that when I am especially feeling that everyone has or is more.... than me, I can look back and remember how truly, I am smart, rich, pretty, thin (well that's debatable.... we'll go with healthy), lucky, graceful, funny, far in life, doing well in school, happy and so forth.

So for blessing number 1: I have a wonderful husband, he cleaned the house today because he got home from work today before I did. What a guy! :) And he was smiling and happy to see me when I arrived home. (This picture is from a VCU basketball game we went to a couple of weeks ago... I didn't feel like getting the camera or else I would have included pictures from our trip to New York this time...)

The Big Apple Experience Part I

"I was wondering when you were gonna give me your ticket". Jeff hands the man at the toll booth his ticket. Apparently, he didn't extend his arm far enough the first time. The man takes it. "That will be $.860" Jeff is getting money ready. "That's $8.60 sir. That will be $8.60" Jeff fumbles through his wallet and hands the man a $20 bill. The man gives him his change and we take off... only a few yards and try to merge into the tunnel. We made it to New York!

We wanted to go to the Manhattan temple first. Jeff was already dressed in his suit and I in a skirt. We had a GPS and followed it until we landed ourselves in Manhattan. We drove around and found Columbus St. "Well the temple must be around here somewhere... oh, look! There it is!" It was rather small looking. It had one small steeple and big gold letters that named it as the temple. Now if only we could find parking. We were excited about this being our first stop. Sadly, it didn't work out. We drove around for an hour and a half looking for parking. There was none to be had. At one point, we got so close to a parking spot, but the van in front of us got to it first (of course he would, it was a one way, one lane side street). Finally, we gave up and decided to go to our hotel. That didn't take long at all... we were staying in Queens just outside of Manhattan. We called beforehand and found out that there was limited street parking in front of the hotel and that there were parking lots close by. As we neared our hotel and saw the parking lots, we feared for our car. We were definitely in the ghetto of New York. We drove around for about a half an hour looking for parking. There were only three parking spots in front of the hotel- all three were taken. On our fifth trip around the block, we saw that a couple was getting into their. "Look, I think they're leaving," I said, "maybe we can park there". So we drove around again. They were still there. We drove around, made a bigger loop and decided that we would park in some spot a block from the hotel. Jeff ran to the hotel to see if we could park there. When he came back, he let me know that we could check in early and that we could park right in front of the hotel. The car had left! Perfect. We could leave our car there for the the entirety of our stay. And, we did.

When we were checking in, we asked about AAA and realized that we could get a 10% discount for having AAA. Score! We got all of our things inside, checked out a map of the subway system, found out that the closest subway station was just a block away and then headed out! It was time to venture into Manhattan (without having to worry about a car). The first place we decided to go was Times Square. We wanted to find the discount ticket booth to get tickets for a Broadway show.

When we stepped out of the subway, we were amazed! The buildings, they were so tall! And screens everywhere! It was incredible and awesome. We found the ticket booth and decided on seeing West Side Story. We were able to get both tickets at half off. Score again! We had a couple of hours to kill before the show started, so we decided to walk around and go find something to eat. We went to a resturaunt called Juniors. I had a cheeseburger with grilled onions and Jeff had a chicken sandwhich and fries. Jeff really enjoyed his sandwhich. Mine, well, let's just say it wasn't the best. After dinner, we walked around a bit more. We went into some stores and then went to Toys R' us. What a cool store! I love toys anyway (I know, I'm a big kid). It was pretty fun. Anyway, after that, we headed to go find ice cream. I asked someone, "Do you know where we can get ice-cream?" "There's a place called Cold Stone Creamery (as if I'd never heard of such a thing) on 42nd and 7th"

Coldstone was bigger than I'd ever seen one. There were so many people inside, all different shades, and speaking all different languages, just like all of New York. I don't think I'd been around so many different people with so many differnt ethnic and cultural backgrounds in my life. It was awesome.

We got our ice cream and headed towards the playhouse. As we walked the streets, people kept trying to hand us fliers for manicures, comedy shows, men suits warehouses, theatre shows, psychic readings, etc. "No thank you. No thanks" I felt like I said that over and over again.

The playhouse was a beautiful, old building. Our seats were in the balcony and it was neat to be able to see the alcoves where part of the orchestra was. The woodwork was so ornate. I loved it. I would have taken pictures, however I left the camera. Or at least I thought I did. It wasn't until later that I realizd that it was in my purse the whole time. Gah! All of those pictures I missed out on.

The musical was awesome! The choreography was amazing! There was some suggestive material, however, which I didn't really appreciate it. One scene in particular was kind of wretched and I couldn't believe that parents were their with their children. I was kind of embarrassed and a little mortified for them. That being said,the choreography really was great. And the music, of course, was awesome.

After the musical, we walked outside and was amazed at how bright it was. It did not seem like it was nearly 11 pm. It was so lit up, it almost seemed like day time. As we were walking, we saw that someone (well two someones, a Chinese man and woman) was drawing a person, they stopped us, ask if we wanted ours done and almost insisted. Well, how could we resist? So we sat down and the lady started drawing us. After she had been drawing for about 10 minutes, she switched with the man and he started all over. When he was done, he showed it to us and tried to sell us a "frame". The picture of the two of us was $15. The frame was also $15. It wasn't worth it to me so we turned it down. They said that it would smeer without the frame. We let them know that we'd manage. The brought the price down to $25 total. I said, "Tai gue le" (Forgive me, I can't remember how to spell), meaning "too expensive". The woman was surprised that I could say that. She said, "okay I give you for $5 dollars. $20 for both." We agreed and gave them a $20 bill and went on our merry way to the subway. It was time to get back to the hotel.

On the way back to the hotel, Jeff mentioned several times, as he would throughout the trip, "I hope the car's okay". Of course it was, and it continued to be fine the whole time it was there.

Well that was our first day in New York. It was quite the experience and so amazing!

I'd like to continue sharing our trip to New York, but there will have to be a part II tomorrow. It's late and all week we've been going to bed late and getting up early. Tomorrow will be no different, so I'd better get to bed. Ta ta for now!