A New Stage of Life

New things are exciting. New friendships, new homes, new clothes. Starting something can be exciting and fun, with a challenging aspect to it that raises your adrenaline and makes you wonder what might this lead to, and how will this change me, or how will I change things because of it. A new school, a new job, a new girlfriend or boyfriend, a new responsibility in your community. It can be daunting, and overwhelming, and still underneath fresh and wonderful in its promise and its hope. A turn in the road is like a Monday morning, or the beginning of the school year; anything might happen, and you know there will be moments ahead like you have never seen before.

New things can be scary to some of us. Alright, they can be scary for me. I like to know I am safe, what to expect and what is expected of me; I like knowing the schedule, having a rhythm to my days, and being able to rely on people and things to carry on as I have grown accustomed to them. I might like a bit of challenge, a bit of danger, a taste of the startling or unexpected once in a while, but I lean on the usual to keep me steady. 

I like that quiet slow undertow of peace and solidity. When I can't quite feel it under the shifting of time and current events and stressful decisions and uncertain tomorrows, I weaken and I falter. Again and again I reach out and take the word of a God who never changes, who says to be still and know that He is there. He says to trust Him, for His love is everlasting. He speaks of everlasting joy with Him. He says that He knows the plans He has for me, and that it's ok if I don't. He says to be courageous and strong, and that He is with me wherever I go. He tells His flock to have no fear, and that it is His pleasure to give me good things. He says that all things are for His glory, and for my good. He is like a rock, a mountain, a protective mother hen, a strong tower. He is my peace.

We are in and coming into a new stage in our life. Our little daughter is changing and stretching and making us into something new, and she has been working at it since she started growing in me, has been gradually making us think and live and plan differently, and when she is here in our arms will make everything even more new and strange and exciting and challenging. 

Everything is shifting. Two become three, and our focus is not now just horizontally toward the other but now pointed down as we focus together on something between us, something we made together, love together, and will nurture together. We're no longer newlyweds, but coming up on our second anniversary, and have become and learned much together and about each other. We're no longer in our first home; we moved over a month ago from the place that everything started. This little person pushed us toward a new home, a place we'd have room for her and her things, and I am so grateful to need a new place. But I do want to hold on to the memories of that first little home - the sweet and the new, the tears and the laughter and the quiet existing together, the arrangement and rearrangement of furniture and words, the cooking for one another, the canning together, the evenings on the porch and the the silly tv shows and disasters spilled on the carpet and late dinner parties where we accidentally turned the oven off when it should have been on. I got comfortable there, and I want to grasp a little at the good of that peaceful, stable, known life. Instead I have a new neighborhood to get used to and feel safe in, and a new home to arrange and make work and that beautifully. A new person to apply my attention and love to. A new era where I'm not doing the same work every day with people who need the same help, but with a fresh soul who will rely on us for everything and whose development and personality and spiritual health will largely come from how we treat her. 

But here I am, sitting on the porch of our new home, feeling my daughter move inside me, relishing the quiet freedom of this week at home after years of working full time, and I taste God's goodness in this new. My soul is grateful, my heart is happy. He has provided fresh challenges and gifts for us to find and prepare for and open and delight in, and He always makes the way for us to learn what we need to know to handle them. We might hesitate a little at the door of a new adventure, uncertain, needing guidance, praying for wisdom, not feeling big enough for this task, and He will give what we lack. He is infinity. He is love. He has more beautiful things in store for us than we can see, and He fills us even as we empty ourselves for the world around us, so that we will never come up short. I am tasting and seeing, and He is good indeed.

35 weeks pregnant (a few weeks ago)

in our wonderfully-windowed bedroom

entryway 

(one of 2 entrances to our home, which feel elegant to have)

living

part of the kitchen

herb garden

our own private porch. we almost live there.

one of many rose bushes flourishing here

view from a kitchen window: the patio and raspberries

more living room. 

sometimes I forget we have a green-carpeted living room, which we obviously would not have chosen, but is working just fine.

from the living room, view of our porch 

(and our new car, another beginning and blessing!)

some of the vegetables. they have taken off like crazy since this pic. 

Rose's corner of our room. There's also a changing table 

(where the guitar stand is here) with bins of her clothes and things.

raspberry patch. 

I have been putting some in the freezer almost daily, and eating them to my heart's content.

