Day 34: Things You Like About Fall

I know most people love fall, and for me it's the hardest season as light grows shorter. But that's all the more reason to celebrate the things that are great about fall. I love college football. I love watching the leaves change color, and I especially love seeing quaking aspens turn yellow. I am grateful for the kind of cooking you get to resume as the temperatures dip, like a big pot of soup. I am grateful for pumpkins and the activities associated with them - patches, carving, and eating, to name a few. I am grateful for the holiday of gratitude, Thanksgiving, and how this time of year leads us right in to a heavy season of holiday and family togetherness. I am grateful for the crisp in the air but not yet bitterly cold temperatures. 

Day 33: Something You Look Forward To

I am looking forward to traveling to Depoe Bay, Oregon! I've blogged about this a bunch of times, so this will mostly be repeat, but here is an incomplete list of the things I enjoy and can't wait to do on this particular vacation:

• Climb up to the eye rocks (pictured left)
• Lay in the hot sand with a good book
• Search for starfish in the crevices between rocks
• Watch the seals spy on us, and spy back
• Try to spot whales
• Climb over to Boiler Bay and check out the old shipwrecked boiler
• Make a bonfire on the beach, roast hot dogs and Smores, possibly camp out for the night
• Walk through the magical forest
• Exploring caves
• Climb over rocks and watch the huge waves crash into the cliffsides
• Wade in the freezing cold water and check out sea anemones in the tide pools.
• Eat some fresh seafood in the surrounding towns
• Share a bottle of wine with my mom and sister on the back deck while we watch the sun set over the Pacific Ocean and try to spot the flash of green
• Play blackjack with M and Ms
• Try to walk through the pitch-black tree tunnel after dark
• Go for runs in 65 degree weather rather than 100 degrees.
• Do handstands with Ivy on the beach.
• Do triple jump contests with my sister on the beach.

I am so grateful for this place and am super looking forward to spending a week there.

Day 32: A City You've Visited

 

A city I'm grateful for that I've visited at different times in my life is Washington, D.C. I remember visiting for a school field trip in middle school and how beautiful the presidential monuments were lit up at night. I remember visiting with my family in high school and how amazing the Smithsonian museums were, particularly the enormous aircraft in the Air and Space Museum. I have a lot of memories from living there for 10 weeks during one of my law school summers - 4th of July fireworks on the National Mall with Kenny, running through Dupont Circle down to Georgetown, and eating at Ethiopian restaurants in Adams Morgan. I remember traveling to DC as a brand new mom to watch my dad's confirmation hearing for the federal bench and what a thrill that was. I'm so grateful for all these memories. And I'm grateful for this city that helps us remember some of the things that are so beautiful about America's history and system of government (as well as past and present challenges to overcome).

Day 31: Core Value

 

I'm grateful for the comprehensive set of core values given in the Fruits of the Spirit. To work on any one of these could be a lifelong project, and one that's worthy of that kind of time and effort. To make progress in any one of these makes your own life better and sends out ripples to the world. If the world as a whole adopted these as the top values, what a utopia we would live in. I'm grateful to have this list when I think about who do I want to be and what really matters.

Day 30: Your Current Age

My current age is 44 - right in the middle. I'm grateful that I have lived long enough that I have some perspective. When I go through a hard circumstance, I know better how to hold on and that it won't last forever. When I go through a great time, I know better to appreciate because it won't last forever. (Still working on both of these for sure, but better at it than I was back in early adulthood.) Meanwhile, I'm still young enough to get to enjoy my kids at home, my body in good health, and most of my loved ones still with me. I appreciate that I'm old enough that my life has taken much of its shape as far as career, family, hometown; but there are still (God willing) many more years ahead for surprises, for twists and turns in all of this. There are things that are very challenging about middle age for sure, so it's great to be prompted to take a moment and think about all the good things in this age range. 

Day 29: Your Favorite Memory

I am going to go with my favorite memory this past year, which is one of the nights of our family vacation to Paris in May. I had really wanted to see the lights of the Eiffel Tower at night, but when you go in the summer, it doesn't get dark until like 10 pm. We were staying in a neighborhood that was about 30 minutes by Metro from the Eiffel Tower, so waffled on whether it was worth it to take the kids out that late and probably not get home until midnight. But one of the nights toward the end of the trip, we all felt inspired to give it a go.

We left our VRBO around 9 pm and watched the sun set through the windows of the Metro as we rode to the neighborhood of the Eiffel Tower. We got out and walked along the path until we got a good viewing spot, then enjoyed the night view of this beautiful tower. After dark, on the hour, the tower sparkles for five minutes, which creates a really magical effect - and we got there just in time to see the sparkling. It felt like everything you dream Paris will feel like. 

As we walked back toward the Metro station, we were all in the mood for a snack, so we stopped at a crepe stand and all ordered dessert crepes. Eating delicious food, being out in the night air, the beautiful view, surrounded by the people you love most - it really doesn't get any better. So grateful for this moment.

Day 28: Your Past

As my own kids are on summer break and trying to find creative ways to kill the long swaths of unstructured time they've been given in these summer months, it makes me remember with gratitude the joy of summer reading as a kid. I remember enthusiastically signing up for the library summer reading program and completing the 24 hour requirement in 3 days. I remember my secret reading nook under the stairs of the deck, where I would haul in my sleeping bag and flashlight and whatever book I was reading and hide away from the rest of the family. I remember reading on car trips as we drove across the Midwest to various destinations; reading on the beach in Oregon and trying not to get too much sand in the spine of the book; reading past bedtime to try to get to the end of a favorite book. I still have this love for reading, but rarely get this kind of time to spend hours lost in a book. I'm grateful for these memories and I'm grateful for the escape reading provides, whether for a few minutes or weeks at a time. 

