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Teaching my daughter

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Viewing our Small World through a child's eyes

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My baby girl enjoying her books

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Making my morning coffee

100 Days Of Happiness

I recently read an update from a friend on Facebook whose husband passed away a few months back after a battle with cancer.  She isn't even 30 yet, with two small girls, and has to be one of the strongest people I've had the honor of knowing.  A month or so ago she started posted about doing a "challenge" called 100 Days of Happiness.  The purpose of this is to find one thing, just one thing, in your life each day that makes you happy and take a picture of it.  Then take that picture and share it in the amazing world of technology.  I'm going to do this on my blog.

Some days I feel so defeated and tired that I forget how many things throughout the day have made me happy.  I want to start having a more positive outlook on life because it's such a wonderful gift.  And I'm going to start by taking one picture at a time for 100 days!

Hmmm...

This morning did not start out well at our house.  One too many pee spots found in our new house put me over the edge.  Finding out that due to those pee spots we may need to get all of our hardwood floors refinished, yep, further over the edge.  

Then this evening I was reading over posts on Facebook and saw one from a mother of four beautiful girls that I had the pleasure of teaching.  She has breast cancer...again.  Not for the second time, but for the third.  I had her two oldest daughters in first grade a few years before I stopped teaching.  I had her second oldest daughter in my class when she found she had cancer the first time.  She was supposed to come volunteer in my room that day and her daughter came to school and told me, "my mom can't come in today, she has cancer."  I can't imagine how she felt all those years ago and I really can't imagine the anger she felt when she found out this news a few days ago.  

Sure made my anger about some pee spots seem very, very petty.  

Turning Over a New Leaf

Almost 3 weeks ago, we moved into our new home.  I love our new house.  It's amazing to me how simply living in a new place can change my thoughts throughout the day.

I loved our old house too.  It was the first home that Art & I lived in together.  It's the home we brought home both of our girls to after they were born.  So many good memories happened in that house.  Painting the half finished walls with Art, decorating our first child's room, countless celebrations, finishing the basement, watching our girls take their first steps.

But there were also many hard memories.  Sometimes I found myself standing in certain spots of that home and replaying events in my mind.  Getting the phone call that my grandmother had passed, the heartbreak of two miscarriages within those walls, coming home to a living room of loved ones after receiving the news of our unborn baby's heart, the spot that a feeding pump and oxygen tank used to sit.  So many spots in that home that were hard to stand in and remember.

The good memories will always be in my mind no matter where we live.  The hard memories will too, but now I don't have a daily reminder of them.  For whatever reason, I've hardly thought about Mia's heart condition lately.  Partially because she is doing fantastic, but I think it also has to do with a change of scenery.  A "new start" if you will.  I don't know if it's the new, literal, view that I have each day now, or if it's a new view that I've taken on within me, but it feels good.

It feels good to have the unknown be a little more controllable and not so scary.  I am a firm believer that everything in life happens for a reason.  The good and the bad.  Those memories will never be forgotten, no matter where we reside.