Gratitude

When I was growing up, living in California and Arizona, I always remember how magical it was to come to Utah in the summer and visit Grandma. Her house will forever make me think of getting bruises on my bum from the swing in the back yard, playing in the pretty red two story playhouse, and especially spiders spiders spiders. Lol. My sisters and I were always oddly fascinated by spiders, and for me, they will always be associated with my summers in Lehi. There seemed to be so many different kinds, and when we weren't grumpy with them for giving us little love bites in the night, we were watching them up really close as they crawled and flew and jumped. The jumping ones were the scariest though, so we never got too close to those. The daddy-long-legs were our favorites. We had those in San Diego too, and somehow their long long legs and slow moving bodies made them seem so much less creepy, and more like pets that we liked to hold and study. Another thing I remember about Grandmas house was her spoons. She collected them from just about every place she ever went, and kept them all in big wooden cases just like the one pictured above. Most of them were very small. Some were plain, and some were very pretty and ornate. There were lots and lots of spoons from Switzerland too. I loved that. :)

Grandma used to have what we called the Granddaughter Week in the summers, when all the girl cousins above the age of twelve would come and stay at her house and spend a week doing exciting Lehi things like attending the Rodeo, and getting to know and love each other. Grandma has never done anything in her life halfheartedly, and these visits were no different. We always had a devotional or lesson each day, and they were about wonderful things that us girls could really relate to and learn from. There was usually some kind of little gift that went along with the devotionals too, to remind us of what we learned and encourage us to incorporate it into our lives. One such lesson was on gratitude. We were given pretty little lined journals in which we were instructed to write every day five things that we were grateful for. When first assigned this challenge, I think us girls felt a little overwhelmed. Thinking of five brand new things to list every day?? How could we do that for very long without repeating answers! But then we were all handed little tubes of chapstick, and Grandma explained: The things that we are truly grateful for are often not the big things like our families and the gospel and our homes, but can be as simple as chapstick, or spoons. Imagine not having a nice stick of lip balm on a hot, dry day, or having to eat your breakfast cereal with a fork! She really is a smart lady, that Marilyn Nielsen. While sadly it's been a while since I've seen that pretty little journal I was given so many years ago, I haven't forgotten how to be grateful for the little things. Mirrors, and clocks, and birds, and wind, and paints, and cameras, and hair pins, and scarves. I've found that it can be so so easy to be happy all the time when we realize that we are literally surrounded by a million things that we'd be pretty grumpy without. How blessed we are to live in a world and a country and a time when we have all these things! Things we may not necessarily need, but we have them anyway, which makes it even more important to remember just how lucky we are.

I am grateful for a happy, smart grandmother, who taught her children to be happy and smart! I am grateful to live near my family and to laugh with them on a daily basis. I am grateful for my faith, and my talents, and my opportunities. And I am grateful, for spoons. :)

(I really really love breakfast cereal!!)