Happy Thankful Thursday!  This week in the YUMMommy household was rather uneventful, but I’m grateful.  The heat has been unrelenting and we’ve been staying indoors to keep cool.  Well, except for Monday when we went to the pool.  Speaking of which this week I’m thankful that Moo has overcome her fear of going out into the pool.  For years the farthest we could get her to go in a pool where the steps.

That was totally fine for me because that meant I only had to help one kid battle around the pool- JJ.  It’s so weird seeing how they have swapped roles with each other.  When Moo was a baby she loved water.  Bathtime was her favorite time of the day, while JJ was NOT a fan of water at all until he hit age four.  Now, he’s a water lover and she’s not.  But she surprised me Monday and asked me to take her paddling around the deep end of the pool.

She did great a job.  I’m looking into our budget to see if we can move some funds around to pay for family swimming lessons.  The Mr already knows how to swim, but doesn’t because he’s not a fan of public or community pools.  So maybe he’ll tag along for a refresher if we do take some.   Swimming lessons would really help to boost Moo’s courage about being in the water and would give me a peace of mind about JJ’s enthusiasm for water.

I’m thankful for all of the Booktubers and blog bloggers that have been raving about Sarah J. Maas’ A Court of Throne and Roses.  I read a few pages in the library and can’t wait to fully engross myself into it this weekend.  But from what I did read, I know that I’m going to love this Beauty and the Beast fantasy-style retelling.  I feel like it’s been so long since I’ve read a good YA (young adult) series.  I probably stopped reading YA after the last Twilight book, speaking of which I heard there’s a new addition to the series that was recently released.

Earlier this week I had a bit of writer’s block and didn’t get much added to my novels.  Today my characters have been busy chattering away in my head.  Scenes have been coming and going.  I can’t wait to write them all and move these stories forward.  I’m thankful that I’ve learned to respect MY writing process more and have come to terms with the fact that I’m just not a fast writer.  And I don’t want to be.  At least not with my first debut projects.

Lastly, I’m thankful that Moo continues to make new friends everywhere she goes- the library, the park, etc.  Her light definitely shines bright and serves as beacon to draw others to her.  I hope that light never goes out and that she will find a greater purpose to use her light and voice for.

What are you giving thanks for this week?

Happy Thankful Thursday!  It’s that time again.  Let’s open those gratitude journals and reflect on all of the positive and wonderful things that happened this past week.  And if you don’t keep a gratitude journal, I definitely recommend that you start one because it’s so uplifting and humbling to be able to look back and recognize all of the things you have to be thankful for.  Things that you may have even taken for granted just last week.

Life is one of those things that I took for granted, but am truly thankful for.  This past week has not been without its tragedies.  There was the shooting in at Pulse in Orlando, parents having to mourn the death of their toddler after he was attacked and killed by an alligator while on vacation, and a teenager was murdered (three others were injured)  in a drive-by shooting while attending a vigil for her friends who had drowned. Listen y’all, I don’t want to be walking here talking about these are the last days, but with so much death in the air back-to-back, it has made me appreciate each day that I’ve woken up with my family much more.

While I know that tomorrow is not promised to any of us, I’d be remissed if I didn’t admit that there is still a lot of living I want to do.  I want to see my children graduate, get married and have my grandkids.  I want to travel overseas.  I want to make more of a difference in the world around me.  It seems selfish to ask God for more time to allow me to do these things when so many other people’s lives have been cut short.

Still I’m praying that He will and that in the meanwhile, He continue to teach me how to live each day like it’s last.  I’m praying that He will help me to become more purposefully in how I spend my days.  I want to focus more on making memories with my family, more on giving back to others and more on strengthening my spiritual self.

This week I’m also thankful that we’ve had an awesome first week of Summer Break!  It feels amazing to sleep-in and not have to turn off four alarms, rush through breakfast and then rush out the door.  And while our Summer Break just started, I can’t help realize how NOT far off August is.  There are so many experiences I want to cram into these peaceful and carefree days.  A part of me leaning towards attempting to homeschool because I don’t want to cram anything.  I want the flexibility of being able to take my time without any outside restraints.  Thus, this is my love-hate relationship with school.

Last night the kids were running around the living room laughing and being a bit rambunctious as kids often are.  My little guy fell onto one of the coffee tables and the corner caught him by his front teeth.  Talk about a heart-stopping moment.  At first, I thought it had gotten his eye and I was preparing to see the worst when he turned around.  But he had hit his front top teeth.

I am so thankful that he was okay.  His teeth weren’t knocked loose, but he did have some wood in from his teeth had chipped away a little dent in the table due the impact force.  The angels were looking out because I seriously don’t know how he didn’t even chip a tooth.  Just the sound that came after his fall made me cringe.  Needless to say I’ve reinstated a no running policy.

I’m thankful that Moo’s love for reading continues to grow by the day.  We have checked out 72 books from our local libraries this week with more books on hold!  She’s even requested to start a Mommy & Me Booktube channel on YouTube.  I know that whether or not she goes back to traditional school or we decide to homeschool, her reading skills are going to be through the roof.  I love that I’m raising well-read children and am exposing them to a variety of different genres, authors, characters and adventures.

Lastly, I’m thankful that we didn’t have to throw out any of our food yesterday.  There were major power outages throughout the Queen City yesterday.  I’m talking about traffic lights not working, groceries shut down because of no power and our place wasn’t without power for three hours.  We kept the frig and freezer closed the entire time and thankful once the power came back on we checked and the ice in the freezer hadn’t even melted.  Everything was still nice and cold.

