Posted on by BWThomas

Family is the steady rock; we need to accept ourselves and our family warts and all.

Painting by Belynda Wilson Thomas

A family doesn’t need to be perfect; it just needs to be united. Unknown

Are we unhappy about the things that don’t work out in our lives or celebrating what is working? Isn’t there always something, big or small that is not working out how we want it to?

Tomorrow we leave for a road trip starting in Vancouver, British Columbia, and ending in Calgary, Alberta. There will be five of us and a fourteen-month-old baby. Will there be hiccups along the way, undoubtedly? Will tempers be frayed at times, certainly? We are fitting a lot into a short time, for sure, but in order to see everyone and everything we want to see, it has to be this way.

We are so fortunate to be able to make this trip and for our grandson to meet his great-grandmother who turns ninety-nine this November. He won’t remember this trip or his great-grandmother but there will be pictures and stories.

This trip came together because as my daughter and I planned to take her son to see mom everyone said we should come too, and here we are the day before we leave.

Today we’ll tie up some loose ends, give our dog a bath before she goes to where she’ll be staying, and water the plants as well as pop last-minute things into our luggage. We haven’t been on a family holiday since our daughter got married almost five years ago.

My kids saw their grandma the fall before the wedding and we are so fortunate mom is still with us. One of the challenges, when we move far from home, is getting back to see family. How fortunate we are to have a family to visit. There is a tie to our family that time and distance don’t erase. When we get together, no matter how long it is since we’ve seen each other there is a sense of belonging. We are part of it, we belong.

We might not have an easy time growing up, sometimes we don’t see things the way our parents do, and our choices don’t align with theirs, but I think most families find a way to accept each other warts and all. No one gets a perfect family where everyone does what they should, always make the best choices, or has the best reaction to someone else’s choices. We sometimes want things for someone that they don’t want for themselves, and we have to accept we can’t control others.

Family, we may not have it all together, but together we have it all. Unknown

“There is so much good in the worst of us, and so much bad in the best of us”, is something Mom has said all my life, and my nephew says, “We love them cause their kin.” That sums up family, made up of the good, the bad, and the ugly, and at various times we might find ourselves in any of those categories. One of the problems we find in families is when they want to pretend there is no bad, or ugly in the family. We don’t all act perfectly all the time, we don’t always treat everyone fairly, think kind thoughts or expect the best of someone else. We have to be okay with our ugly side because it’s part of being human.

If we can accept ourselves warts and all, then maybe we can accept others as well. We have to be careful we don’t fracture families by making it seem that if families aren’t overjoyed with the decisions their children are making they can’t be told the truth about what is going on. When we create secrets in the family even if we think we are doing it for a good reason, it will likely have a bad outcome. When someone realizes you didn’t trust them enough to tell them the truth about yourself, how will they feel, and how will this strengthen the family? If we as a society encourage children and teenagers to keep secrets from their parents are we really doing a good thing even if what we are trying to do is support the children in their decisions?

Parents want the best for their children, and we as a society must trust this is so, because who do children have to turn to if they can’t turn to their parents and family? We have to be careful that by expecting perfection in families we don’t fracture them more and do more damage because perfection is the enemy of the good. Good intentions, have caused a lot of problems, and there are often unintended consequences no one wants to be responsible for, but what if our meddling is responsible?

Family faces are magic mirrors. Looking at people who belong to us, we see the past, present, and future. Gail Lumet Buckley

In family life, love is the oil that eases friction, the cement that binds closer together, and the music that brings harmony. Friedrich Nietzsche

We start with our family, we may stray as life goes on but we all end up with our family – appreciate them. Catherine Pulsifer

Thank you for reading this post. Please come back and read some more. Have a blessed day filled with gratitude, joy, and love.

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Thank you to everyone that reads my books, and a special thank you to those that leave a review on Goodreads and Amazon. If you click on the Amazon link and purchase an item I receive a small percentage of the sale.

Posted on by BWThomas

Living fully in the moment and documenting our days may lead to understanding our lives better.

Painting by Belynda Wilson Thomas

Documenting little details of your everyday life becomes a celebration of who you are. Carolyn V. Hamilton

We are so busy, but what are we busy doing? Keeping a journal helps us understand the life we’ve lived and the thoughts we had while we lived it. As we plan our itinerary for our trip out west the schedule is getting pretty full. Can we see this person I ask, just pop in and say hi. I’m not even trying to fit cousins in, just nieces and nephews.

