Gratitude

My word of the day is gratitude. I am feeling it in abundance this morning. I probably haven't been feeling as thankful as I should over the past couple of weeks. Toby has been working late hours almost every night and I was admittedly a little stressed when I noticed that our upcoming party was getting big. (As my friend Tom wrote on the evite, "Crikes! It's a three digit partah!") I couldn't quite figure out how three digits worth of people were going to fit in our little yard and house, or how I was going to get our house from messy to party-ready clean.

Then I woke up yesterday morning and the sun was shining. We had thirty-five lbs of smoked pork in the croc pot(s) and a bunch of wonderful people coming to our house that afternoon. I knew right then it was going to be a good day. It was crazy, sure. I handed out probably a dozen Band-aids, but mostly to put on scrapes I could barely see. And there were rumors that the eight-year-olds were drinking beer, but it turned out that they were just making "stinky potion" in the bottles by mixing beer and mud. (Hopefully we still have a few more years to go before the kids are sneaking alcohol from our parties to drink.) But all in all, it turns out that everyone fit in our yard just fine. We ended the evening with marshmallows and live music under a bright moon.

Despite going to bed at midnight last night, I woke up at 5 AM. I considered cleaning up, but couldn't quite handle it that early. Instead I went for a run and saw foxes, prairie dogs, birds and a beautiful view of Green Mountain. The whole time I was running, I couldn't help thinking how lucky I am.

And so, gratitude.

A photo from my run this morning