Fearfully and Wonderfully

Sometimes it is the smallest of things that makes the biggest impact on a day. A few kind words from your boss when you haven't been sure how your work performance has been lately. Your hair coming out perfectly on a busy morning. Your husband coming up quietly behind you and rubbing your tired shoulders. A note from your mom saying she misses you. Bible gateway's verse of the day. The squirrel running by on his wire outside the window stopping and staring at you for a moment.

Sometimes it is the small things that you know are on their way to becoming big things. A smile across the room from someone you hope might some day become your friend. That engagement ring promise. The nest egg that is embarrassingly small at first. A sloppy bubbly weird looking sourdough starter blob.

Dinner with this guy
(he is unbelievably good to me)

and our PA relatives.

Rose, you are our small thing, the tiny blob that is becoming the big thing in our lives. You are our quiet, hidden, beautiful, strange, surprising, overwhelming little living person. You are our future. You are our hope. You are our perfect creation whose creation has very little to do with us at all. You are our questions and our answers. You are our laughter and our confusion. You are our daughter, lovely and unknown like a song we don't quite understand yet but love the faint melody of on the air. 

You're still quite small, but unfolding and changing and growing at a wonderful rate. Today we reach 20 weeks, which means we are halfway to holding you in our arms. Twenty weeks seems a little long to wait for something you are eager and happy and aching for. But twenty weeks is actually a long time to have already had your heartbeat here under my heart. It is a long time to hold this gift. Time is beginning to go by quicker and quicker, until some days I make myself stop and look at us in a mirror and the shape you are pushing and pulling me into because I know that I won't look just this way for long. I know that time already passes too quickly for me.    

 19 weeks                                If I lean forward a bit, I can still see my legs

In all of life, it is picking up pace and going just a bit faster every year, every month, maybe every week. It can be so easy to spend our time looking forward and waiting impatiently for the things we hope God is bringing us or just a change from now, or even looking longingly back at things and times that were sweet and wonderful for us. But we are also given a now. And it is in the now that we make decisions and feel sunshine and say warm words and move our bodies in strong and beautiful ways. It is in the now that we lean toward someone or taste things or feel the softness of socks or get pierced deep by our conscience. Now is life, too. And I want to feel and see and love all that I can of each of these moments that will be gone before I can really grasp them. 

- - -

They say you are about 10.5 ounces now and 10 inches long. When I look down, I see evidence of you, and I can feel your steady rhythmic kicks at times, and you are changing everything about how I feel and what I need to eat and how much sleep I need to have and when I laugh and cry. 

We got to see you Friday on what has got to be the coolest live video on earth. We couldn't stop smiling and you couldn't stop wiggling. It took some trying to get good measurements of all your reaching limbs and twisting body parts, but you were perfect. You look perfect, too - your little turned-up nose, the mouth we saw opening and closing, the left arm thrown up behind your head as if you were chilling on the couch, even the inner parts that we never see out here like the 4 chambers of your heart pumping faithfully - perfect and amazing and human and working. I am in awe of the God who is fashioning you so well and wisely. What love.

the words you can't quite read on the last picture: '4CH HEART'

Three

News
We are three now! And we'll be able to see this little person face to face sometime in July (yes, we have a due date, but I'm not going to be stubborn about it as I'm sure Baby won't be as punctual as we would prefer). God is good, and we are excited about this new phase in our lives.


Prayers
-Thanksgivings:
     no morning sickness to speak of
     good first Dr's appointment & ultrasound
     strong heartbeat and active baby
     an attentive and thoughtful husband
     OB clinic is just down the street and hospital a few blocks further
     financial stability and good health insurance
   
-Requests:
     continued health and strength for me
     continued health and safety for Baby
     energy and cheerfulness (I am just tired so much, and it makes everything harder)
     wisdom for medical-related decisions we'll have to be making
     wisdom in planning maternity leave, and understanding what I can handle until then


Specifics
A few weeks ago (9wks):

Today (12wks):
[I know my picture is poor quality... but there is something there that's not all Christmas turkey and chocolate!]


















Twelve weeks email update! I really love having so much information at my fingertips. I love knowing what is going on in there, and what about this child is developing right now.

"The most dramatic development this week: Reflexes. Your baby's fingers will soon begin to open and close, his toes will curl, his eye muscles will clench, and his mouth will make sucking movements. In fact, if you prod your abdomen, your baby will squirm in response, although you won't be able to feel it. His intestines, which have grown so fast that they protrude into the umbilical cord, will start to move into his abdominal cavity about now, and his kidneys will begin excreting urine into his bladder. From crown to rump, your baby-to-be is just over two inches long (about the size of a lime) and weighs half an ounce"

Home

I've been thinking about homemaking, and making a home. About making things homey, feeling at home, turning a house into a home. About whose job it is and who it is for and why we need homes and not just hotels a month at a time. About how I can study and improve here.

I can't stop thinking about that mysterious mixture of things that goes into a good home, or at least into the home I want us to have:

the mixture of relaxed and put together,
     welcoming and private,
     tidy and lived-in,
     classy and modern,
     projects that are like work and that like play,
     masculine and feminine,
     practical and decorative,
     old and new,
     strength and beauty,
     established and evolving,
     quiet and conversational,
     clean and yet not sterile-feeling,
and so many more things.

Tonight I'm thinking about whose job it is to manage these things. And I believe that the balance of these (sometimes seemingly opposite qualities) is achieved by both man and woman being involved in some way in the house.

The 'homemaker' probably makes us all think of the wife, and it's true that often, historically and in our circles, the woman of the house is responsible for much of this because she is there more hours of the day than her husband. And because most women have an eye for beauty; they enjoy the planning and buying and arranging and decorating and cooking and cleaning that make this place run in a lovely and functional way. If that is where your strengths lie and what your husband would like and what you are able to accomplish with joy, then splendid. And I might envy you your ability to do it all.

(rabbit painting by Terri Rice)

But what if you both work and you aren't home until pretty much supper time just like him? What if he works from home and has fewer demands on his time? What if he came into the relationship with a more complete set of furnishings, dishes, art, and linens? What if you are often so busy with the care of small children that you have no energy to finish the evening meal and do more than swish out the toilet with some bleach, let alone scrub the entire house every day, and who even cares about whether there is a nice looking arrangement on the side table or there is anything hung on that one empty wall in the living room? What if he has an eye for aesthetics that you don't, or what if it just exhausts you and stresses you out, but makes him happy to set things into place and make things attractive and give to you through cooking or doing the dishes every night or cleaning the bathroom or picking up pieces of art he comes across somewhere? Strong believers in gender roles tell us it is 'femmy' or gay for a man to care about the house. We hear (sometimes aloud, sometimes implied) that the woman who lets or asks her husband to do the interior decorating is failing in her job as keeper of the house. A woman who doesn't do 90% of everything in the home (and have it mostly done before her husband gets home from work) feels guilty for not doing her job completely enough. Even the woman who has an 8 to 5 job is often expected to carry a large portion, if not all, of the runnings of the household on her shoulders.

I love beautiful homes. Sometimes I even have ideas on how to go about making an empty wall look better, but usually I have to see something in a magazine or showroom or friend's house to spark my creativity. I love cooking and baking and presenting a meal. At least a couple of times a week I am inspired to do these things and most of the time I receive compliments on my work in the kitchen. I love to clean, and to inhabit a clean, clear space. But I am not perfect in these areas (in fact, I am trying to spur myself on to do a lot better in all of them!), and I am definitely not alone in these things. My husband is very attune to the aesthetics of a room, an outfit, a meal, a wall, a piece of music, a movie or book; and he is not only aware of when they are good or bad and willing to comment (which sometimes makes a detail-oriented person terribly annoying to a spouse trying hard and not being perfect). Fraser can *do* things about his tastes. Often better than I can, or with less hesitation than I do. He is the one who has had (progressively better) ideas for laying out the living room; he is the one who brought home the Renoir print that sits on our dresser; he measured and arranged and hung most of the pictures and mirrors on the walls; he cooks at least as much as I do, and reminds me often that he WANTS to do these things for or with me. And it's wonderful.

I realize that every couple is different, and that my husband is probably (if not almost certainly) more helpful and interested in arranging the living room, or making quiche or braised chicken, or dusting the house on Saturday while the game is on, than most husbands are. Not every man wants to be that involved. Some perhaps seem to not care at all. But I think that they should care, and should be involved with how their home serves its members and those who receive hospitality there, whatever level it may be for him.

