Day 12: An Ability of Yours

I'm grateful for the newfound ability to be a homeschool teacher.  There were lots of questions at the beginning of last school year, but definitely one of them was, "Can I even do this?"  Homeschooling is a much bigger business than it was when I was growing up, and has especially boomed with the pandemic, so there are a lot of resources and curriculums to help parents, many of them free or very low cost.  No one has to take this on from scratch.  Nevertheless, it's daunting to take on the rule of teacher for your kids.

I do not have the personality to command a room of 30 kids, either by hilarious banter or magnetic presence.  I'm not great at managing difficult behaviors.  I would be a disaster as a classroom teacher.  I was never the kid who lined up my stuffed animals and taught them a lesson, with dreams of someday teaching a classroom full of kids.  I was much more the kid with my nose always in a book.

Fortunately, that personality works great for homeschool!  (And so do many other personality types - "you do you" is never more true than in the world of homeschool.)  The style of homeschool we do for many of our subjects is to read together and then talk about it, or go out and find it (science).  We are all learning together.  I love reading, and talking about reading, and learning new things - so this particular style of teaching is a pleasure and a natural fit.  I'm really grateful that the one little corner of the teaching world that works well for me is precisely the corner where I've landed.

Day 11: A Food You Love

Today I'm grateful for two new culinary experiences Kenny introduced me to - they are linked in my mind because they happened in the same year.  The first is sushi.  Growing up in Nebraska in the 80s and 90s, there were no sushi restaurants, and I probably couldn't have told you what sushi was.  Even living on the coast in college, while there probably was sushi available, I never tried it and I don't remember it being a regular thing for anyone I knew.  So my first time eating sushi ended up being takeout, on the beach, in Wilmington, North Carolina, at age 24.  Kenny and I were dating and he got this as lunch for us.  I was so excited to try something new and was amazed how delicious raw fish could taste.  It's hilarious to think back on how this worked out because I've been to the beach hundreds of times since then, and had sushi maybe also a hundred times since, but never again have the two things come together.  Which makes it an extra special memory.  (And it got me ready for all you can eat sushi, which is a Reno staple.)

The second new culinary experience is dim sum.  Technically I had dim sum once before with friends in New York, but it was a basically unknown cuisine to me at that point.  Kenny and I lived in Oakland for our newlywed summer, which is also where his paternal grandparents lived.  About once a week, we met them in Oakland Chinatown for either a dinner meal or dim sum.  Kenny's grandparents were so kind and generous to this girl from the Midwest who didn't have the first clue what each thing was or how to use chopsticks.  I remember trying to pick up a square gelatin item and it just kept slipping out, and Kenny's grandma showed me how to just stab it in the middle with the chopstick, which was both funny and a relief.  I'm grateful for how a meal can be such a warm and welcoming introduction to someone's family and culture.

Day 10: A Family Member

 I am so grateful for my dad, for so many reasons. I'm grateful how he bonded with us in the early years through sports - teaching all four of us kids (both boys and girls) how to throw a spiral on a football and run a chair pattern, how to use the correct footwork when boxing out on a basketball rebound, and how to watch the ball into the glove when playing catch.  I'm grateful for so many memories of his singing songs in the car and in the house - my knowledge of 1980s church music, golden oldies, and classic country is all deeper due to him.  

I'm grateful for his enthusiasm in planning family vacations; for how he took us to see the Minnesota Twins (and would sometimes end bedtime with the phrase "no smoking in the Metrodome"); and for how much he loves sitting on the rocks near the Oregon beach and watching the waves crash in.  I'm grateful that he has a great sense of humor and an eagerness to try new things.

I'm grateful how he's always been there for me.  In the midst of a demanding work life, he was always there for sports games and track meets and music concerts, and not just there but actively involved :).  I'm grateful that he was involved in two big moments in my life, officiating at my wedding and swearing me into the bar.  He was there for us when Joshua was born, flying out to Salt Lake City to support us, and then helping us drive across the country when we were traveling with two dogs and infant and a trunk full of oxygen canisters.  

I'm grateful that he treats my mom with love, kindness, and respect, giving me a good example of what I should look for in a husband. 

I'm grateful that he's been a role model to me throughout my life in so many ways - in his career, he has been highly successful as a judge, but always made time to give back to the community in various ways.  He has prioritized his faith.  He is a person of integrity, he cares very much about the marginalized and outsider, and he has a really amazing combination of strength and tenderness.  I'm so grateful for my dad.