Making this trip so everyone gets to see most of what they want to see is our goal. We don’t have tickets to the Calgary Stampede yet, we thought we couldn’t get any but there were a few available last night. My husband has to decide if he wants to go now that it looks like it’s a possibility once again. Decisions, decisions, decisions, we only have a bit of time to spend so we have to decide how to spend it.

Years ago we took the ferry to Vancouver Island and toured Bouchard Gardens so we aren’t doing that this trip. We’ll see Stanley Park, dinner beside the ocean with a niece and nephew and their families, and the Night Market in Richmond on our first day.

When do we rest, when indeed? We might have to lighten our schedule a little we do have a fourteen-month-old on board, but I expect him to be a little trooper sleeping in the stroller or carrier.

How lucky we are to be able to take this trip for his Great-Grandmother to get to meet him, and my kids to see their Grandmother.

Our little dog is staying with my daughter-in-law’s grandparents while we are away, but they also got asked to look after a cat. Fortunately, the cat will stay somewhere else so we don’t have to worry about a cat and dog fight. They might have gotten along well, but my daughter-in-law doesn’t want the responsibility of Lulu getting hurt while with her family.

There’s a whole load of stuff in life that is worth documenting. You see it every day but do not even notice. Jan Chipchase

Sometimes we plan things for years, other times they come together quickly as this trip is. We are so blessed to be able to go on a family trip, to have a family to see, to live so far away and still be able to get together, to be able to pick up the phone and talk, and even video chat if we want to.

There is so much to enjoy, so much to see, and so much to be grateful for. We will be getting in a lot of walking which I hope will make up for the amount of eating we will be doing. Good food is always an enjoyable part of a holiday.

One of the things I’m planning to do is create an Illustrated Journal of our trip. I’ll be giving a couple of talks on Illustrated Journals when I get back, so having one I started on our trip will be a good example of what I’m talking about. I’m feeling a little pressure to make it worthy of display but the goal is not perfection, so much as documenting our trip.

Documenting our life is a good exercise and putting our thoughts, maybe a few photos, drawings, and observations on a page will bring us back to the moment when we look through our journal. We can write down what we are grateful for and how we feel now. We can write down thoughts we don’t want to forget. Combining writing, art, photos, and even memorabilia will fill our journal and make it special. I like to read my journals and relive what I was thinking because we don’t always know at the moment how important something will be. We won’t always look back on things the same way we were looking at them when they happened.

Life is what we make it, and keeping a journal whether written or illustrated is a way to make more of our lives. The more we put into life, the more we get out of it.

Document the adventure of your current life, whatever and wherever that might be. Diane Evans

Documentation is a love letter that you write to your future self. Damian Conway

Art creation is the documentation of the soul’s voice. Malkiese Paythress

Thank you for reading this post. Please come back and read some more. Have a blessed day filled with gratitude, joy, and love.

To subscribe, comment, see archives or categories of posts click on the picture and scroll to the end.

Thank you to those that read my books, and a special thank you to those that leave a review on Goodreads and Amazon. If you click on the Amazon link and purchase an item I receive a small percentage of the sale through the Amazon affiliate program.

Posted on by BWThomas

We can’t do everything, but we can choose what we will do, at least some of the time.

Painting by Belynda Wilson Thomas

Do what you can, with what you have, where you are. Theodore Roosevelt

We think we can’t do things until we do them. Then we wonder why we didn’t do it earlier. It might be getting up early to write, exercise, or practice something. We wanted to do something that didn’t fit into our lives until we made time for it.

Much of life is making a decision to do something and then doing it. We can’t be more than we are until we do more than we do. That makes sense so what would we like to be accomplishing that we aren’t accomplishing yet? What would we like to do, see, or be? If it is going to happen we are going to have to make it happen by finding a time to fit it into our life and schedule it.

One of the things my husband and I haven’t gotten to is traveling. We are planning our trip to England for next year, and Mom turns one hundred years old. This is a milestone that needs to be celebrated, so the trip to England might be postponed for at least a year.

