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Thankful Thursdays: Thanksgiving Edition

I recently stumbled upon a blog that touches my heart, as a Christian, as a woman and as a wife. You're likely familiar with Jefferson Bethke, though you may not know him by name. His Youtube video of a spoken word poem entitled "Why I Hate Religion, But Love Jesus" went viral earlier this year. I saw it all over my Facebook, from friends and family all over the country. My beautiful cousin Rachel retweeted something he said on Twitter, so I began to follow him. He recently got married and he began to retweet things that his wife, Alyssa, tweeted so I began to follow her as well. This is how I happened upon her blog: Alyssa Joy.

In her recent miniseries on Gratitude, she wrote the following:

"A book that deeply touched my heart, and changed my whole outlook on life, is One Thousand Gifts by Ann Voskamp. In this book, Ann talks about her struggle to give thanks to the Lord when life is hard, and in the mundane day-to-day events. BUT. When we do- when we choose to give thanks- the mundane becomes beautiful. The pain becomes beautiful too- because we see Jesus at work, instead of asking where He’s gone. We invite Jesus in to each moment, and savor His precious gifts. 

Ann was challenged to write a list of 1,000 things she was thankful for and discovered the joy of looking for every moment that she could thank the Lord for. 

Although I’m not at 1,000 yet, this list-making has brought so much joy to my life. Inviting Jesus in, taking a moment to reflect on His beauty, His work, His presence- in every moment. 

So, every Thursday, I am going to write a list of things I am thankful for. I hope you will join me in this process. Hopefully we will get to 1,000 soon."

And so, I've decided to join in on this challenge. Each Thursday, I will be taking time to write about at least 10 things that I am thankful for that week. I've ordered One Thousand Gifts from Amazon and look forward to reading it. I've also ordered two other books from Alyssa's Recommended Reading List: Feminine Appeal: Seven Virtues of a Godly Wife and Mother and Prayers of An Excellent Wife. I hope that these will teach me a lot and inspire me to be a better wife to Stephen. This also correlates nicely with number 9 on my 30 Before 30 list: Complete a thankfulness journal for an entire year.

So, for the week of Thanksgiving 2012, here are the ten things that I am thankful for:

He makes me smile this big all the time, even
when I'm wearing ridiculous boot-slippers.

1. A God who orchestrates my life in ways that show His hand so obviously: there's no other way that Stephen and I end up married. There are too many things about our lives and how perfect we are for each other that you just can't chalk up to coincidence.
2. My amazing and wonderful husband. He completes me, seriously. I am good on my own but I am great when we are together. He brings out the best in me by loving me just as I am. I want to be the best possible wife to him and look forward to raising a family with this amazing man! He continues to give me more and more reasons to love him every single day.



My Gram attacking a turkey leg?
Totally normal Thanksgiving.

3. Our incredible, weird, crazy family! I could not be more blessed to be related to some of the most kind-hearted, caring, fun-loving, adopting-random-people-because-we-love-everyone, give-you-the-shirt-off-my-back, people in this entire world. My family and my in-laws are a huge blessing in our lives and I feel so blessed to have these people speaking into our lives and into our marriage. We are surrounded by people who follow God in their lives and encourage us to do the same in ours. We could not be more blessed.
4. The best best friends anyone could ask for. I have two sisters by bonds that I can't imagine life without. Though we're in three different states, we talk constantly and encourage each other in all of our pursuits. We understand each other and we have a similar humor. I am so so so so excited to see them in a couple weeks and to just enjoy being in the same state, let alone the same room! It brings me such joy. I just love them and their (my) family to death.



I can't believe this was 6 years ago.
I love my sisters!

5. We both have jobs. In an economy like this, when so many have fallen on hard times, we are both gainfully employed in jobs that we enjoy a majority of the time. 
6. Life-long friendships. Okay, so this kind of correlates with #4 (Sandi and I have been friends for 13 years!), but can I just say how awesome it is that Stephen and I spent Thanksgiving in the home of my Aunt Lori's college roommate, Kathleen? How incredible that all of these years later, they are friends, and that their friendship would extend to them being my family too? How many people can say that? They've been friends longer than I've been alive and I can't wait to be best friends with Sandi for 30 years!
7. Getting pictures of my sweet nephew in text messages from my brother- I just love him!
8. Weird family traditions, like my Mom, Dad, brother and I telling each other "Happy Birthday" on Thanksgiving because it's Turkey Day and my parents are turkeys!!
9. A beautiful home to live in
10. Mashed potatoes. No lie. People who know me know how much I love potatoes.

Going forward, the list will most likely not be so verbose. It will probably look more like this: 10 Things. But I look forward to thanking the Lord for everything He puts in my life. Both the large and small :)

Goals, Food, Health and Happiness

It seems like I blinked and the year is almost over. 

I'm looking back on some of the goals that I started the year with and it looks like I'm doing pretty well, actually!

