Happy Things

Mostly from me, a couple from Matt, Ruthie, and Alison . . .

 

• Kippany to Kendra: "I'm, like, restraining myself to keep from meeting with you!"
• Feeling like Frank Gilbreth making my kids listen to language CDs
• Realizing that me not having kids is God's mercy to them (they would be traumatized!)
• Brainstorming up evil organizations to feature on a business assignment, and the quotes I've come across:
  "Any smoker with a sincere desire and determination to stop smoking can-and should-quit. The best way to reduce the risks of smoking, of course, is to quit." -RJ Reynolds web site
• The amazing variety in my life: going from filling out Activity Requests to learning "la mesa grande" to giving someone advice on how to encourage others to be on fire for God to reviewing prices for restaurant equipment to reading Anheuser-Busch's vision statement to researching Dublin zoning and discovering that a former college professor went south to the hurricane zone to rescue animals to reading a friend's courtship story to attempting to play UNO at a nursing home to hearing (at the dinner table) about how I am going to rule my husband when I am married to singing "Bill Grogan's Goat" for the Carsons to eating chocolate and drinking grape juice
• Discovering that Cuban web sites can have aliases
• Cake in leaders' meeting
• Beautiful flowers from Ruthie
• Anonymous chocolate
• Anonymous hot chocolate and mug
• Resolution to tense situations
• Energy
• "The rest of us have to wait till heaven for ours." -Mary, commenting on Elizabeth's Burger King crown
• Kendra-"Well, I'm basically not omniscient."
• Fake letters from Character Suite-"Mom, Dad-I LOVE it here!"
• Basketball with kids at the mission
• Jonathan Lee being mistaken for Yao Ming
• The crunch of la manzana
• "If they only knew that their food came from cosmetology . . . with the mannequin heads looking on . . ." -Mimi, commenting on the wedding reception we were serving on 13
• "Dude, she does look like Sid!" -undisclosed teenage boy about an undisclosed wedding party member
• "I think my morality is telling me to take a nap." -Benjamin G., after hearing about the reporter who defined morality as "what makes you feel good"
• Delight in Spanish class upon learning new phrases!
• Eileen's "más, más, más, más, más café!"
• J's skirt falling off while doing table set up after Good News Mission [only girls in the dining room]. Kendra walking in afterwards and jumping up and down, saying, "I missed it" when told about it
• "I try to be like you." -Eileen to Jamie, after someone told her that she went fast on kitchen cleanup
• Arriving at my room in the wee hours of the morning and discovering that my bathroom had been cleaned for the first time in too long! (Jessica's here J)
• When the girls do their planning for the mission in my office
• Praying for carnations for Valentine's Day (silly, yes) and having it hit me the day after that the bouquet I got had carnations in it
• Valentine's stuff from Kirstin M.
• Matt, to miscellaneous vicious guys: "NO, you may not kill the raccoon. It's cute!"
• Matt thinking that the sheet Kippany is sewing for me was a white dress . . . and Kippany's comment after hearing that: "That would be an economical way to go!"
• Capital improvements to the office
• Ice cream on Friday nights
• Friends coming back to visit! (i.e. Jessica and Naomi)
• Siblings coming for more than a visit!
• Sharing the Gospel with someone who has never heard it before
• Spending time with John and Mary . . . and Elizabeth!
• Three meal schedule
• Receiving an anonymous letter in the mail . . . thinking it was a recommendation form until I opened it and found a picture of a girl riding a small rocking horse . . . labeled "Jessica just spending some free time at home" . . . in Mrs. Griffith's handwriting
• Clayton Reedstrom laughing at me when I told Dan Grose that I would keep his ice carving and cake decorating skills in mind for "some day". "What are you laughing at?" I demanded. "No comment," Clayton smirked.
• Beautiful carnations from Jamie
• My strawberry candle from Nina
• Slumber parties and old journals
• Four years of happy things!