Day 27: Favorite Spot in Your City

I am grateful for all the parks along the Truckee River. I particularly like Mayberry Park, pictured here, but Crissy Caughlin and Idlewild and Oxbow are also great. Because Reno is high desert, it can be hard to find places that feel really lush -- but right along the river, you find lots of green. You can get some shade for a picnic, you can wade to cool off, you can enjoy all the trees. Along the river is my favorite place for running in the warm weather months. The Truckee River and it's surrounding parks are like an oasis that run all through the center of Reno, and I'm grateful for it.

Day 26: Someone You Got To Meet

 

I am grateful to have met Andre the Giant. We happened to stay in a hotel with him in the Midwest, just a few years after The Princess Bride was released. We got on an elevator and there was Andre the Giant, a person whose stature would've been notable even without his celebrity. We tried to say hello and he did not respond; it was unclear whether he could actually hear us and at that point he might have been tired of constantly getting recognized and hounded everywhere he went.

As I've written in a previous post, I absolutely love The Princess Bride, so it was a thrill to get to see one of the actors in person, even if it wasn't the most warm and fuzzy of receptions.

More importantly, whenever I'm thrown into an icebreaker (side note, if I ever flip the switch and do a series of "ungratefuls", icebreakers will be right at the top of that list) and there is a question about who is the most famous person you've met, I'm grateful for this one chance encounter so that I have something to say to this question. 

Day 25: Education

 

I am very grateful for my college education at Brown. I've referred to different things over the years - my college coach, some particular friendships, some lessons learned - but I don't think I've ever done one on the experience as a whole. 

I'm grateful for all the new experiences. Coming from Nebraska, just living in the Northeast offered a smorgasbord of seeing new cities and states and meeting all kinds of people. I got to stay with a friend in Maine whose dad is a lobster fisherman. I got to visit a friend's cousin in New York City and attend a traditional Shabbat dinner. I got to see the fall leaves in New Hampshire and Vermont, dine on lobster in Boston, and walk through opulent mansions in Newport. The list could go on and on.

I'm grateful for the intellectual rigor of the classroom discussions and readings and lectures. The classes on history and political science in particular were better than I could have ever imagined those subjects to be, and caused me to change my major just so that I would have a good excuse to take more.

I'm grateful for the opportunities it afforded me. Going to an Ivy League school helped me get into a strong law school and has since helped give me the benefit of the doubt when I'm job searching, even with my very unorthodox career path that includes a 13 year work history gap. I'm also grateful for the confidence it has given me - coming from a public high school in Lincoln and being thrown in as a small fish in a big pond but then figuring out how to swim, empowers you to feel like you can do hard things. I'm grateful for that confidence boost.

I'm thankful for the memories. Between dorm life and the track team and the Christian fellowship, late nights at the pizza place and afternoons studying on the Green, and so many hang outs -- college is a really special time of life that is so focused on friendship and fun and enriching activities, and you never really get that in such a focused way again in life. I enjoyed the heck out of it and I'm super grateful for the memories most of all.

Day 24: A Book you Learned From

 

I'm thankful for a book I'm reading right now, "Orthodoxy" by G.K. Chesterton. This book makes many great points, but the a couple quotes that are sticking with me from my reading this morning are the following: 

"Mysticism keeps men sane. As long as you have mystery, you have health; when you destroy mystery you create morbidity. The ordinary man has always been sane because the ordinary man has always been a mystic. He has permitted the twilight. He has always had one foot in earth and the other in fairyland."

"Humility was largely meant as a restraint upon the arrogance and infinity of the appetite of man. He ways always outstripping his mercies with his own newly invented needs. His very power of enjoyment destroyed half his joys. By asking for pleasure, he lost the chief pleasure; for the chief pleasure is surprise. Hence it became evident that if a man would make his world large, he must be always making himself small." 

These ideas that celebrate wonder and mystery and how much is out there besides just me -- written in the context of Christianity - and by such a witty, intelligent author -- make me want to stand up and cheer. I'm only about a fourth of the way into the book and am SO grateful i get to to move through this one slowly over the summer. 

Day 22: Something You Use Every Day

I am grateful for my washer and dryer. We are at the stage of family life where we use these machines at least once a day, and depending on the sports season, sometimes more. While it's easy to complain about the never-ending task that it is to stay on top of the clothes pile, the reality is that I have it very easy. I don't need to hand-wring out clothes or dry them on a clothes line. I don't need to walk them down to the river or haul them over to the Laundromat. I don't need to carve out a whole day for the chore of laundry, because the reality is that other than folding, it takes almost no time to shuffle clothes through the machines. I'm grateful that modern technology makes laundry really a pretty easy chore, and I'm grateful for the provision of clothes to wash and family members who continually produce dirty clothes. 

Day 21: Things You Like About Summer

 

This pictures contains many of the elements I love about summer. Being at the beach. Hot sand and cold water. Bonfires and S'mores fixings. More freedom in the schedule as school is out, many activities go on pause, and vacations are encouraged. More time to spend with friends and family, making memories. I am so grateful for this season and I'm particularly grateful for all the memories just like this made on this beach throughout my life.