{"id":462,"date":"2013-01-05T22:09:00","date_gmt":"2013-01-06T03:09:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.michellebeachy.com\/blog\/saturday-january-5-2013\/"},"modified":"2013-01-05T22:09:00","modified_gmt":"2013-01-06T03:09:00","slug":"saturday-january-5-2013","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.michellebeachy.com\/blog\/saturday-january-5-2013\/","title":{"rendered":"Saturday January 5, 2013"},"content":{"rendered":"

I hit the keyboard, fully planning to write “random” in the title bar until I noticed that was exact title of my next to last post.  Really?  I am THAT creative?  Amazing.  <\/p>\n

Does anyone else feel as though they just got lurched forward in time?  December was a month long celebration it seemed and for once, I thought I was really on top of the annual wind down and new year beginning in my head.  Then I got walloped with a GI bug this week that would have left me unconscious on the bathroom floor at 3 AM had David not held onto me before I collapsed and dragged me out onto the floor of the bedroom until enough cold water woke me.  The boys and I are still touch and go … mostly go \"stunned\" … and it’s left my brain loopy and slow and thinking we’re back in 2012.  In an effort to clear my head, I’m trying to clear my desk.  Clean desk = clear thought processes.  Unquestionable correlation, right?<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

December was filled with<\/p>\n

winter weather<\/span><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

friends<\/span><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

cozy moments<\/span><\/p>\n

\"\"
<\/span><\/p>\n

and <\/p>\n

hot chocolate.<\/span><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

I’d be just fine with thinking about pink tulips starting tomorrow.  According to the weather forecast, there’s a lot more ice-skating, steel cut oats drizzled with maple syrup and loaded with blueberries, and goosebumps predicted.  I’m still trying to figure out exactly how to stay warm at Wednesday night vespers when it’s 26 degrees out and we’re sitting on split logs with ice on them.  Leggings? Check. Layers and layers? Check. Scarf? Check. Hat? Check. Boots? Check. Coffee? Check. Suggestions? ______________<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

But back to December.  <\/p>\n

**********************<\/p>\n

Really quick.  Close your eyes and name five close friends.  People you consider to be someone you could call on for support if you needed it.  Got it? Go! Let me guess, you had that done in about 3.7 seconds and could have given me another five in a heartbeat.  Do you realize what an enormous gift this is?  Sometimes I take my friends way too much for granted until I realize not everyone is so blessed.  One night as I was telling someone we have friends coming in for the weekend she said, “So does your church try to send someone up to see you guys like one weekend a month?”  I was confused … until I realized how blessed we’d been with visits from friends since we’re here.  “No,” I said, “Only one family was from our church.  We just have a lot of friends.”  Those words just don’t leave me.  “We just have a lot of friends.”  On days I’m lonely and feeling far away, they’re like a hug, reminding me of how blessed I am.  Other days, they echo against the words of a camper’s mom when David asked her if she has anyone she can go to for support.  “Yes,” she said.  “I’m sure *Jim and Susan would help me out if I ever needed anything.”  Two names.  One couple.  Suddenly the “s” in friends goes echoing against the house walls and I feel selfish.  Why have we been given so much when some have been given so little?<\/p>\n

December is a month for giving gifts.  I love finding the perfect gift for someone, even if on years like this one it means shopping until almost the very last minute because I could not think of the right thing.  This month, perhaps because there were more days of homesickness for old friends …. perhaps because I’ve come face to face with people who have so few friends, I’ve been thinking more about the gift of friendship.  It’s one of the few gifts we get to give to someone all year long.  And {most of the time} it’s one of the best received and most cherished gifts.  But somehow we forget just how priceless the gift of a true friend really is.<\/p>\n

*names changed<\/p>\n

***********************<\/p>\n

Excitement was running high at our house because Ryan and Tury were coming!  Tury is such a good friend of mine and one of those people I miss terribly since we’ve moved.  She’d come over after work, fix herself a glass of tea, and we’d talk til she or I had to go.  She was like the boys’ aunt really, and took care of them often when I needed a sitter.  Now she’s just too far away to do any of it, but it was so much fun to have them here for a weekend and instead of only being together for a few hours!  Adam and Liam spent the night before they came getting little notes ready for their bed.  We had a blast just being together, going to see the Nutcracker, and playing games.  You can’t possibly know, until you move away, how special it is to have guests from home!<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

\"\"  \"\"<\/p>\n

\"\"  <\/p>\n

\"\"  \"\" <\/p>\n

 \"\"<\/p>\n

\"\" <\/p>\n

 \"\"<\/p>\n

**************************<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

That same week I got to hang out with some Lancaster friends thanks to David needing to make a road trip to PA!  An hour with Cindy at her kitchen table, sipping tea and discussing boys (funny how that sounds different when you’re a mom then it did when you were sixteen), and dreams, and life… a fantastic lunch in Thelma’s cozy house with Rachel and Andrea …. meeting the adorable new babies and watching the drama of their personal introductions … <\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Bentley: “Well, hello there, Miss Kate.”<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

“My goodness, you’re so cute, I just can’t get enough of you!”<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

“Oh, no.  I wonder what I did wrong?”<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

“This is totally overwhelming.”<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

“OH, wait!  There’s another cute chic … let me introduce myself to her”<\/p>\n

I could do that day all over again!<\/p>\n

*****************<\/p>\n

And then there were all the camp Christmas activities … <\/p>\n

a morning spent making Christmas cookies<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

an evening spent caroling for the neighbors<\/p>\n

\"\" \"\"<\/p>\n

a Christmas party with a traditional meal the night before the boys left for homevisit<\/p>\n

a Christmas party for all the staff the next morning with a handmade craft exchange<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Honestly, I think you could squeak by without any family traditions and celebrate Christmas well around here. \"winky\"  By the time we’d had our own little family Christmas Day and were ready to head to Virginia to celebrate the actual day, the boys were convinced it had already happened.  “I’m glad we live in Maryland because we already had Christmas,” Liam said enroute to Grammie’s house.  He still doesn’t get it.  And we have another year to figure out whether to squeeze in a cookie making day of our own sometime.<\/p>\n

********************************<\/p>\n

And now a few favorite quotes I’ve stumbled across in the past month.<\/p>\n

“Forgiveness, for the most part, is something you do and not something you feel.  It is an act of the will, not the emotions.” — Kevin Leman in his book, Born to Win<\/span><\/p>\n


<\/span>“The most important thing she’d learned through the years was that there’s no way to be a perfect mother and a million ways to be a good one. — Jill Churchill<\/p>\n

*********************************<\/p>\n

Come to think of it, my desk isn’t looking any better than it did.  How was this supposed to work again?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I hit the keyboard, fully planning to write “random” in the title bar until I noticed that was exact title of my next to last post.  Really?  I am THAT… <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-462","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p39ynQ-7s","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.michellebeachy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/462","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.michellebeachy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.michellebeachy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.michellebeachy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.michellebeachy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=462"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.michellebeachy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/462\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.michellebeachy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=462"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.michellebeachy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=462"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.michellebeachy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=462"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}