Hurry! Count Your Blessings!

Here are my gratitudes for today:

image: louisville.com

1. Summertime - I'm having a lazy morning. It's payday, so I'm getting the budget all set for the month. I'm grateful for the chance to just sit here and get it done and not have to hurry about getting kids out the door. That's coming sooner than I'd like. It's been a great summer. We didn't plan a big vacation because of our Spring Break trip, but we've done little jaunts here and there. There have been lots of trips to the fountains in the area, a couple runs to the beach, a trip to Seattle for the Warden and me, and the vacation will end with the Portland to Coast relay for me and something yet-to-be-determined for Labor Day. #3's birthday is the day after school starts. For her, that means, the first day of school. The Freshmen go on the actual first day. She and #2 will go the day after. Happy birthday to her!

   

   image: theskinnyms.com

2. Good food - I've been struggling with stomach problems for months now. I believe I've mentioned that before. It's not been fun. I started by cutting out white flour, sugar, and other processed foods. It helped quite a bit. I'm now down to whole foods. It makes me happy to be at least trying to get healthy things into my body. I'm hoping it will pay off over the long run, and I'm sure it will. Cooking so simply is a bit of a challenge. For some reason, in my mind, I feel like making dinner has to be so complicated. Chicken breasts, broccoli, and quinoa just doesn't seem like it can be difficult enough to be considered dinner.
3. People who say it how it is - Maybe I live in the wrong culture, but I LOVE people who will just come up and tell you what's up even if it's something they know you don't want to hear. My brother that was just here is that way. I love that I never wonder where I stand with him. If there's ever a problem, he'll tell me, and we'll work it out. I love people like this.

For today, I need to take a three mile walk and get some new socks for this weekend's face. The budget is almost done, but of course, it doesn't quite add up, so I have some more slicing and dicing to do. I need to go get the cash and set up the kids' accounts for the new school year.

We, in the next couple days, will all write to #1, and I need to start getting her birthday package ready.

Our temple is now open, so I want to get over there.

I think for this new school year, I'm going to undertake a plan to have a freezer cooking day once a month or so. I've read about this but have never done it myself. Now that we're eating so much simpler, maybe this is something I can do.