Today is Beautiful

One day earlier this week I was walking back from class, and there was a guy behind me who just seemed so HAPPY. He spoke to everybody he passed, and then he said, "Today is a beautiful day. I'm gonna enjoy this day." Then he looked at me and said "How 'bout you?" So of course I said I would, because who would say no? But then I realized that I had not once that day taken time to think about how gorgeous of a day God had given us. The weather had FINALLY cooled off a little bit, the sun was shining, and it really was a beautiful day.

I want to be like that guy. I want to be thankful for all the blessings I do have in my life instead of harping on the little things that aren't going my way.

I got this email from my dad this morning that reminded me of how I felt that day. I don't usually send forwards, but I wanted to share this one, so here it is:

"A blind boy sat on the steps of a building with a hat by his feet. He held up a sign which said: "I am blind, please help." There were only a few coins in the hat.
A man was walking by. He took a few coins from his pocket and dropped them into the hat. He then took the sign, turned it around, and wrote some words. He put the sign back so that everyone who walked by would see the new words.
Soon the hat began to fill up. A lot more people were giving money to the blind boy. That afternoon the man who had changed the sign came to see how things were. The boy recognized his footsteps and asked, "Were you the one who changed my sign this morning? What did you write?"

The man said, "I only wrote the truth. I said what you said but in a different way." I wrote: "Today is a beautiful day but I cannot see it."
Both signs told people that the boy was blind. But the first sign simply said the boy was blind. The second sign told people that they were so lucky that they were not blind. Should we be surprised that the second sign was more effective?

Moral of the Story:

Be thankful for what you have.. Be creative. Be innovative. Think differently and positively. When life gives you a 100 reasons to cry, show life that you have 1000 reasons to smile. Face your past without regret. Handle your present with confidence. Prepare for the future without fear. Keep the faith and drop the fear.
The most beautiful thing is to see a person smiling…
And even more beautiful, is knowing that you are the reason behind it!!!

If you appreciate this message, please share. You may touch someones heart today and forever. Enjoy your weekend with a heart of gratitude...

"Faith is not about everything turning out OK; Faith is about being OK no matter how things turn out."

OWWW

I am HURTING today. Lee and I are on Day 3 of P90X, and I am some kinda sore! We started the P90X on Monday night, then we got up early yesterday morning and did Day 2, and we were SUPPOSED to get up before work and school this morning for Day 3, but when my alarm went off I could BARELY move. I'm not hurting as bad right now as I was last night though. Last night I didn't want to move. I parked myself on the couch and read a book and tried to move as little as possible. It was hard to not move, though, when you have two spoiled dogs who have to be on the couch with you all the time, but jump down any time they hear ANY noise, then want to be picked back up. (They CAN jump onto the couch, they just don't know it...that's probably for the best so I can at least kind of control when they're up there and when they're not)

So anyway, my arms, back, and now legs are killing me AND it's the first day back at school for the fall, so I'm walking around campus with a backpack (which obviously is not good when your back hurts...at least I don't have any books to carry around yet!). I told Lee that if we are going to deal with being this sore, we HAVE to finish this program, and not quit a month into it. I'm not exactly following the meal plan, but I do feel like if we stick with this we'll get some really good results.

To make myself just a little more pitiful, I had to go get a shot and a TB test today :( I don't do well with needles at all, so I was really dreading it, but ready to get it over with. This was my third attempt to get all this done...third time's a charm :) The first time I went to health center on campus the line was almost out the door, so I left, thinking I could just get it done at the walk-in clinic close to my house. So I went there yesterday to find out that they could do the TB test but not the other shot I needed. So this morning after my first class I went back to the health center. I tried to make an appointment for this morning so I hopefully wouldn't have to wait so long, but they said that because they had not treated me there before that I could only come in as a walk-in. That just didn't make any sense to me, but whatever. The line wasn't nearly as long today, and I was only in there for about half an hour. And it didn't hurt too bad. I've had the TB test before so I knew it wouldn't be bad, but I wasn't sure about the meningitis, so I was a little worried. I told the nurse about my issues with needles and she did a good job distracting me so I wouldn't get all nervous and forget to breathe or anything (yes, that has happened to me before!). And now I've got an awesome band-aid with the Tasmanian Devil on it where I got my shot :)

Funny Little Story

I had a job over the summer that I had to quit last week because it didn't work with my school schedule. It was a pretty well-known retail chain that sells soap and lotion and stuff like that. I enjoyed the job and the people that I got to work with, and it seems like a really good company, so I hate that I had to quit, but I just couldn't make it work.

But anyway, back to the story. My last night there was last week, and we had gotten some new Halloween themed hand sanitizers. A girl came in with what I'm assuming is her mother (it could be her aunt, friend, whatever, but for the purposes of my story we'll go with mother) and they were looking at the hand sanitizers. I had not seen the new Halloween ones yet so I was looking at them with them, and we were smelling them and showing each other the different ones. The mother saw one called "Vampire Blood" and showed it to me and her daughter. The daughter looked at me as serious as could be and said, "Is that really what vampire blood smells like?"

How do you respond to that?? I just stood there for a second trying to figure out what to say when the mother laughed and reminded her that vampires aren't real. I took that as my cue to walk away and let them shop around on my own (and so I could turn around and get a little laugh out of my system)

I'm glad I was able to get a funny little memory for my last night there!

Lee's consultant

Lee's working from home today and look who's helping him out:

She has no idea she's not a person!

The Boys of Fall

I think I've mentioned a time or two (or seven or eight!) how much I love football, especially The University of Alabama football. I've been counting down to football season for at least two months now (and we still have one long month left!). A few weeks ago when I thought I couldn't be any more ready for football season, I heard this song. Oh man. Then the video came out earlier this week. It brought tears to my eyes. It's "The Boys of Fall," by Kenny Chesney. If you haven't heard it or seen the video, here it is (it's kinda long but so good!):

{Here's the youtube link}

(As an Alabama fan, I was watching for Alabama clips the whole time and was getting a little upset because I never saw any, but the video goes out pretty dang strong!)

And since I'm on youtube, I wanted to post a couple of Bama football videos I've come across in the past couple of weeks.

This one is a hype video to get everybody pumped for this season:

{youtube link}

And this one is supposedly the new intro video they're going to show in the stadium:

{youtube link}

Win or lose, I love the Tide! Only about a month until the season starts (Alabama's first game is two days after my birthday, and college football actually starts on my birthday! I get the best birthday present every year!) I'm going to continue my countdown now...

What a week!

It's been a pretty busy couple of weeks! These summer classes are KILLING me! Right now I'm taking an online math class (I started that one in June), a regular math class (a five week summer class) and last week I had a one-week Intro to Education class. Even though that class was over last week, I still had two papers due for it this week. When I say papers, I mean one of them was just 3-5 paragraphs and the other was a 3-page research paper, so they didn't have to be long or anything, but still. And I had a math test on Wednesday in the middle of my papers being due. Next week I have a test on Tuesday and then two finals on Thursday. Then I'm done with summer classes! Whew! I'll get a break for ALMOST a week then fall classes start. I'm excited about fall classes because they actually pertain to my major and they're not just deficiencies I didn't take my first time around.

So my plans for today are to get to everything I didn't get to do this week. I want to get this house clean, pull weeds in the yard, get some homework done and go to the grocery store. We'll see how much of that I actually do get done! My mom is in town keeping Riley since Sunny had to go back to work yesterday (he doesn't start at daycare until Monday) so she's going to come stay with us when Sunny gets home from work today :) Tomorrow I have a baby shower to go to and I have to work a little bit on Sunday, so I guess I should really try to be productive today!