On Mondays, I take five minutes to write the things that I am thankful for.  I say 5 minutes, but maybe that’s just an ideal.  (It’s easily can add a few hours to fix all of my typos and round-up pictures!)  I make an effort to do this daily, but on Mondays I share! This project has been a HUGE blessing to me! I’m not sure that there’s a better way to start the week!  So without further ado, these are gifts that bring me joy:

• K running wild, cereal all over her hands
• M, with rogue curls, playing vet to plastic horse
• The 6 + surgeries that plastic horse has had this morning
• The garden growing and mirroring life every day…blooms and bugs and holes and climbing striving vines…and the precious water that keeps pouring down on it all.
• Overwhelming Mess (yes, I used my  forbidden word)…that means 4 people I love live here
• A chance…a chance that this new nurse will work out
• A coordinated second here and there were the girls helped me clean
• Cleaning the floor (that I dislike very much) on the van for the last time…
• Being able to get the behemoth of a van up-fitted for our needs.

• The girls sleeping in for the first time in a LONG time…allowing me the time I needed to get B ready this AM…my first time doing the 30 minute mad-rush to get tubes, pump, cochlear implant, and clean boy loaded into his chair and ready to go (nurse-free) .  Such a saving grace this morning!
• A shared meal with a friend that fills up
• Conversation that encouraged and lifted over 5 loud kids’ chatting/playing.

• Three beautiful words that I hardly dared imagine my boy would speak…

“I love you”

In a down moment last weekend, my husband nudged B and told him to tell me he loved me…and

in perfect rhythm, heavy on the vowels, they came…like a song…the most beautiful song!

I may not hear them for months or years to come.

He may utter them weekly or never again…but in a perfect moment he coordinated the muscles to do it.  He said those most precious words in a moment that I needed them most!