Hope Faith Love

We spent Friday and Saturday with friends getting ready for and then attending their wedding. It was beautiful; small, intimate, fun, and filled with happiness. I did a reading at the wedding and probably would have been able to keep from crying if the groom wouldn't have been tearing up during the reading (that's my story and I'm sticking to it ha ha)


During the ceremony, the pastor read the cornerstone verse of Geo and my marriage; our wedding theme was centered around it and our lives revolve around it: Hope, Faith, and Love. In every room of our house we have at LEAST one faith, hope love plaque/wall hanging. I can't choose a favorite, though the one I look at when I sit at my desk that was made by Geo's grandma is probably my favorite:


It's my visible reminder to keep faith, hope, and love at the forefront of my mind. So yesterday, as the pastor was reading the verse I was struck by something that I hadn't realized before this point-or hadn't realized consciously: "love is patient, love is kind,  love is not envious or boastful or arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice in wrongdoing, but rejoices in the truth. It bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things."


Love is KIND. KIND


That's really all you need to know about love; that it's kind. If you think about it, being kind is truly the cornerstone of a strong marriage; it means being kind in your every day life; the little things-changing the trash before you go to work because your wife likes to start the day with a fresh bag, putting new napkins and silverware in your HH's lunch box unbeknownst to him, cranking up the heat right before your wife gets out of the shower so the bathroom is super warm, buying your hh's favorite snack just because.


It seems so simple, yet so many people don't do this. So many people struggle at just being kind to one another; they play the "I'm not doing anything nice because he never does anything nice" game, or "Why is she doing something nice? What does she want?" Love isn't supposed to be suspicious or rude.  


Does it go deeper than being kind to your spouse? Yeah, I think it does. You need to be kind to yourself above all. You need to know that YOU are worth it; that you are worthy (?) of someone else's love. I always thought it was bunk when people said that you had to love yourself in order to love someone else, but the more I observe people, the more I realize this is true. If you don't love yourself, how can you expect to love someone else AND take the love your partner wants to give? 


So today, go out and be kind-to yourself-and let that kindness reach out to other people. I once had a coworker who used to tease all of us about our attitudes toward ourselves, he'd say, "You know what I do? I put my arms around myself and give myself a big hug and tell myself 'you're good enough, you're smart enough, and gosh darn it, I like me'" We'd all laugh and get out of our little funk and go back to what we were supposed to be doing. This guy had the right idea-I am good enough, I am smart enough and I DO like myself...today when you're feeling down, give yourself a big hug and tell yourself how much you like YOU. You might be surprised at how much your attitude toward yourself can change your attitude toward your spouse...and theirs' toward you!


:)

Friday Five-I'm HUNGRY!

1. What’s your favorite kind of salad? Chicken Caesar
2. What’s your favorite kind of sandwich? Ham and cheese on a good thick bread
3. What’s your favorite kind of soup? If I have to choose, I say beef and barley, but I am soup lover, so it's hard to narrow it down to just one...
4. What’s your favorite kind of pie? Cherry or Pecan
5. What’s your favorite kind of cake? I can't narrow it down to one...chocolate, vanilla, you name it, I like it LOL

Thankful Thursday

My thankful Thursday is two fold today; first off I am thankful that Gabriel has such an excellent teacher (Even if she DID go to MSU...ha ha) She's very in tune with Gabriel's needs-both academically and physically-and they seem to be a good match.

The second thing I'm thankful for is that Gabriel is so bright and happy and charming. He's doing so well in school-other than needing to SLOW DOWN which he gets from his mother, he's making friends, and he winks at his teacher. HE WINKS AT HIS TEACHER.
*shakes head* I am sure wherever Uncle Joey is, he's smiling every single time Gabe winks at her.

