November 22

Happy Thanksgiving! Today I am grateful for so many blessings. I am so grateful that I am a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and that I believe in a living prophet and continuing revelation.  I'm grateful for eternal families and the opportunity to spend time with some of them today.  I'm grateful for the opportunity to be in Arizona with my brother's family today and to be able to celebrate Thanksgiving with them.  The kids want to list all the things they are thankful for and it can go on and on.  I love it.  I'm so grateful that I live in this free country and that I have the opportunity to vote and make my voice heard.  I'm so grateful for the blessing of prayer and for the support I feel from my Heavenly Father.  I'm so grateful for the opportunity to have this day of gratitude to help me focus on how many blessings I really have.

November 21

Today I am grateful that we had a safe drive to Arizona.

November 20

Today I am grateful for paid vacation.  Mom and Dad and I are leaving tomorrow to go to Arizona to spend Thanksgiving with Todd and Nicole and I get paid to be gone.  Kind of great!  Next weekend I get to go to Idaho for my friend Nicole's baby's blessing and since their church is so early I wanted to go up Saturday and try to get in a few temple sessions.  Again I get paid to be gone.  I've worked hard to get to this point where I have so much vacation to look forward to and I'm grateful.

November 19

Today I am thankful that I work at a place that is run by people who work together to solve problems and figure things out. You may have heard about Wonder bread closing down. The people at our corporate office had already been in negotiation with a different company to supply our buns and so with some careful planning on their part we should be able to be into the new product without any hiccups in our business. There has been a run on other bakeries to provide buns for all the food places and they are having to turn people away.  I'm happy that our corporate people make my job easy.  

November 18

Today I am grateful for my Savior Jesus Christ.  Today in Sacrament Meeting we had a high council speaker who spoke in depth about Jesus Christ as our advocate with the Father and he quoted 1 Nephi 19:9.  It reads: "And the world, because of their iniquity, shall judge him to be a thing of naught; wherefore they scourge him, and he suffereth it; and they smite him and he suffereth it.  Yea, they spit upon him, and he suffereth it, because of his loving kindness and his long-suffering towards the children of men."  He said he's not grateful that Christ was scourged, smitten, or spit upon, but he was grateful that Christ suffered it because it was because of His suffering that He is able to succor us.  He said, "As Christ ministered on the earth he represented the Father and did his will.  Now that His mission is finished, He was able to ascend to heaven to represent us to the Father.  Jesus Christ is fighting for all of us to get to come home because of His suffering.  He is pleading my case in front of Heavenly Father and now my role is to choose the right and keep the commandments.  How grateful I am that He finished His mission.  How grateful I am that He loves me.  How grateful I am for his long-suffering and loving kindness.  I make too many mistakes over and over and I'm grateful that He continues to fight for me.  I'm grateful that He wants me to come home.  I'm grateful for the opportunity to finish my mission and then to be able to return Home.

November 17

Today I am grateful for a clean kitchen.  Keeping my kitchen clean is so hard for me.  I don't really know why but I let the dishes get stacked up for days and then I (and my Dawn) have to work harder to get the dried up food off.  Why do I not just clean up when I'm done??  Someday I will learn to figure that out, but in the meantime, it only took me about 20 minutes tonight to make it pretty, so feeling pretty good about it!!

November 16

Today I am grateful for my job.  I am so blessed to have a good paying job, that enables me to have the life I do.  I can afford to pay all of my bills and live in a pretty nice apartment, and eat every day.  In today's economy that's a really nice blessing.

November 15

Today I am grateful for sleep.  Nuff said...

November 14

Today I am grateful for nature.  This morning I went out with Todd and Nicole and Andrew and Rory and my mom and the dog and we went for a walk around the Jordan River parkway where my mom lives.  There was still snow on the ground, but because the snow came so suddenly there were still leaves on the ground as well.  There were ducks in one pond, but ice in another.  It was like we had entered a place where fall and winter collided and were trying to one up each other.  It was fun to watch the kids running around and throwing snow balls at the ice and chasing the ducks back into the pond after they fed them some bread.  I'm happy that I live in a place that has all of the seasons and I'm grateful for the time to go out and appreciate God's beautiful creations.

November 13

Today I'm grateful for sunshine.  We had the funeral for my grandpa today and we were a little worried that it would be a miserable day based on the fact that we got a lot of snow last weekend.  As we came out of the church to go to the cemetery the sun was bright in the sky.  We got there and it wasn't too cold and we were able to enjoy the graveside ceremony.  It was a really nice day.

November 12

Today I am grateful for extended family.  The viewing for my grandpa was tonight and a lot of my cousins and my mom's cousins were there.  It was a great opportunity to meet together and visit and just catch up.

November 11

Today I am grateful for music and the power it is in my life. I have the opportunity of being the choir director in my ward and as we learn the Christmas music that I got to choose it makes me happy. Today also was our Primary program and I just love hearing the kids bear their simple testimonies through music and word. I also get a great deal of inspiration from hymns and other songs and I'm grateful for the gift of music in my life.

November 10

Today I am grateful for weekends!!!!!  It's been a seriously long week.  When I made the decision to go to the temple everyday this week, it didn't occur to me how difficult that would be.  I've been so blessed to be able to spend a few hours of the last five days in the temple, but it's hard work to get dressed up and drive up and rearrange my schedule to make it work.  Today as I sat for an extra long time in the Celestial Room, because I had "nothing better to do" I was thinking about how drained I am.  Almost immediately the thought came into my head "I never said it would be easy, I only said it would be worth it."  I smiled to myself, as tears came to my eyes, because it has been 100% worth it.  It's the best gift I could have given myself.  Now that I'm done, I am going to curl up on my couch under my new blanket and just enjoy the nothingness for a minute, because that's about all I have!!  Happy Weekend!

