Gratitude Friday...

First and foremost, I feel I need to tell y'all about a special mother/daughter moment I shared with Aubrey Kate tonight.  

Earlier today, she actually feel asleep during nap which means she will play in her room until...oh, 10 pm tonight.

For real.

I try to keep her from falling asleep at nap time.  However, she really is much easier to handle when she gets even just an hour of sleep in the afternoon.  The problem lies in waking her up after an hour.  

She's almost comatose.  

Bribery helps.  Chocolate chip cookies, specifically, work like magic.

Anyway, the point of that is to say, I have been known to let her stay up a little past her bedtime on those days when she does take a nap.  Tonight was one of those times.  

Girly stayed up because she wanted to help me vacuum and mop.

If I wanted to make that up, I couldn't.

She has her own little vacuum and she just follows me around with that.  She doesn't have a mop though.  Which clearly needs to be corrected.

(She would also like Candy Land.)

(Tells me about the game every five minutes.)

(Not exaggerating.)

Since she doesn't have her own big kid sized mop, she used mine.  Literally, I sat on the couch while she mopped.  And she did a good job.  

Granted, it's hard to do anything less than "good" when you use triple the amount of cleaning solution than I would have.  

But it was totally worth the extra money to watch her joyfully mopping the floors.

Might never happen again.

I guess that should be the first thing on my list.  I have clean floors and I did very little to make that happen.  It's almost like a vacation.

Wait.  No it's not.

Other than that, this week was kinda up and down for me.

I have been killing it on the treadmill.  Got in almost 10 miles so far and hoping I can hit five miles tomorrow.  Also did 12 miles on the elliptical.

But those miles totally don't count.

Running is back to feeling normal.  And I stinkin' love it.  I feel more me when I run.  Good, bad or ho-hum, I never regret a run.

Did some good praising during those runs too.  I'm that weird girl raising her hands and singing on the treadmill.

Come on.  You know you wanna do it too.

However, I've also had a couple of doctor's appointments this week and those were not as much fun.

Not sure how you handle things, but I have yet to be able to turn over something...anything...to the Lord and then not try to take it back.  Sometimes I do a better job of walking away than others but inevitably, I turn around and at least look at the "junk" I've left behind to make sure God's got it under control.

You know, cause He totally needs my supervision.

That's sort of the way this week has gone with my health "junk."

I absolutely turned it over last week and for the most part, have been on a high of thankfulness since then.  I know God can move this mountain and I feel like with every mile I run, the mountain is crumbling underneath my feet.  

But.

The disappointment of a darn cold this week (bringing my current total of illnesses to eight in the past nine months) and continuing to get very little in the way of answers from doctors did get to me.

Those are the moments when I look back over my should, take a peak at the junk I left with God and say, but, like, could I just hold it for a minute?  Worry over it?  Hug it a little?  

Of course, I realize every time I turn around the mountain grows.  Even just a little.  

So very grateful, my Father understands me.  He gets my weird desire to cuddle up to my issues and make them into a bigger deal than they need be.  Grateful I can continue to come to Him and lay my junk back down.  He'll take me as I am every single time and will always lovingly remind me He of His goodness.  

Praying next week will be better and I won't even take a quick glance back over my shoulder.  

Also praying the cold wraps up it's time in my sinuses and moves along.

And in case you're wondering, Aubrey Kate is currently playing with the doorstop.  It's 9:27 pm.  My money's on 10:15 pm tonight.