Gratitudes. . .

I'm taking advantage of a few minutes to blog, before I get to painting the upstairs hallway. I just wrenched Kyle away from the computer to take his shower and get his things out of his room before I booby-trap the hallway with wet paint.

James is out splitting wood from the trees that fell across the road a couple of weeks ago. The wood from those two trees (less the wood that a neighbor has already collected) will just about fill our need for next winter. It has to season a bit before we can use it, since both trees were still alive when the winds pulled them down.

James has a good stack of wood already collected, split and stacked for this year. He got most of an oak tree from a guy on freecycle.com, and then a dead tree next door dropped the top several feet, and that got cut up and stacked as well. He has permission to fell the remaining truck and cut that up when he finishes with the cherry tree across the street.

It's wonderful to see how abundantly we are provided for when we have such simple needs.

A phone call this morning reminded us how lucky we are to have our health. A "nephew" (extended family-by-choice) was taken to the ER this morning, but is home now, with quite a collection of meds.

We are so grateful for our own health, and the health of our children. It is also a blessing to have ready access to excellent medical care at an affordable price.

My project for the day is priming the walls in the upstairs hallway. My Christmas present from James was mudding the walls to repair dents and smooth the wall surfaces. I can do the drywall mudding and sanding, but it requires quite a bit of upper body strength, so I really appreciate his efforts! Especially as I still haven't rebuilt by shoulder strength after having the cyst reoved from my shoulder. (There's that medical care gratitude again!) It works out well, because I don't much enjoy the mudding. It just seems like "hard work" to me. Then I LOVE painting, especially once I get started on it, and James doesn't. So we divide the primary responsibility for wall improvements according to our interests. (And he gets to go split wood while I paint.)

We figure we'll be ready for this part of building our next house by the time we finish redoing the walls here!

(This house will probably go on the market in Spring of 2011, if you know anyone moving to the DC/Maryland area then. )

What do you enjoy doing to make your world more beautiful? What blessings are you enjoying today?