Goals for 2012:

• Complete the Couch to 5K training program to get back into running - Check!
• Read at least 18 books (progress can be tracked on my blog to the right) - I'm currently reading book #27!
• Complete a second Photo A Day project - So far, so good!
• Make a realistic budget with my husband and stick to it - Well, we made a budget. I haven't exactly checked our stick-to-it-ness but we're doing well financially and have made some changes that make financial sense so maybe I get half credit on this one?
• Actually finish the Bible Study I bought an embarrassingly long time ago - I've actually done two, including the above mentioned one.
• Get pregnant again (God willing) and have a happy, healthy pregnancy- Still a work in progress, but God willing...
• Blog more frequently - Well, this will be my 13th post of the year. In the history of my blog, this is pretty good. The only years that I've had more posts were during the planning of our wedding, our wedding, and some related posts so I think that I'm doing pretty well. 
• Spend more time nurturing relationships - This one is sort of hard to quantify, but I think that I've been able to build closer bonds with some of the people out here, as well as get closer to some of my favorite people from back home. 

So really, the only thing that I haven't been able to accomplish to some degree is getting pregnant. But, I can say that I have made strides to help with this process. Thanks to some awesome friends of mine, I was introduced to the book Taking Charge of your Fertility this summer. From that book I really learned a lot about how the female body works and how everything really has to work together perfectly for conception to occur. I've recently started charting using a great app called Fertility Friend, which has taught me a lot about how my body works. I'm hoping that this will help us to have a baby, but at the very least it has empowered me to be able to speak to a doctor with some authority about how my body functions if we have to get to that point. 

I also met with my own personal nutrition consultant, my sweet friend Kelsey, last weekend. She's incredibly passionate about nutrition, eating Real Foods, and is even studying to become a doula. What a great resource she is (check out her website: www.aderofoods.com)! She took the time to compile her own research about eating well, both in general and for fertility. And while I already do eat fairly well, she was able to speak to the exact nutritional value in different foods that I could add to my diet to enhance my health and wellness. So here are a few things that I have tried this week:

Organic whole fat milk: full-fat dairy is related to an increased likelihood of getting pregnant
Kefir: full of probiotics to help boost immunity and regulate digestion, also full of calcium
Organic butter: healthy fats!
Brussels sprouts: mmm, folic acid and phytonutrients ( I have yet to cook these so I hope I can make them taste awesome! Accepting recipes...)

Today I made and ate my first omelet in my almost 28 years. Eggs are apparently really good for you, despite the fact that I don't particularly care for them. So I added things I do like to make them better. I love love love tomatoes so that was a no-brainer. I also added organic baby spinach (yay iron!) and some cheese. And, as always, Cholula makes most foods better. I wouldn't skip straight to *liking* eggs yet, but they were more tolerable with these additions.

 Oh, and trying to drink ridiculous amounts of water-- good thing I have quart-sized mason jars to use as glasses. And, with my recent health issues, I'm more than willing to try things that can boost my wellness and maybe help me get over this!

Speaking of recent health issues, we still don't know why my skin has been freaking out for the past three and a half months. So far I've treated my crazy rash as ringworm (three times, in three ways). I've also had blood tests for various things, ruling out gout, lupus, rheumatoid arthritis, previous strep infection, vasculitis, and inflammation which can be caused by autoimmune diseases. Or at least that's what Google tells me based on the tests the doctor ordered. Everything was within normal levels.

I also had a biopsy of one of my "spots." This was actually pretty cool because I could actually watch the procedure since it's on the front of my thigh. It was so interesting! It came back benign. No abnormalities of the tissue, so no cancer-causing cells. The pathological diagnosis shows chronic spongiotic dermatitis, which according to Google means acute eczema. (The doctor didn't actually tell me I have eczema, so I'm relying on Google for this.) I have another follow-up appointment on November 27, so hopefully he'll explain this to me more. The weird thing is that I've never had eczema before in my life, and I guess I didn't know that you can randomly get it after almost 28 years. Hopefully the doctor can explain this more to me, cause it's not going away. And there's a lot of it. And it's really ugly. I've had just awful luck with this biopsy site. I've lost three of my four stitches. They've just come untied and so I pulled them out. This scar is going to be gnarly. My skin also had a crazy reaction to wearing a bandaid over the site and four days later, it still looks like I'm wearing a pink bandaid. Why my skin hates me, I don't know.

Enough whining, there are happy things yet to come!

• Next week is Thanksgiving! Yay food and yay time with my sweet husband! And yay for 4 day weekends. And we're spending Thanksgiving with the Kleinhuizens, which is bound to be a hoot.
• After Thanksgiving means Christmas Tree buying time!! I love how Christmas trees make the whole house smell amazing and Christmassy and like joy.
• Then it's my birthday, which was going to suck because my husband will be in Phoenix for Brandon's bachelor party, but now is going to be amazing because I will be in Vacaville and will get to spend my birthday with my family and best friends! And I'm really really hoping to get some San Francisco time in my weekend. It's been too long!
• CHRISTMAS. Do I need to say more?
• New Year's and celebrating 6 years with the love of my life! He's so my favorite.