Gratitude Friday...

I know. I've been a little MIA.

Okay, a lot MIA.

There are reasons. And they are threefold (please picture me giving you these from inside a box. Because Friends is still awesome.):

1. During January and February, I spent about 486 hours on the couch with my laptop working like a crazy person every free second I could find and even some I created with a little too much watching of Elmo. Over. It.

2. Working all that time left a house in complete disarray. There were piles of clean laundry and piles of dirty laundry. I kept waiting for the dust bunnies to do the laundry but it didn't happen. Took me literally a full week to get caught up on laundry and another week to get caught up on cleaning. At which point, the laundry needed to be done again.

3. Not that I exaggerate at all, but this is a literal fact: I was three full scrapbooks behind. And about 80% behind in a fourth one. So once I got caught up on all the housework, I pulled out all my scrapbooking, uploaded a zillion (really almost 200) photos to Shutterfly, made lists of what events needed to be done, and got to work. I have four layouts left in the book I had a whopping 20% done already. That leaves 10 in the next book which includes Pumpkin's first birthday, an entire book dedicated to our beach vacation last summer and then what should be our current scrapbook. It has about 10 layouts already that need to be done.

Those reasons, on top of the usual trying to keep up with a busy toddler, meant the blog needed to chill the heck out for a couple of weeks.

But I did miss it.

While I've been working my way back through our life over the past two years, I got a chance to think a lot. And cried some. Because really, Aubrey Kate is such a blessing as well as so stinkin' cute.

But all those hours I've spent in the last two weeks, have been focused on a hobby.

A hobby.

Oh sure, I do it for good reasons. I enjoy it but I also want to make sure our kids have something to look back on and read the story of our life as a family.

But really, it's still just a frivolous hobby.

I'm not on twitter but my tech junkie husband is. He will tell me about tweets people send out about deciding which restaurant to eat or whether they feel like boots or tennis shoes or where they should go for vacation. Some of them use the hash tag "first world problems."

Ain't that the truth.

Really, when I get right down to it, all of my "problems" are first world issues. Stuff only the wealthy deal with. Although by American standards, we are far from wealthy. But compared to the rest of the world, we are so very rich.

I watch our little girl working her puzzles, stand in front of a relatively stocked refrigerator, agonize over a hobby, stress about catching every spec of dust in our warm, safe house, and all I can think is, thank you precious Lord.

Because while I could do what I feel so many Americans do and compare myself to others and see what I don't have, I feel our journey of gratitude has taught me Jesus wants me to see what I do have. Not compared to anyone else on earth but only to what He gave so I could live. In Him, I have a life. A blessed life. A miracle life. A life where I know without a doubt I am loved. I am enough. All because He lives. His death and resurrection are a miracle. Because God is love. And He is all sufficient for me.

So grateful to be back being grateful...