Tag Archives: thoughts

Perspective

Just Life, Other, , , , ,

Lately I’ve been feeling a little stressed and busy. It’s been a fun, action-packed month of July with vacations and an awesome work conference. I’ve gotten to spend time with family and friends and it’s been great. But coming out of it all, I feel like I have so much to do: normal laundry and cleaning, getting the house back in order, collecting baby gear, getting things ready for the latest addition to our family, wrapping up projects at work, other to-do items. For a few days, I was really overwhelmed. (And it doesn’t make it easier to accomplish my to-do list when I’m so tired coming home from work that I just want to lay down and do nothing.)

This evening our house was hot, and BYU has faster Internet that we do, so Josh and I brought our computers and some things to work on and headed up to campus. I was tired and whiny, but after a frosty and fries (yum yum) and once we got settled in a study room, I started tackling my to-do list.

After a little bit, I looked around and realized that I was on BYU campus in a study room, somewhere I hadn’t been in a while, and it reminded me of being a student. Those days of papers and tests and studying and deadlines. Then I took a second look at what I was doing: writing thank-you cards for generous baby shower gifts from family and friends. Sitting next to my best friend in the world. Getting ready to be a mom. Wow, how easy, fun, and carefree compared to studying for finals!

I really enjoyed being a student and going to college, but I think if my college self could look ahead to me right now, I’d be jealous and excited. Me with an awesome job I love and free evenings. With no homework. And with an amazing miraculous blessing about to enter my life, just around the corner.

So remembering my past tonight helped me enjoy the now just a little bit more. It’s so easy for me to get caught up in dreaming about and waiting for the future. Sometimes I think I forget that this current now I’m in is the future I once looked forward to more than anything. I think I need to stop and enjoy the now more often.

Kitchen Table + Mini Boats = $1,000,000

Other, ,

Do you ever hear about an invention or design or product so random, yet so cool, it just makes you happy to be part of the incredibly creative human race? Josh and I had one of those moments last week.

On Sunday we had some couples from our ward over for dinner; the menu consisted of baked potatoes, salad, and rolls. As we struggled to pass all the dishes, platters, and bowls around the table, I brought up the lazy susan that sits on the table in my parents house, the one I grew up with. (If you don’t know what a lazy susan is, follow the link and learn real quick.) Then one guy told us all about a table he had seen in the Philippines – a kind of different spin on a lazy susan, if you will (ha, no pun intended!). He described it as a big regular square dinner table, but with a big hole cut out of the middle and filled with a container of water. You could then place all the dishes in the water, and if someone opposite the table needed the rolls? Why, just shove them across and they’d float on over!

Awesome, huh? We all thought it was pretty cool. (So cool that I’m writing this blog post now). And I wanted to include a picture, but I couldn’t find one online (how would you Google for that, anyway? “Kitchen table water center”? Nope. “Kitchen table pass dishes water”? Nope. If you have any suggestions, let me know). Anyway, since I couldn’t find a picture, I drew one up real quick, for visual learners like me (and for you, Mom, because I know how much you love diagrams).

So here’s an isometric view:

And even an arial view:

So we hope you enjoy this awesome invention as much as we did. Whoever thought of it is a genius. Maybe we’ll even own one some day. If we do, I think we should fill the container with goldfish…um, maybe. But I could see some definite potential disasters if you combine a kitchen table filled with water and a family of kids.

The Silver Lining

Just Life, Other, ,

I believe the difference between a good day and a bad day, between an awesome experience and an awful one, can all be in the way you look at it. Take our kitchen cabinets, for example. The house we’re renting (as we’ve discussed) is old, less-than-perfect, and quirky. When we first moved in and saw the kitchen cabinets, I thought, “Wow, they’re all white and made of metal. Taa-cky.” But then, one happy day, I was looking at our refrigerator, which is crowded with magnets and wedding announcements and cards from family, and then I looked at our cabinets…back at the refrigerator…back at the cabinets… “Hey!” I thought. “Those have potential!” And now (after a Christmas present from my sister of lots and lots of new magnets), I’ve turned our kitchen cabinets into more displays of cards, photographs, letters, and family love. Awesome!

So it’s all in the way you look at it, really. About finding the silver lining. Joshua and I were talking tonight, and we want to try to do that more often. Even when our lives are in flux, and we don’t know what changes with internships and jobs and such the next few months will bring, and life is scary and uncertain, we’ve decided we want to be better about looking for the silver lining.