Thundersnow

It’s a perfect snow day. It’s all gloomy and dark outside, so my sister and I are keeping warm and taking advantage of our inability to go to work. I made a fabulous breakfast and a whole pot of coffee. I’ve never heard of thundersnow, but that’s what the weather man is predicting. Your guess is as good as mine.

I got some wedding stuff done today. I feel accomplished! You see, I am no event planner. Never have been. I just say: Here, this is pretty, somebody make this. Most of the time my mom and sister’s questions are answered with: I don’t care, whatever you think looks pretty. :) Just get me down the aisle, let me wear the pretty dress and the ring, and take me on a fabulous trip…please and thank you.

My mom has worked countless hours on my wedding, at my request of course. She is single handedly addressing and mailing all of my invitations. She is making my wedding dress (which is fabulous I must say). She is making my going away dress. She’s making her MOB dress. She’s making my sister’s MOH dress. No, she is not making a dress for my dad. Mom has worked and reworked, and worked and reworked the reception menu. She has daily been watching for certain items to go on sale for this and that to do with the wedding. She researched and wrote all the information for the bridesmaids’ dresses.

And all of this she has done, as she says, as a labor of love for me and my amazing fiancé.

She deals with every nervous breakdown I have with grace and encouragement. She keeps me going. She always tells me that “Everything will be fine, sweetie.” And she’s always right. She is quite possibly the most amazing woman I know. I can’t imagine doing this whole wedding thing without her.

And that’s when I do start imagining.

A dear friend of mine recently loss his precious mother-in-law to be. He and his beautiful fiancée are excitedly awaiting their fall wedding, and in the midst of their excitement, their planning, their happiness, tragedy snuck in.

It’s simple really, the purpose of this post. It’s reminder to be thankful .

My mom frequently reminds me, “Sweetie, tomorrow is not promised to us.” And it’s true. Who knows what tomorrow holds? When tragedy touches my life, I am easily reminded of all the things I should have done. All the compliments I should have paid. All the hugs I should have given. Should have.

I know we can’t live in the past, we have to move on with our lives and keep on keepin’ on. But we should never allow a tragedy to not affect us. Every situation that comes our way is a test, an obstacle that we must overcome and we must allow it to change us as a person. We must accept that change, embrace it. We must allow tragedy, betrayal, emotion hurt and painful decisions to bring about a change in our make up. Bitterness is not an option. The change that we allow to take hold of us must always be positive.

Bitterness is not an option. Betterness, however, is the best option. Choose to be better. Choose to be thankful. Choose to give out all those hugs, all those compliments; all those things you should do, do them. Choose to be better.

The snow is still falling, pouring really. The sky is still gloomy. The sun is way far above all of these clouds, but it’s still there, waiting to come out again and shower us in light and warmth.

Find your sunshine today and remember to be thankful, it might just change your life. :)

Enjoy the snow day! :)

Internet Failure

I fail at Internet consistency.

I have come to realize this fact about myself and how I have been an Internet failure for the majority of my life.

I loath email. I stopped using email as a tool of conversation many, many years ago and I now primarily use it to communicate with my parents who are often in different time zones, or overseas. It’s free, it’s fast, and it’s easy. And terrible! You can NEVER tell how a person is saying whatever it is they are saying. You are left to your own interpretation, which as we all know, has failed each of us a time or two, or a million.

When Myspace took over for AOL Instant Messenger, or MSN Messenger, I was already over the whole IM thing. Again it worked for overseas communication, but when I moved back to the states I was pretty much finished with it. Myspace ruled for oh, a year.

And then came Facebook, one of my current fancies. I enjoy it for many reasons, the number one being I love pictures and I enjoy viewing other peoples’ photos. But then came the Project 365, a daily photo commitment for one year. Fail.

And the as the age of blogging is upon us I have attempted that. Fail. Again. But I have determined that I would like to continue this for the moment and see how long it lasts. I get inspired every once in awhile and I do enjoy releasing some of that inspiration to the world through my blog.

And, as my life is about undergo some seriously life changing moments I thought now would be a good time to start typing away again.

So to update you, my few readers, I have now been engaged for 4 months! You can read the entire story of our engagement on my mom's blog and also at our wedding website. It was the most magical day of my life to date. Now I wear this pretty rock on my finger and I get stressed out if people ask me too many questions about my wedding. But in general, I am so excited about that perfect day coming up in just 9 and a half weeks. I can’t wait! But mostly I just can’t wait to be married and on the plane headed to get on our cruise ship.

I have serious cabin fever with all this winter stuff going on. We are now in the middle of the biggest winter storm in Midwest history apparently. Not cool, Mother Nature. Bring on the spring please!

Well, my inspiration has run out for this post. Be back later to share more about my life changing moments as an engaged/event planning/stressed out/ person. :)