Day 9: Something You Like About Where you Live

Ascension

I love so many things about where we live - I love the size of Reno and how the character is a mix of cowboy independence and California; I LOVE the geography, and how we get to enjoy both the dessert and the mountains; I love our nearby alpine lakes and our local junior ski program; I love our church; I love so many of the people here.

The year a balloon landed right in front of our house!

But to choose a new one today - I'm grateful for my favorite annual Reno event, the Great Reno Balloon Races.  This is a hot air balloon festival that happens for three days every September.  It takes place at a park near our house, so even on the days we don't attend, we can usually see some of it from our driveway (and once had a balloon land in our cul de sac!).  

The events start at 5 am, so you wake up and leave the house while it's still dark, and then you use flashlights to find your way through the parking lot, then through the trees, and down to the field - the dark makes it feel like an adventure. If you get there early enough, you get to see some of the balloons lift up in the dark and glow like little moons.  They start the main event around sunrise - 100+ balloons blow up in a giant field and then ascend.  They let the spectators walk around the field, so you are right in the middle of the action, surrounded by an explosion of color and the sound of blowtorches going on and off and people looking up to the sky in wonder.  

I'm so grateful for this annual event that's a thrill for kids and and adults alike.  

 

Day 8: A Happy Memory

For today's prompt, I'm choosing a seasonal memory - the Big Bang Boom 4th of July celebrations!  I grew up in a small town of about 20,000 people in northeast Nebraska.  Small Midwestern towns often do 4th of July celebrations in a big way.  There's an all day festival with bands and food and maybe mud volleyball that was watered down by a firetruck.  There are people shooting off all manner of fireworks at all hours of the day.  (I remember my brother and his friend putting on garden gloves and goggles and having a bottle rocket war.)  

And then the big highlight of the day is the professional fireworks show at night, which the whole town attends.  (And all the neighboring townsfolk  - believe it or not, we were the "hub" town in that area, with the mall and the movie theaters and the bowling alley - most towns in rural Nebraska are under a thousand, separated by miles of farmland in between.)  The fireworks show takes place over Skyview Lake, and we happened to live right across the street, so my parents often invited people over to watch with us.  

One year, they went all out and hired a band to play in their backyard.  I have the happiest memory of hanging around with my friends at this party, on a high of summer and grilled hamburgers and fireworks all day, and watching my musical, extroverted dad step in with the band for a few songs as the singer.  Then, as the sun went down, everyone getting blankets and lawn chairs turned toward the lake, and turning up the radio so we could hear the music that went along with the show.  Everyone "oohed" and "aahed" as the sky lit up, and held their breaths through the spectacular grand finale.   

I was not big on fireworks as a kid.  I was not one who would save up hundreds of dollars, buy up a whole stand, and blow up everything in sight all through the month of June.  I was more the type questioning (mostly in my head) spending that much dough on things that literally blow up in seconds when there are starving people in Africa - the fun one at the party!  

But now that I live in the west, where fireworks are much more limited and regulated due to the wildfire danger, I appreciate what a joy fireworks bring to a 4th of July celebration - both the driveway kind and the professional show kind.  And now that I'm older, I realize how much we all need these moments of celebration and joy.  I'm grateful that I got to grow up with a Big Bang Boom of a 4th of July, and grateful that we often get to return to Nebraska in July to do Independence Day Midwest style.  

Day 7: Something that Makes you Smile

Josh reading to Bear

Something that makes me smile is the way Bear (our pug) zooms around the house after he takes a bath.  There's something about baths that revs his energy up to one hundred percent and causes him to run laps around the house full speed.  It's funny how his eyes go crazy, how he skids a bit on the turns, and how he's kind of being funny but kind of being totally serious.  Pugs have the reputation for sleeping a lot, and they do, but they also have very big personalities and very high energy moments, and Bear does things every day that make me laugh.  I'm so grateful for our little pup.  

Day 6: A Smell You Love

I am so grateful for the smells associated with books!  First and foremost, of course, is the smell of a book itself.  Every book lover knows the feeling of burying their nose into a new book and inhaling the aroma, as part of the anticipation and enjoyment of the book reading experience.  Second, I like the musty smell of a used book store, in the kind of store that's built like a maze and has books packed into every nook and cranny, and probably a cat or two wandering around.  I like thinking about the lives the books have lived before they made it to this store, and then thinking about the life the bookstore owner lived that got him or her to this point, and then going home with a stack of amazing books for a bargain price.  Third, I like thinking about other smells that go along with favorite reading times and places - coffee with a morning read, salty ocean air from a beach read, even the gas station snack smell (specifically, my brother eating Funions) as I read in the minivan on family vacations.  Like songs, I'm so grateful how a smell can bring you right back to a time and place.