The Eternal Optimist

I'm an optimist...a very pollyanna, glass half full, lemonade out of lemons, see the best in everybody and everything optimist. I've always seen myself that way, and the people I'm very close to would agree. So it's been sort of strange for me to read back through this blog and not see that at all. In fact, see the very opposite of that. I know this has been a place for me to vent and I suppose I've needed that, because this has been a dark couple of years for me. I'm not going to stop venting, but I'd also like to find more balance and make this blog more true to who I really am. So today I'm going to talk about five exciting and happy things that have been going on with me for the many many months I've been gone:

1. Ryann turned ten. My girl is double digits. Impossible to believe! She's such a sweet soul. We have epic mother/daughter battles, but she's smart, funny, thoughtful and beautiful inside and out and I'm so proud to be her mom. She has shot up in the past year. She is almost as tall as me!?!?! We're in the process of leaving behind shopping in the girls' section in favor of the juniors' section. She did great on all her testing this year. She scored perfect in the writing portion of her Stanford test and scored high school levels in most areas of the test.

2. K and I celebrated another anniversary at Hotel Icon. This was in the middle of some of a lot of drama, and we couldn't really decide whether or not we wanted to do anything at all for anniversary, but we did and I'm glad. We had a nice time.

3. I am really getting so much more organized and neat. I've started doing parts of the flylady system and it has made a huge difference in my house and my life. This has been something I've really struggled with my whole life. I'm messy, but it's like a light bulb went off and it's a work in progress and I have a long way to go to get it to where I want it to be, but I am decluttering and keeping the areas that I've already decluttered very clean. The biggest thing for me has been organizing. Once I figure out a place for everything, it's so much easier to keep it neat. Also, my car used to be a HUGE MESS. No more!! It stays clean and organized! I'm very proud of myself.

4. My ear surgery was a success, so I can hear out of my left ear. Hell to the yeah!! I'm very excited about this. I'm still trying to get used to it. I still always talk on the phone on the right side, but it's just out of habit. I still don't hear as well as most people do in either ear, but it is so much better than it was and I feel very blessed to have had the surgery in both ears. Without them, I would barely be able to hear at all.

5. I got a new car. Well, it's actually an suv, but I call it a car. It's a Honda CRV and I LOVE IT!! It looks like this: