I remembered today

...that the title of my blog is 'celebrate the ordinary'. This theme stems from a great quote I found in the book "Celebration! Ten Principles of More Joyous Living" by Jaroldeen Edwards.

"Celebration is the conscious decision to live our lives with joy. In the midst of turmoil, pain, and adversity, in bad times and good, joy is the great companion our Heavenly Father intended us to have. To feel joy, however, requires a decision on our part—a chosen approach to life, a chosen attitude, a constant awareness. This decision is the necessary beginning to recognizing, feeling, and developing the joy with which Heavenly Father has filled our creation.

To live with celebration we must begin with an absolute and personal conviction that we have the ability to change our lives in small, meaningful ways. We must feel that we can learn better patterns of thinking, feeling, and doing that will allow us—wherever we are individually at this moment—to feel better, accomplish more, and rise higher."

Anyhoo... because I remembered today the importance of this principle in my life so I don't Boo-Hoo too much, I thought I'd list the ordinary funnies from our house today:

1. When we were asking Hannah if she wanted to attend BYU or even frigid cold BYU-I, she was like, "I don't know." So we asked where she might want to go to college. She said, "I want to go to college in Mexico." Alrighty then!

2. Abe saying "I don't like Sloppy you." (probably had to hear it for yourself, but he was saying he didn't like sloppy joes).

3. The Kazoo concert in the car on the way to pick up Jimmy from work. The kids traded off playing a song on the kazoo. Instead of initially irritating me, I found it rather humorous. Who knew that Abe could play the kazoo so well? The boy has musical talent. (Oh - and Hannah wearing that railroad engineer hat upside down from my 4th grade Idaho History program was too random and funny.)

4. Seeing the stars on my drive home from Costco. For some reason I feel like I never see the stars. I used to spend hours and hours watching the stars as a teenager and seeing Orion reminded me how much I love the night sky and taking time to enjoy nature.

5. Our Christmas tree made my heart happy tonight. I came out from taking a nice bath and all the lights were out except the tree. The Christmas Season is sweet.

6. The kids doing a surprisingly great job of cleaning up all the messes they made all day long by playing in every room in the house. We had sleeping bags, musical instruments, cowboy gear with stick horses, cars, doll houses, etc. all over the place.

7. Jimmy's hugs!

8. My funny decision to walk on the treadmill. My legs were aching so I decided to get myself ready and exercise. I think it took me longer to get ready than it did to actually exercise (including the long minute it took to get off the floor from putting my shoes on). I started at 3 mph and it was too fast for my weighted-down hips. So I ended up at 2.5 mph which was creeping slow. After 15 minutes of my pleasant stroll, I decided to take a break. An extra 30 lbs sure does make a difference when attempting exercise.

9. The hope and excitement of hiking in Utah. I decided that as part of my new get-in-shape plan after recovery and settling-in once in Utah, I will set the goal to hike Mt. Timp at the end of the summer with Jimmy. I will have to be in much better shape to make it to the top. But I love hiking so we'll see if I can push myself to work hard enough to hike that mountain.

10. Abe's peanut butter and honey sandwich shaped just like the grand state of Idaho after 5 minutes of munching. Abe keeps telling me he wants to go to "Hidaho". We'll get there buddy - we'll get there yet!