*sneeze*

Pardon our dust, I'm doing a bit of rearranging of our blog...as you can see to your right, there's a little button that says "I'm on the fence" or something equally as charming about a fence...it's a link-a-doo and if you'll be so kind as to click on it, you'll be voting for our blog to become a favorite-I'm in the family life category and wouldn't mind some votes...gotta get some new readers to go along with you oldy moldies :)

In addition to cleaning up the blog, we're packing up the house...packing, in a word, sucks. I hate it with a passion, in fact the only thing I may dislike more than packing is Bob Dylan. (Hmmm...I don't believe I've ever talked about my passionate dislike for Dylan. Rest assured, it's mostly a joke, but maybe it's not...you never can tell...)

Packing flat out sucks. There's no two ways around it. You think you're doing so well and then you get to your new place and you open up a box that's clearly marked "kitchen" and find something like a hammer and four feet of twine in it and you think to yourself "now why in the hell did I put that in here?" then you open the bathroom box and find caulk, a wooden letter G that's painted with polka dots, and a single mitten you've been searching for frantically for the last three and a half weeks...or is it just me? Am I the only one who organizes things like this? A hammer and twine OBVIOUSLY belong in the kitchen because of the junk drawer. The caulk belongs in the bathroom...because sometimes you have to caulk the edge of the tub, right? RIGHT!?

No, probably not, I'd bet some of you out there are master packers, you're probably the type that labels everything precisely and knows where everything is right down to the candy cane coasters that match the penguin place mats your godchildren gave you for Christmas one year, right? Yeah, I kind of hate dislike you for that kind of organization, I'm just sayin', it's not right. Normal people don't behave that way...

Now...back to packing!

Wordless Wednesday: Missing

This is Doug Donham. He is an awesome guy with a promising academic career. He was reported missing October 30 by his parents and was last heard from on October 17th in Denver.

His apartment lease ended last month around the time he was defending his dissertation at the University of Colorado Denver. Subsequently, he was somewhat homeless while revising his paper: sleeping on a couch in the student union and sometimes getting a hotel room. As of the 17th his phone has been turned off and his parents, friends and adviser have not heard from him since then.

If you have any information on his whereabouts since then, please contact Chris Schilling (chris dot schilling at gmail dot com) who is coordinating with Doug’s parents. Also, more information and updates can be found at the Updates on Doug Facebook page.

If anyone can help, it would be greatly appreciated.

Wordless Wednesday

New House :)

Report Card Time

It's report card time at ye olde Witkowski home and I'm so pleased that Gabriel is doing SO well. His areas of "expertise" seem to be math and reading, which I couldn't be happier about. His daddy is awesome at math (and I'm not so good...lol) and not to brag or anything but reading is my strong suit. He's reading above grade level and devours books the way locusts devour a field in a biblical plague.

We have parent-teacher conferences coming up and are excited to hear how well Gabe is doing and what we can do to help him excel and become the best possible Gabe he can be. I don't really care about grades, truthfully, because grades don't really show how a child is doing in school. I want to see (and hear) that he is comprehending things, that he is showing that he knows them both written and verbally, I want to know that he is doing the best he can do-that he's working up to his potential.

I shall report back after his conference on Thursday and we'll see how well he's doing...

In other news, we have a new house :) We'll be moving at the end of the month back into town (ha ha-the fact that Maple Park is considered town cracks me up) about two blocks from where we originally lived when we moved out here. It's an old house (as in, built in the 1880's!!) but the kitchen is newly remodeled and has a brand new washer and dryer IN THE KITCHEN (my dream kitchen, seriously. Yes, I realize how lame that is, but really, who wouldn't want to have the machines RIGHT THERE when you spend as much time in the kitchen as I do?) I happen to know the landlord (yay small towns) and it looks like it's going to work out great. Two car garage that had Geo drooling, a huge yard with a big clear spot for a giant garden that had the kids and I drooling, and a three seasons room that I am SURE is going to get a lot of use between us and the kitty cats.

*sigh*

We're all feeling so much more relaxed and calm right now, thank goodness. Now to pack everything up...ugh...not looking forward to that, but at least this will be the last time we do it until we buy a house.

Hope you're all doing well :) I've had increasing hits on my blog in the last few weeks-so welcome if you are new to the blog and ♥♥♥ to all of our oldy moldy readers he he.