Where would I be without............

With all the new and rather overwhelming happenings in my life, I find myself reflecting on a lot of things that I am really grateful for…..even the little things. Because really, these things bring me a lot of happiness.

The Gospel

Scriptures. Church. The Temple. Eternal Families. The comfort that comes through the Spirit. It’s good news, folks.

Ryan

He’s not just cute, he’s the whole package. He knows where his priorities are, he’s funny, loving and a great daddy. Ryan is really good at being and finding the positive during hard times. He’s the kind of person that I can be with 24/7 and not get tired of.

Baby

Happiness incarnate. Even when he’s crying (well, sometimes) I can’t help but smile and give him kisses. I am SO happy that he’s in my life.

My family

I couldn’t have a better one! They are angels in my life and are so helpful alllll the time. I can’t enumerate the times that I feel that I don’t know what to do next and Silvia brings me cupcakes or my mom will care for the baby or my dad will buy me lunch or say something silly. They are wonderful.







My in-laws

SO supportive, SO non-judgemental. My parents-in-law will even call me to say hello! They also spoil us to death. And they love baby, and I really love to see them with him. I unfortunately don't have pictures of them on my computer right now


Ok, now for the "little" things that I find happiness in:

My blowdryer

After the baby was born, my hair care went down the drain, mostly because I didn’t have a blowdryer that was fast enough and sleep was my biggest priority. I bought an amazing one at a good price and I have nice hair again! Yay! It's amazing how different you feel when your hair looks good.

Vinko Coce’s greatest hits cd

Yes, it’s Croatian. Yes, it’s cheesy, but I have learned to love it. And even better than that, baby loves it and it’s the only thing that can make car rides tolerable for him and produce the desired effect:




Ryan’s Thai food

Meaning “White Curry” (that’s what I call it, hehe), sticky rice and mango, and more recently his Pad Thai. Yummy!

Ideeli.com

I love shopping on this site. I don't have to buy anything, but I feel like I'm missing something if I miss looking at the sale that day. It's my therapy.

Croatia



If I didn’t have Croatia, not only would I not have had an amazing experience where I met and served with fantastic people, but I wouldn’t have a place to daydream about. I often daydream about Croatia :)

A perfect first year of marriage

The recent challenges have made me really reflect on the past year and all of the wonderful things that we have done and the great things that have happened. We couldn’t have had a better year!

Heaven Help Me!

And it has! We went to Stake Conference a few weeks ago and Elder Costas from the Presidency of the Seventy came and spoke. It was a really good talk which was very inspiring. He talked about the importance of frequent temple attendance as well as being organized. I felt a bit guilty, but I made a new goal to organize my house once the conference was over. The guilt increased as the days passed and we still had boxes and boxes to go through and just a lot of general clutter (we just moved to the apartment we are living in). In taking care of and worrying about Ryan’s recent health problems I didn’t know how on earth I would reach my goal. I think in difficult situations like this, God often sends angels to help us. And He sent them to me.

My parents came over one day to care for the baby while Ryan and I went to the temple. When we returned they had moved the furniture I needed moved and taken away the furniture that we didn’t need any more. The house felt so much better and I finally felt that I could keep it up. My parents are such a HUGE help and they often act as angels in my life. Since then I have been able to keep up the house well and get through some other things from the move. Miracles!

And a cute picture of Baby to keep the readers happy. He loves the baby carrier and he'll look all around until he gets tired:

Mommy Blogga'

Well, it took me long enough to post something. I created this blog back in January as a New Year’s resolution, but every time I started to write I would just erase it and decide to wait until I could write something better. I was also afraid of entering the “mommy blogging” world. Luckily my fears have been eased because Ryan was the one to put up the first few posts, so this can’t possibly be a 100% mommy blog, right?! Not that there’s anything wrong with mommy blogs. I am actually inspired by many of the blogs that I read that are written by moms. It’s just a weird phobia of mine, I guess. A phobia that I will quickly throw aside and hopefully start posting more faithfully. And of course, I will most likely write volumes about baby Elias :). Wish me luck!

I'm Stuck

“My arm is stuck”! These are the words I said to Keiry as we were about to get off the bus taking us from the rental car return to the airport where we would fly home from our honeymoon. Not even two weeks into marriage and I had already embarrassed myself! We were sitting down on the bus and I was leaning up against the onboard luggage shelving and my elbow went through. This could have happened to anyone right? I am a little accident prone, but these were new grounds for me. In the past it was my head that got stuck not my arm and that was usually on purpose. My Mom had not warned Keiry to always carry vaseline and to be on the ready to goop up my ears and the side of my head. Like the time I stuck my head through the bars at Sea World or the time I was able to squeeze my head through the stair railings at my grandma’s house. I even got my hand stuck up a candy machine, but those experiences were never on accident. Once I calmed down and the fear lessened, I straitened my arm, turned my hand palm up and removed my arm from the luggage rack.

Pad Thai

Pad Thai and I have a history. I say that like I am an expert or experienced in cooking the famous Thai dish, but I have only made it twice in my life--both times being in the last week! Wednesday night the operation was perfect. The rice noodles softened at the right time, the ingredients combined together flawlessly and the flavor referred to as yumminess by Keiry pervaded the mixture. My Pad Thai was consumed in ten minutes. Thursday’s Pad Thai? Not so much. I decided to fix all the tiny errors I saw in the Pad Thai from the night before and absolutely killed it! I am not using slang here, I literally ruined my dish. Within two minutes of adding the noodles to the mixture of chicken, egg and sauce, I went from having noodles that were too hard and unworkable to having a soggy wet flavorless mush. So what did I do wrong? I rushed the noodles and tried to correct by adding water to the final product and boiling it out. Impatience killed my dish. Never rush rice noodles! Keiry did smile through dinner Thursday night, but she cooked on Friday