Spinning Jenny: Gratefulness for Years of Fun

Sunday, July 21, 2013

Gratefulness for Years of Fun

BJ has recently set up a neat screensaver slideshow on our TV that we and our boys have had a great time watching on lazy mornings lately. After breakfast on a weekend morning we often convene in the living room as a family and play with toys; in the background we play an album of our choosing and across the TV scrolls eleven years' worth of our photos on a random basis. The boys love it and often scream in delight when they see family members, Tex, and friends. Silas sometimes looks at pictures from early in our marriage and sagely states, "Mommy, you were young then," and "Daddy, you had hair on your head then."

This morning we were all playing while listening to Of Monsters and Men, and I just couldn't help but feel my heart swell with emotion when looking at some of these pictures as they came upon the screen. What an overwhelming sense of gratitude I felt for all of the years I have been blessed to live, all of the lovely people who support me in my life and endeavors, and all of the places I have seen and things I have done. I occasionally grinned ear-to-ear at the images coupled with the beautiful lyrics, "Hold your horses now/Through the woods we ran..." I saw pictures of our second apartment, the U of Minnesota campus, Gallagher-Iba timeouts with Eddie Sutton at the helm, Tex as a puppy, my children being born, blinding snowfalls, North Carolina beaches, Christmas gift-unwrapping, hot afternoons at the lake, Korean Buddhist temples, campsite scenes, fish caught, miserable post-surgery moments, morning coffee on a Beavers' Bend deck, fly fishing in Colorado, turquoise lakes in Banff, and swollen pregnancy feet. How did I ever get so lucky to have had all of these moments? Thank you, BJ, for setting up frequent trips down memory lane! Here are some pictures that I saw just this morning: