Thankful Sunday, April 7, 2013

I am thankful for comforting things.

Last Monday, my father passed away. Through my sadness, this week I was comforted by many things.

I was comforted that my father was able to live a good, long life before he passed away.

I was comforted by all of my family around me.

I was comforted by the ample food that the neighbors brought to feed us.

I was comforted when I made arrangements for my father with people who knew him and respected him.

I was comforted by the stories that were told to me by my father's friends.

I was comforted by the kind words from friends in both my face-to-face world and in my blog world.

I was comforted by the words, "The good Lord gave us tears for a reason. It would be a shame not to use them when you need them."

And I was comforted when I arrived back home to see daffodils blooming and knew that the promise of spring was indeed here.

Life

My father as an 8 year old farm boy.

A good man died today, my father.

Tears and smiles mingle as we remember his life.

Easter Gathering

Laughter, tears, silliness

fill the day

Family, connections, love,

fill our life

Thankful Sunday--March 31, 2013

I am thankful for Easter

because it reminds me that all things are possible.

Good intentions

You may remember a while back I commented that my friend said she could definitely taste the difference between the red M&M's and the others. I had never noticed this before and wondered if it were really true for her and maybe others also. I thought of various ways to test this idea and decided that it was a really complicated hypothesis to test considering the number of variables involved and the number of taste memories our brain can hold at any one time. Nevertheless, the experiment held too much potential for fun for me to dismiss it. I came up with a couple of different test methods, and while they wouldn't hold up under close scientific scrutiny, I thought I could gleam some information from them. So I had a plan in place, but first I needed to try it out on a few people (Ward, me, and the boys) before I tried it on others.

With high hopes of an interesting experiment, I completed the first step. I bought two bags of M&M's. I even made it to the next step of sorting them by colors. Well, I almost made it through that step. It seemed that every time I sat down to work on this part, I got called away. And as I was leaving, I grabbed a handful of candies to eat, and scooped the rest into the bag so that cats wouldn't play with them while I was gone. And you know what? After two weeks of this, I ran out of M&M's before I ever got to any testing.

So I guess I will have to start this experiment all over again. I plan to do that as soon as I finish the taxes or when I want some more M&M's to eat. Wanna take a bet on which will come first? :)