Planning things is tricky, sometimes if we put things off they might never happen, but if we don’t put them off something better won’t happen. We never know what will happen in our lives or the lives of others, but we can make the best of what we have now. We can enjoy the blessings in our life now. We can laugh and celebrate now. We can invite someone to dinner and find out a couple of months later it was the last dinner we’ll spend with them, and we are happy we got to spend the time with them we did.

This is why we are taking our grandson to meet his great-grandmother and not waiting to do it to celebrate her 100th birthday. We can do it now, and if we are blessed we can celebrate her 100th birthday, but we don’t want to regret not going now when we can. England is not going anywhere, it will still be there waiting for me. My husband was born in England and has always wanted to take me to see his place of birth. He’s been to my hometown in Saskatchewan and seen the farm I grew up on. I want to see where he started his life in London, England.

Always do your best. What you plant now, you will harvest later. Og Mandino

Some people never get back to the land of their birth, but some like my daughter-in-law’s grandparents returned for the first time after being gone for seventy years. Life rolls along whether we are accomplishing what we want to or not. We get to make choices in life, and those choices color our lives in ways we might not have considered when we chose them. This is why our choices are so important.

Is there a bigger choice in life than who we marry, and who we have children with, hopefully, the same person? We can change jobs, start businesses, and create a side hustle, but getting in and out of marriages is where we really hurt people.

It seems to me one of the blessings in life is to find a great partner and stick with them through thick and thin, and spend our later years doing things we didn’t have time for when we were busy building a life. If we have a partner we are going through life with we can share our joys and sorrows, go on adventures we might not want to do alone and enjoy the harvest of our lives.

We don’t know what may come, so we need to make our plans and do things while we can. What are the things we really want to see, be, or do in life? What’s possible now?

Do something today that your future self will thank you for. Unknown

What you do makes a difference, and you have to decide what kind of difference you want to make. Jane Goodall

Our problem is not that we don’t have power, so much as that we tend to not use the power we have. Marianne Williamson

Thank you for reading this post. Please come back and read some more. Have a blessed day filled with gratitude, joy, and love.

To subscribe, comment, and see archives or categories of posts click on the picture and scroll to the end.

Thank you to everyone that reads my books, and a special thank you to those that leave a review on Amazon and Goodreads. If you click on the Amazon link I receive a small percentage of the sale through the Amazon affiliate program.

Posted on by BWThomas

Celebrating fathers, celebrating writers, there is so much to celebrate.

Painting by Belynda Wilson Thomas

I can shake off everything as I write; my sorrows disappear, my courage is reborn. Anne Frank

Father’s Day was yesterday and celebrations took place in backyards, restaurants, and at whatever events kids think their fathers will enjoy. How blessed we are to celebrate Father’s Day. Even if our father is no longer with us, he is part of our life, however big or small a part he played or is still playing.

Now that we are grandparents my husband isn’t the only father to be celebrated. We had a lovely barbeque in the backyard. Our grandson was putting pebbles in his mouth and wanted us to chase him to take them out. Life seems more fun when there are kids around, everything is new, they laugh and we laugh watching their antics.

On Saturday I attended a Local Authors Showcase in the park put on by a Library in Brampton. It was a lovely event and there were ten children’s authors there unless I missed some, and my goal was to speak to each of them and ask if they would be willing to be part of Story Time with local authors reading their books. Everyone said yes, and now I have to make it happen.

If local authors can read their books to children then children meet authors. The books these local authors have written are wonderful. One author wrote about her dream of skating and lessons learned in hockey that aren’t about winning, Nancy Whiteford, “My Skating Journey,” and “It’s More Than Hockey.” Fiona E. Vander Wilp wrote “I Love Being Me,” and “My Shining Star.”  The first story she wrote and illustrated is about a child she taught as an Educational Assistant, and her books have taken on a life of their own. Paul and Tuula Reddit wrote about their beloved dog, “Schluberhound.” These were the authors on each side of me in the park.  

The mistake I made was not asking my husband to come with me. This was the first time I attended this event and I went by myself which made networking tricky, I had to leave my table to talk to other authors. Husbands and wives supporting their writing spouses were there in abundance so my husband would have had lots of people to talk and joke with. I think he would have enjoyed it if I invited him to attend, but I assumed (and isn’t that usually a mistake) he would not be interested.

