gratitude doesn't have an expiration date

Guys. While KonMari-ing (mostly for real this time) my house, I found a little notebook my mom had given me on my 23rd birthday - my "golden birthday," because I was born on the 23rd. That year, my parents gave me one of the very best gifts I've ever received: they sent me on a weekend alone at a bed and breakfast out of town*. They didn't even tell me where they were sending me. They just put the address in the GPS and sent me on my way, with a basket of fruit, a little cash, and some other goodies in my backseat.

I ended up in a small town about an hour or so away from where we lived, but somewhat near relatives - they weren't dumb enough to send my still-knowing-everything self too far away from safety - to this adorable, historical bed and breakfast. My room was actually what had been an original entire house, complete with original front door and fireplace. It was half a block down the street from the bed and breakfast's "main house," where they served breakfast, so that made it feel even more private (though the house I was staying in had been added on to, so there were more rooms in my same building). The first night I was there, I walked to a little grocery store around the corner, and purchased a few necessities for my stay.

And did I mention my birthday is in late October? So every morning, I would wrap up in cozy clothes, and make my trek to the main house for breakfast. There was always a perfectly crisp chill in the air in the mornings. When I was done eating, I would wander around the cute downtown area. I found a little giftshop and an art studio I really liked, so I frequented those.

Let me interrupt my reverie to go back and tell you about the notebook I found. I guess my mom had tucked it into my little goody basket. In the front cover was written a message that went something like: "In this notebook, there is space for writing 200+ blessings for which you're grateful. Your challenge over the next three days is to come up with 100 blessings, and write one on each page." How cute is that?? And, sure enough, on the following pages I found (most) of what I had written...

"Most" because, for some reason, there are only 97? But the notebook is full. All I can guess is that I tore out some of the pages later (maybe they were related to old beaus?). But anyway, when I found and read the notebook, I thought, WOW. This book is almost a decade old, and I'm still grateful for every single thing. They are all still applicable to my (very different) life today (fun fact: it was less than three months after this trip when I met my now-husband). So it just blew me away that, hey, gratitude doesn't have an expiration date. Maybe that's not quite the perfect phrase to reflect what's in my head and heart...but I don't know what is. I just thought finding the notebook was pretty cool.

So, I want to take you on a journey with me through my little book, a few blessings at a time. It'll be such a fun way to start off the new year :)

There are so many questions I could pose to you: What has been one of your favorite gifts? Have you ever taken the time to write down what you're grateful for? What do you think of maybe doing some sort of time capsule thing - like making a list of blessings every year, and opening them up and re-reading every year or ten years or even just saving them for your descendants to find sometime after you're gone?

*I actually ended up being pretty lonely that weekend. At that point in my life, I was working full-time, yet still living with my parents. I thought they made me feel smothered, so the gift of alone-ness felt so perfect. But once I had been away about 24 hours I realized that I really wanted to share the weekend and its luxuriousness with someone. And I really missed my mom. So I begged her to come join me, and she did, and her presence made the trip so much more special. That weekend was probably what began the rebuilding of the relationship I had so nearly destroyed during my teenage years.