November 9

Today I am grateful for friendly happy people.  It's been kind of a weird day.  It's been snowing since about 7 this morning. Snow at Arctic Circle means that a lot of people don't roll down their windows all the way and it's really hard to hear them, and then when they pay they roll up their windows, so you're standing at the window waiting for them to notice their change or credit card, and then they act surprised to see you standing there... I love snow days!!  Anyway I had to work a 12 hour shift today and I started at 6:30 this morning at the temple so it was a long day.  About 40 minutes before I got off, I had pulled a car up so I could get a cone out to the car behind them and when I ran the food out after a few minutes, they thanked me sincerely and wished me a good night.  That happens quite often, but for some reason this time it touched my heart.  After so many people who were somewhat difficult to work with it was nice to be sincerely thanked.  It was nice to know that they were grateful to me for coming out in the snow... at least that's how I took it.  Sometimes I feel like I work in a thankless job.  It's almost as if people in the drive thru treat me like I'm somehow less intelligent than they are or that what I do for them is somehow below recognition, like it's expected somehow.  I appreciate people who recognize me as an intelligent human being and are sincerely thankful for what I do.  Those people are few and far between and they make me grateful.

November 8

Last night at 11 my grandpa Piercy passed away.  Today I am grateful for eternal families.  My grandpa was almost 90 years old.  He's been sick for several years.  He's been unhappy about being alive for a really long time, so in reality it's a serious blessing.  When my mom called to tell me today I was in the temple, and so didn't get the message for a while.  I reflected for a few minutes on the fact that I had made myself unavailable to find out such important news, but really, I was in the temple helping someone named Vilie Grace Slingerland receive her opportunity to be with her family forever and I just felt really grateful.  The plan of salvation is real and it is our blessing and opportunity to get everyone involved!  I've thought a lot about my grandpa today and I've tried to feel the emotion of the news.  I'm not sad, I'm not upset, I don't feel like I wished we had had more time.  I mostly felt grateful that Grandpa got his wish.  I felt grateful that he's free from pain and hurt.  Grandpa wouldn't want me to be sad for him.  He's home.  And we're an eternal family so he's waiting for the rest of us.  That just makes me really grateful.

November 7

Today I am grateful for the temple.  It's our Stake Temple week and our leaders encouraged us to go as often as possible.  I went last night and again tonight and it's such an amazing place to be.  As the election raged and opinions rage and facebook is loaded with comments on what is happening to America, it's nice to  sit quietly in a place where I know that God is in charge of this whole crazy mess and that in the end His will will be done.  It's nice to go and hear someone pray for the leaders of nations and have faith that that prayer will be answered.  It's nice to walk away from life and sit in a beautiful room and remember that God loves me and that this is the promised land to those who live righteously.  I am seriously so blessed!!

November 6

Today I am grateful for my crock pot.  I put breakfast in it last night and woke up to a delicious sausage hash brown egg casserole and now I'm attempting a crock pot lasagna.  It's so great to put food in and forget about it and come back to yumminess!!

November 5

Today I am grateful for my Mom.  It's her birthday today and we didn't do a whole lot of celebration this year, but I am super grateful for the influence she is in my life.  She is a fun grandma, loves to take pictures of flowers and nature in general and has taught me to love it as well.  We haven't always been on the same page. I was a pretty bratty kid, teenager, young adult, older adult... Anyway, my mom has stuck by me even when she didn't really like me and now we have a great relationship.  I count her among my best friends.  So Happy Birthday Mom.  I love you!!

November 4

Today  I am grateful for the Sabbath!!  I didn't have to get up early this morning.  I don't have to "Do" anything except get ready for church and go.  I work a 6 day work week.  It's so nice to wake up at my own leisure and then make the decision to do nothing for a few hours.  I read blogs, play on Pinterest, and don't feel guilty for not doing something "I'm supposed to be doing."  So today I'm grateful for the one day a week that no expects anything from me.

November 3

See it's only the 3rd and I've already missed a day, so I guess I'll write two things I'm grateful for today and we'll hope I can stay on this better.  Today I am grateful for autumn.  I walked outside today and it was crisp and clear and there was just a hint of the color left on the leaves.  It's hoodie weather and I love it.  I am also grateful for memories.  That one sounds funny so let me explain.  Yesterday I was going through some old stuff deciding if I needed to keep it or just get rid of it. As I was going through the boxes I was thinking about where the stuff came from and who gave it to me and as I looked through pictures, and wondered who those people from my mission were, I was really grateful that God gives us memories.  There's a whole lot of stuff I don't remember, but the things I can remember have given my life a lot of happiness, and so today I can smile at the memory.

November 1

I committed to this gratitude posting 4 days ago and now that it's time I'm doing it grudgingly... doesn't that sound grateful!!!
I've been pretty emotional all day long.  Blame hormones or my super late night at work doing month end last night, but little things are setting me off today.  Today I am grateful for friends.  I've been sitting on my couch wallowing in self pity and I've received like 50 text messages tonight.  Random requests, a chat, and one friend who just sends me random lines from Reba episodes.  It's made me feel rather loved on a melancholy day, so to those who I call friends... I am grateful.

Totally cheesy picture, but it works!!