and at the end of the day, there is joy...

We inherited a fan when mom passed away. It was new, in the box, never taken out. We found it wedged in between the bed and a shelf. We debated about selling it, but as you technically can never have too many fans, we kept it upstairs until it was time to use it.

Last summer summer, the time came. 

My plan was to put the fan in the kitchen, which gets rather warm (even for me) when we attempt to cook most anything in the summer. It was a two-tiered fan, one on top of the other, and the fans themselves could be moved up or down. I figured, if I put it by the vent, it would catch the cold air and circulate it around, hopefully making the kitchen a bit more bearable in the summer. 

I took the fan out, and found it required the tiniest amount of assembly – I had to put the feet on the bottom part of the fan. No biggie. The fan was assembled that evening, and put off to the side. And I was pretty darn proud of myself for actually putting the feet on. Go me. 

The next day, I go to move the fan,…

I’m one of those people that make goals for the new year. Resolutions sort of has a bad rap, so I call them goals.
I know I’m not the only one out there.
However, I do wonder if I’m the only one out there who is thoroughly sick and tired of hearing that “80% of people ditch their goals by Feb”, or something like that. Like seriously, how many times is someone going to hear that and finally say, well, guess I’m gonna fail anyways, might as well get a head start and fail now!
Annoying.
Anyway…I’m working on my goals. January is almost over, and I’m not entirely sure if I’m going to reach said goals.
There are two ways to look at this.
First – I’ve failed!!!! I shall ditch all future goals, wallow in self pity, and wait until 2020. If I can’t be perfect, might as well not even try!!!
Since I’m generally a positive person, I’m choosing to look at my “failures” a little differently. In the process, I’ll share some of my goals.
I have a Fitbit, so some of my goals are tied to that…

We got new family members in December, and I haven’t properly introduced them! The New Year has had me off and running, and while I have been working on other writing projects, I haven’t had a chance to work on blog posts. And I find that when I do, I prefer to write them offline, and then print them later. I don’t enjoy the writing as much when I know I’ll be pushing the “publish” button in just a few minutes. Only took me years to figure that out, ha!
Anyways, the pets! My son got a ball python, named Spot! It took a while to convince the Hubby, but once he did, then the path was cleared to bring her home for Christmas. My daughter got a beautiful blue parakeet named Captain Jack Sparrow. I call him Jacky for short. He really is a pretty bird!
The kids got all the stuff for the animals on Christmas day, and then we went and got them the day after Christmas. We had to visit two different pet stores before we found Jacky, and two more pet stores after that to find Spot!
Ja…

I really wanted to post something tonight, but I sort of ran out of words (happens often with introverts). Therefore, here is an older (short!) post that I wrote, but never published, and I thought it was a good reminder for January. We could all use some defiant hope. :-) Especially heading into a new year.

The other day I ran across a simple quote on a t-shirt that said defiant hope. And I really liked that quote, because sometimes that is what hope is – very, very defiant. You have to have hope even when you don’t feel like it and it takes too much energy. You have to have hope when all you see is darkness and you feel like you are being buried alive. Hope is defiant in the face of adversity, depression, negativity, bad days/weeks/years, illness, poverty, crushed dreams and past broken promises. Hope is defiant in the face of shame, fear, lies, brokenness and darkness. Having defiant hope is hard sometimes. Not as easy as simple hope sounds. Do your best to cultivate it, grow it, an…

This weekend was a pretty good weekend.

Friday night we got snow - not a lot, but just enough to play in, and it was wet, which means good, packing snow. Saturday afternoon, the kids played in it for hours, and built their most creative snowman yet. I seriously need to post pics, but they are still on my phone, and I'm too lazy to download them right now.

I'm sure they will make a blog appearance later.

At church, my sons new pet snake, Spot, was the talk of potluck. I find people ask an equal amount of questions whether or not they like snakes. Everyone is curious, and both my son and I are happy to talk about our new family member. She is doing well, by the way. She ate once again Friday night (her feeding time), and we held her tonight. She is the most docile snake, she sits there for a while, then slowly branches out and explores. She never threatens. I held her for a bit, and she made her way part way up my arm. Again, pics are in my phone. I'll post them later.

There…

I just spent about three hours in the kitchen.
   First, I tried out my new cast iron griddle. Our stove we had to buy before Thanksgiving as a fifth center burner, and we were itching to try it. Tonight was the night! The griddle isn't large, and I had to break out my electric one, but I'm happy with the cast iron one. I didn't cook great on it, but I'm assuming there is a learning curve. At least for me, anyways. We made pancakes.
   Then, it was baking for the weekend. We have potluck at church, and there was a dessert I wanted to try, so I made a chocolate turtle cake, and then oatmeal cookie bars (which I had forgot I had made before - oh well!). Then, a batch of cookies for the womens ministry meeting on Sunday.
   Dude. That was a lot of baking.
   And I got to admit, its an awesome feeling of accomplishment! Oh yeah!
   Afterwards, I cleaned the kitchen and picked up the house, and now I'm chilling in front of my computer resting my feet, thinking that I…