What made your gratitude list this week?  Leave me a comment below.

Do you know what today is?  I will give you a hint.  It’s not my anniversary.  It’s the last day of school!!  I wish there was a confetti button.  I am so excited that Summer Break is officially here.  In fact, it’s the first thing that I’d like to give thanks for in today’s Thankful Thursday post.

As I mentioned in my June Recently post, I am thankful that we can now sleep in and I can turn off all four of my morning alarms.  I’m thankful that when we do activities during that day on Monday through Friday, Moo won’t be or feel left out because she won’t be stuck in the classroom.  I’m grateful that our schedule is flexible again.  If I want to stay an extra at Target in the afternoon I can without worrying about not being able to get Moo from school on time.  I almost feel like doing cartwheels right now.

However, as excited as we all are about tomorrow being the first official day of Summer Break, we are a little sad.  This afternoon I went to enjoy lunch with Moo in her classroom for the last day of school.  We watched movies with her classmates, she told me how she ended the school year with the highest reading level in the class and she exchanged numbers with her best friend.  Her teacher has been raving about her all school year and I knew it was no secret that Moo was the class pet.

Still when we went to leave early, I wasn’t expecting her teacher to burst into tears over the sadness of losing her star pupil.  And I wasn’t prepared to start tearing up right along with her.  This school year I am most thankful that Moo had a teacher who not only enjoyed being a teacher, but she genuinely loved and cared about her students.   While she accredited so much of Moo’s success and smarts to me being an involved parent at home, I accredit a good deal of Moo’s successful first grade year to her having a teacher who loved and nurtured her.  It was through and with her teacher’s love that my kid really thrived and flourished.

While there were things I didn’t like about Moo’s new school this year, her teacher isn’t one of them.  She will forever be a part of our village and I plan on emailing her frequently to keep her updated on Moo’s progress.  A part of me is hoping that she’ll end up being JJ’s teacher one day.  Here’s to all the teachers out there who take our children under their wings and fight for them just as hard as we, their parents, do!

I’m thankful that our library was able to workout the issue with their book supplier and approved all of my suggested book purchases.  We read a lot in the YUMMommy household.  Therefore, going to the library is one of our favorite pastimes.  Recently, I noticed that our library was a little low on books featuring main characters of color- African American, Hispanic, etc- and suggested some books like Tia and Tamera Mowry’s Twintution series and Jacqueline Jules’ Sofia Martinez series.  I was super excited when I received a message from our librarian that supplier issue was solved and our book requests were ordered.

There are diverse books out there.  We just have to start seeking them out and supporting the writers who are writing them.  I’ve made it my business to increase the number of books by minority authors- not just Blacks- that I purchase for my Kindle each year.  In doing so I’ve gone beyond reading just my favorite authors and have discovered some new faves.  I’m grateful this and for the opportunity to support fellow writers and give them encouragement to keep on writing because I’m reading and supporting their works.

Lastly, I’m grateful that our weather seems to have gotten its act together.  So far this week has been lovely with nice hot temps and only a few light showers.  I hope that our summer will be a balance of getting just the amount of rain we need without us going into the drought level and having water restrictions.

What are you most thankful for this week?

Happy Thankful Thursday!  I’m so grateful to be back on the blogging wagon.  I took a brief blogging break to move YUMMommy from Blogger to self-hosted WordPress.  I’d said more than once that I wasn’t interested in moving my blog, but then I got frustrated with not being able to add things and customize my site the way I wanted to without having to know how to code.  Don’t get me wrong, I know a little HTML.

However it’s so much easier being able to just add a plugin that does all the hard work instead.  I don’t mind working hard, but sometimes working hard means working hard at working smarter.  I still have a few tweaks and changes to make, but for the most part I am happy that I made the switch.  Being the DIYer that I decided to move everything over myself and that was an experience.  I’m thankful for all for great customer service, the WordPress forum and Google because without these resources I would have had to move each post over manually.

Spring Break is over.  While some parents rejoice about being able to send their children back to school, I am that 1-5% of parents who dread having to give up sleeping in.  I am NOT a morning person.  JJ is NOT a morning person.  The struggle has been real to get up every morning after 10 straight days of sleeping in.  Also, we miss the freedom of being able to decide what we want to do for the day as a family and not rush about having to pick so and so up from school.  This is exactly why I’m thankful that Summer Break is right corner!

The kids have given me a list of some of the fun (and educational) places they would like to visit once school lets out.  I have to admit that I’m excited to see how many of these field trips we’ll mark off our list.  As a mom, I’m proud of the fact that they purposefully picked out some of the places because they want to learn.  I don’t know what I’ve done to instill a natural love of learning into my kids, but I’m kind of patting myself on the back.  They could have just as easily have requested to hang out by the pool and watch TV all summer (not that they have a chance of this happening).  The best part is that my mom, niece and sister will be tagging along on some of these field trips!

Faith is a refusal to panic.

~ D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones

There have been some major changes going on behind the scenes in my personal life.  I’m thankful that through it all my faith has kept me strong and kept me from freaking out.  Life is full of curve balls, but you don’t have to let those curve balls derail you.  We are all stronger than we think.  Regardless of our religions I truly believe that we can all take comfort in your faith when things don’t go as planned or unexpected surprises arrive.

What are you thankful for this week?