Of course, a man who takes over completely the running of the home (whether he tells his wife her work is shoddy, re-does whatever she has thought of whenever she leaves the room, or just overturns her every spoken idea for what could be done in it) is doing his wife an unkindness and a disservice. And a woman who decorates and buys and plans and cooks without any regard for the wishes of her husband is likewise doing it wrong. Theirs will not be a happy home, because it is not a balanced home, and I think it will be obvious that there is an imbalance to those who visit. I've been in a few houses where I wonder HOW on earth a man would ever feel relaxed here because there are SO MANY ruffles and everything is floral and shades of pink and teacups sit on doilies everywhere you look and is there even a place he can set his shoes that won't look silly?

I think marking out our differences and our spheres of work or specialty is sometimes done too strongly, and our partnership and likenesses and friendship and co-ownership in all our things could be lived a little stronger. It is not the woman's domain to the exclusion of the man's comfort, expression, or participation.

God made us humans first, and a man and a woman are more alike (when you think of the whole creation) than they are different. Our roles are going to differ, and our jobs are often going to be very different - especially if there are children or she is home most of the day and he isn't. But we are first and foremost partners, not opposites, and our homes should show that about our persons and our relationship; that we have done this together (even if the collaboration is as simple as running ideas past one another and asking for input) and live here together.

today's pics

Sometimes God loads us with benefits simply by placing lovely things around us for our eyes to enjoy.

This morning I had opportunity while at work to walk around a farm homesteaded in 1888. My iphone documented some of the things I stopped to look at, and these pictures remind me again how blessed I am to live on the Palouse, to have a job that takes me to such a lovely place, to have leisure occasionally (while working) to stroll around and enjoy myself, and for the gift of this memory-catcher camera.

 Built in 1911. Photographers are always stopping along the highway to get shots of this barn.

 On an old loading chute: the essential coffee can.

 Ok to be fair, this one was taken last week. Wheat and bachelor's buttons (I think).

 Globe of feathery silver.

 Where once was livestock.

 Also taken last week, but I couldn't resist posting. I don't know how people can say the Palouse is ugly.

 Fallen nest.

Shadow of the windmill.

poem and pictures: growth, sanctification, spring

 

                                                    Jefferson Street 2013: from the roof

                                                  Garfield Street 2012: by the driveway

                                                North of Moscow 2014: highway ditch gold

                                                Potlatch nursery 2014: geranium explosion

                                                      First Street 2014: first flowers

                               our home 2014: borrowed branches & a favorite chair

 Backsliding

Why after spring,

after being quickened and taught to sing,

knowing He has taken our death and made us green and growing,

why would we go back to winter

so willingly,

and drop so soon our little leaves and stems and fine new fruit

with so much promise,

as if the sun had never shone upon us,

living water never washed our skin?

Why do we hide again our heads and bury deep our souls

in the killing frost of sin?

A Year of Yes

A year ago today was one of the best days of my life.



Saturday afternoon. Winter and cold, with some sun occasionally breaking cloud cover. I was home, in the big house on Jefferson Street, and only 2 of my 8 roommates were there at the time, off in their rooms studying. The place was quiet. I had music playing from Spotify on my laptop on the kitchen counter and was putting together an apple pie, which we could eat that evening. Fraser had told me he was coming over in a while, and I was going to have this put in the oven before he came, or if I was still finishing it up he would keep me company and I would impress him with my cool kitchen skills (which is always fun, obviously, especially as we are both crazy about cooking and spent a lot of our dates in that kitchen putting meals together).

A knock came on the door, and it was him, but he seemed nervous and didn't even take his coat off. I kept working away for about a minute until I realized how agitated he was and right about then he said he 'was going to go for a walk' and did I want to come? Well duh.

After cooking, walks were possibly our favorite pastime together. Sometimes we had places to go; usually we just ended up places because we were going, or wound around neighborhoods, looking at houses and meeting lonely cats and speaking to them in the few French words we knew and speculating about history here and there and talking about stuff or just being quiet together. Walks are amazing. I still love them with him. Or anytime. But most with him.

This was the best walk ever, of course, although it started out nerve-wracking for both of us, and though we switched courses several times (not unusual, but rough for him because he couldn't decide where to go). At one point we decided we were going to this little park at the top of a hill, and I thought I saw a shortcut to it, so we took it. It wasn't. We ended up almost in someone's back yard, and it was muddy and messy.

