Hi everybody!  I know it’s been forever since I last posted anything, but to be honest haven’t been in the blogging mood lately and took a break.  But I can assure you we have been trucking along.  Nola is learning new vocabulary daily, and well, she’s pretty much a little adult person.  A lot of that entails repeating what we say and not really knowing what she’s talking about, but lets face it that’s most adults these days as well.

I finally read the book, Fault In our Stars.  For anyone out there who doesn’t know (probably nobody because it’s a pretty popular book and movie) it’s a story about two teenagers who have terminal cancer.  Weirdly I didn’t connect emotionally to the romantic relationship in the book, but what got me was the parent’s dealing with their kid’s sickness.  Let’s just say I hugged and kiss my girl 100’s more each day while reading this book than the normal quota because I’m so thankful for her health.  To have healthy kid’s is something I know I take for granted and reading that book gave me that humble moment in time to stop and be grateful for that.

Awhile back I read this excerpt from A Cup of Jo that had a huge impact on me.  I couldn’t stop thinking about it and wanted to share it with all of you:

I actually attack the concept of happiness. The idea that—I don’t mind people being happy—but the idea that everything we do is part of the pursuit of happiness seems to me a really dangerous idea and has led to a contemporary disease in Western society, which is fear of sadness. It’s a really odd thing that we’re now seeing people saying “write down three things that made you happy today before you go to sleep” and “cheer up” and “happiness is our birthright” and so on. We’re kind of teaching our kids that happiness is the default position. It’s rubbish. Wholeness is what we ought to be striving for and part of that is sadness, disappointment, frustration, failure; all of those things which make us who we are. Happiness and victory and fulfillment are nice little things that also happen to us, but they don’t teach us much. Everyone says we grow through pain and then as soon as they experience pain they say, “Quick! Move on! Cheer up!” I’d like just for a year to have a moratorium on the word “happiness” and to replace it with the word “wholeness.” Ask yourself, “Is this contributing to my wholeness?” and if you’re having a bad day, it is.

—Hugh MacKay, author of The Good Life

Isn’t that pretty great?!  It’s something I always want to keep in mind on how I raise our kid.  This day in age our kid’s are pretty spoiled and we often give them this entitlement.  There are so many things I pray my kid will become, but I’m on board with this.  I want push and raise her to be a ‘whole’ individual much more than just a happy person because I believe this will make her so much more of an amazing person.

And since I haven’t done a blog in forever I couldn’t do one without a photo 🙂

memorial day at the pulgas water temple