Gratitude for Lemonade

I was pleased to find out this week that Sharkbytes at My Quality Day nominated me for the Lemonade Award. Apparently that’s for blogs that show gratitude and a wonderful attitude. Quite a boost to my spirits, after this month (more on that later). But.. here are the rules:

--Put the logo on my blog. (oops, still need to do that)
--Nominate at least 10 blogs which show great attitude (umm… I don’t even regularly read ten blogs… the masters of blogosphere will have to accept THREE)
--Link to the nominees within my post (wow, this is sound like a lot of work!)
--Let them know that they received this award by commenting on their blog.
--Share the love and link to this post (done)

So here are my nominees…

--Sharon at What Else Do We Need. Mom extraordinaire… I check daily for her updates, at which time I end up laughing or sighing (while nodding my head and thinking, I've been there!)
--Dustin at Transparent Publicity. (my former student that made me do the photo thing… gotcha back, Dustin!)
--My big brother at Life as we know it. He's quite the photographer--and so is my amazing sister-in-law.
(disclaimer: my other brother and sister-in-law are pretty amazing too, but they don't blog anymore or I would have nominated them too)

So about that gratitude thing… I’m not usually overly serious on this blog, but I do have to say that this January could be looked at as a seriously bummer month. I mean, there has been just WAAAY too much work to do while at work (not to mention the budget cuts forcing lay-offs), the husband has increasing pain in his back, and the weather has been COLD COLD COLD…

But, I’ve tried to stay focused on the good things. Like boys who read.



I'm grateful to Stefan for finding something that Alex loves to read--Tin Tin comic books. Father and son have spent hours (HOURS) laying on the floor together, absorbed in these books.


Alex enjoys the books so much that he even forces his friends to read them with him.


Now THAT'S something to be grateful about.





Then there are these two brothers who just can't stop playing together.



I'm grateful that they have each other, I'm grateful that they play together, and I'm grateful that they will have these memories. Our camera is full of scenes such as this... wrestling, piloting helicopters, missions into outer space...

Now that's not to say that all is rosy. Along with every bit of nice play, there's also the "MOM! Jay ate some of my cereal" and "ASSSICCCSSS! DOP DAT!" and tugs and pushes and shouts and hollers. But you know what? They keep coming back to each other as buddies... over and over and over.


Life is pretty good, isn't it?