We could have turned around and gone back down the hill and around the proper way, but that would have taken too long and so he made his proposal right there - near someone's house, in the mud, no fancy words but all the ones necessary. The sun had disappeared again. He didn't think of kneeling. I thought with the serious way he began he was about to tell me something horrific or devastating (are we breaking up? did he do something awful he's about to confess? did I???). I realized I had never heard his voice mean so much before. And I realized why his hands were in his pockets of his coat.

And I realized there was no way I would say no.

Eventually we ended up back home, holding hands and smiling so much. We kind of remembered the pie, but it was finished much later, and not eaten until the next day. The ring was sparkly and shiny and just dazzlingly pretty without being impractically ostentatious (he knows me), and I heard the story of how he got it and where the diamonds came from. I remember taking it off to start working on the pie crust again, and then realized I should call my family to tell them, and then remembered I had roommates home and wandering through the house to tell them my news and get hugs. That evening we drove a bunch of miles to join a bunch more of the roommates and friends at a campfire at the river, and made our announcement to them, and stared at fire and water and stars, and everything glimmered on the stones of that ring and everything was better than any best of my life before that day.

(engagement photos by Chris Walker, chriswalkerimages.com)

 

Yes is a good word.
It is full of hope and promise
and joy and honesty.
It is full of grace.

And my year has been full of grace. It has held learning: learning to give and to forgive, learning to read someone else's history that is different from yours yet brought you to the same place, learning to receive with appreciation the gifts that are disguised and the ones that are difficult and the ones that are confusing as well as the ones that are just what I've been hoping for, learning to live a new life and also an ordinary life in a glad and diligent and purposeful way. Learning so much. And not being content to stop there, but learning that I/we have a lot more to learn.

My gratitude to and for this man grows, and I know it will continue to. God has made a beautiful thing of two things incomplete, and His hands are making us more to His pleasure as time goes by.

May the next 50 go as grace-filled as this first.

Flavors. Dinner. Yum.

Lately I've been poking around on this site, Budget Bytes, by Beth. This is not because I know Beth (because I don't), and not because we need to save money (though beating the budget is always nice), but simply because I somehow got a link to it and have found so may delicious looking recipes there. Admittedly I have only made a couple of them. But I have been faithfully pinning them like a true Pinterester for future use, and wow, some are just phenomenal looking.

Last night I made Chicken and Pumpkin Soup. We had leftover chilis in adobo sauce from something fancy Fraser made earlier this week, and pumpkin from a Christmas pie, and one last pair of chicken breasts from a package, and there are always leftover parts of onions in the fridge and partial bags of frozen veggies in the freezer.

This is super easy. The recipe says it takes an hour and 5 minutes, and that's about right, while during that hour you definitely have some free time to toss together a salad or clean the kitchen floor - or both, as it happens I did, because I did ten minutes of prep work earlier in the afternoon just after finding the recipe. I get a little excited about putting together a tasty supper, especially when the husband has done most of the cooking for the last week and I'm needing to get my own creative juices flowing again before he takes over. :)

I changed a few things in the recipe, but not enough to affect the flavors that much. I used about 50% more chicken and 50% more pumpkin (which was a pumpkin and squash mix, actually, since I baked up a tiny decorative squash that's been sitting around here forever. The picture is of the beautiful steaming thing after pulling it out of the oven - sitting pretty next to the dutch oven we use the most, this perfect smallish soup-size orange one). I used that salty powdered cheap chicken boullion, but it tasted fine - didn't need to add any salt to the finished soup. Annnd I skipped the fresh cilantro, partly because my husband doesn't really care for it and mostly because we just didn't have any (because my husband doesn't care for it, ha), but put a pinch of dried cilantro in instead. This is a delicious soup. Filling. Colorful. Spicy (go with the 2 chilis she suggests, and maybe taste it and see if you want to add a bit more of the sauce too; it's really not too hot).

I put together a salad from another source, but I heavily edited it. It was a Mexican Salad with Honey Lime Dressing, and as such had corn and black beans in it (which I didn't want seeing as the soup already contained those), and also contained jicama, which is cool but would have necessitated me running to the grocery store. AND the recipe would have made too much for us. So here's what I did, for 2 good sized servings:

  4 or 5 leaves of lettuce
  a tomato
  tops of 2 green onions
  1/2 avocado
  1/4 bell pepper
  some feta cheese

And the dressing. You only need about 1/3 of the dressing this recipe makes for that little salad, so be judicious with your drizzling of the dressing. You never want to overdo salad dressing; just enough for flavor.

These two dishes went beautifully together (visually and gustatorially), and I kind of want to make the salad again when we have leftover soup this evening or tomorrow.


*Sidenote: this made a lot of soup. We put some of it in the freezer.

Almost the Holiday(s)

It's the day before Thanksgiving, and my news feed and conversations with people and work with my student and everything I hear on the radio and everyone's decorations are all about Thanksgiving. Which makes sense. I myself am currently starting a giant batch of roll dough for the bajillion dinner rolls I am making to contribute to my Mom's Thanksgiving dinner, and we'll be driving there tomorrow to spend the whole day and celebrate.

But I'm also preparing for Christmas, hence the pictures in this post. We will have my husband's parents here for several days, and will be celebrating early Christmas with them on Sunday, so all kinds of shopping and food prep and festive things have been going on. My husband also just gave me a super early Christmas present: a schmancy new iphone, which is like magic to me. My old one was sufficient but simple, and this upgrade is a treat. :) It's a 2-for-1 holiday weekend, and there was much rejoicing.

Lights are strung across walls and around windows

Boxes that have been arriving, and some wrapping supplies

Our stockings, simple and practical with a little pretty on them.

Close-up of embroidery on his stocking

Close-up of trim on mine

I love getting out and using for the first time this lace doily my mom made. Cheap candles and votive holders found thrift.

Still alive, and it's Thanksgiving week

Yep, still alive and thriving over here. Just not as good at posting things as I used to be; sorry.

It's almost Thanksgiving, which means I've been married for almost 4 months to my favorite fellow on earth, and it also means it's going to be easy for me to write something here. All I have to do is list some of the things I'm thankful for and ta-da! How simple and how perfect for the week we are in.

1. I'm (still) so thankful for this man. Being with him is both natural and unbelievable, and this new life together is both simple and full of things to learn. Fraser gives to me every day, somehow, and sometimes (like when we go shopping) even wants to give more than I want to let him. I love when I can surprise him with something delicious smelling when he walks in the door from work. And when he comes up with a great idea like "let's drive to Spokane this afternoon!" And when he tells me I am not allowed to go to work because I'm so sick. And when he reaches out for my hand when we are walking somewhere - even if mine is in my pocket already. He makes me laugh, and can stop my tears, and his laughter is one of my favorite things.

2. I'm grateful for our wedding photographer Chris Walker and the great job he did. Here's a sampling of our photos. http://chriswalkerimages.com/blog/2013/7/27/1/

3. I'm thankful for cooking: for the spacious kitchen, the beautiful pots and pans, and the full cupboards I have. I like baking late at night, and making quick scrambled eggs on a late morning, and steeping tea, and chopping up onions so precisely and small, and leaning down over a pot or fry pan to breathe the fire and life that is simmering there.

4. I love this book we've decided to work through (over the next few years, probably. It's 300 recipes, after all!). Thanks to whichever roommate or relative or friend happened to leave this behind and left it for us to inherit! The Italian Cooking Encyclopedia. http://www.amazon.com/Encyclopedia-definitive-professional-ingredients-techniques/dp/0681020377/ref=sr_1_3?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1385073811&sr=1-3&keywords=the+italian+cooking+encyclopedia

5. I'm thankful for fabric and needles and thread and irons and patterns and the Joann's store. Currently working on our stockings. And I'm not very good at it. And sometimes frustrated. But I will one day have cute stockings to post a picture of, I'm sure. Not to mention, to put presents into. :)

6. I'm happy to have family - so much family, and more all the time, it seems. Thankful for my parents and grandparents and aunts and uncles, who have been part of my world since before I could understand who they all were. Thankful for the siblings who've been best buds and good competition and tagalongs and little shadows and adorable frustrating hilarious human beings. Thankful for a new set of parents and grandparents, and their love and welcoming, and for a new sister and brother and the different surprising perspectives they give me on life, and things, and my husband. And thankful for all the kids who call me Aunt Bobbi, and the new ones who will someday. They steal my heart over and over.

7. Electric heaters. No explanation necessary.

8. Paychecks.

9. Winter sunlight. I'm about to take a walk to do a few errands, and thing that'll perk me up just about as much as I need for the rest of the day, and the week.

10. Chocolate chips. Seriously, when there isn't a good solid chunk of chocolate bar to grab, a handful of these little dudes is pretty much the best thing I can think of. I'm off to raid the cupboard and pop one at a time as I head out to do those errands.