Talking to other authors and hearing about their journeys is interesting. One romance author (and I thought I got her card) but I’ll have to do a little research to get her information didn’t start writing until she was fifty and most of the author’s there are writing more as a pastime than as a way to make a living.

To gain your own voice, you have to forget about having it heard. Allen Ginsberg

Some authors hit it big and some don’t but it isn’t only the quality of books and the writing or illustrating, there is a lot of luck involved, but an artist or writer can’t be discovered unless they do the work. If they do the work who knows where it will lead? I believe we get more out of writing than just having something written. We are not the same person when we are finished writing that we were when we started. Writing is a gift we give ourselves and whatever rewards come after that are a bonus.

An author arrived late with his family and set up behind me, being the first visitor to his table he gave me a copy of his book. His daughter said, “Dad, you’re supposed to be selling them.” I have the book in front of me, a book of poems and prose, “Flowers on the Far Side,” by Jaspal Virdee.

There were about one hundred local authors as part of the Showcase and everyone had a book or books, and a story, but I can’t mention them all so I’ve mentioned the ones that were near me.

If you attend an event with local authors, don’t feel intimidated that if you talk to them they think you should buy their book. Feel free to talk to them, look at their book, take a card or bookmark, or buy the book if you want to, but feel free to talk to them. They would love to talk to you.

If you want to be a writer, you must do two things above all others: read a lot and write a lot. Stephen King

First you set out to write a book then very quickly you realize the book was set out to write you. Brandon A. Trean

If you really want to know yourself, start by writing a book. Shereen El Feki


Thank you for reading this post. Please come back and read some more. Have a blessed day filled with gratitude, joy, and love.

To subscribe, comment, and see archives or categories of posts click on the picture and scroll to the end.

Thank you to those that read my books, and a special thank you if you put a review on Goodreads and Amazon. If you click on the Amazon link and purchase an item I receive a small percentage of the sale through the Amazon affiliate program.

Posted on by BWThomas

Taking charge of our money is taking charge of our life.

Painting by Belynda Wilson Thomas

Savings, remember, is the prerequisite of investment. Campbell R. Mcconnell

Are we scared to think about retirement even if it looms large? Do we calculate how much money we need to retire comfortably and know if we don’t sell our home, and even if we do, we might not have that astronomical number? Yet people retire every year, and most seem to manage. What is the secret the financial gurus who are scaring us aren’t telling us? Could it be that we don’t need an astronomical sum to retire and be okay?

Do-it-yourself investors – those who bought stock in quality companies, many of them paying dividends, and held the stock over long periods are the investors that have done well. We have many blogs and books telling us about dividend investing and how we can create a growing income, and we don’t need a million dollars according to Henry Mah author of Your TFSA Compounder, Income Investing Explained, Your Ever Growing Income, and Salary for Life.

We owe it to ourselves to take control of our financial life, and not be embarrassed that we weren’t able to amass the astronomical amount of money the financial industry tells us we need if we don’t want to eat dog food in our old age. One of the problems we have in my opinion is we don’t talk about money enough, and by not talking about it we don’t learn what there is to learn. Many people would rather talk about their sex life than their financial life if given a choice.

If we never save money or invest we will always be poor. No matter how much we earn. Unknown

In Canada, we have the Tax Free Savings Account (TFSA) available to us since 2009 which allows us to contribute a total of $88,000 if we were born before 1991. According to Henry Mah and others, using the TFSA over RRSPs will give us more money and if we have a choice of contributing to our TFSA or an RRSP we should choose the TFSA first in most cases.

Of course, not everyone agrees on this, but I trust someone that wants to help me manage and grow my money more than someone that wants fees to manage my money when it seems the most effective way to grow your money is without paying fees or taxes.

The more control we take in our life the better, whether it is our health, finances, or attitude. For the most part, we have to be our own control board. Who else can make us do what we need to do? Finding books, blogs, and podcasts that enlighten us might change the course of our lives. I think those who read Henry Mah’s books will find themselves offered possibilities they didn’t feel were open to them because they didn’t have millions saved for retirement.

None of this knowledge is hidden and yet so many of us don’t know it. We know we should live within our means and invest, and I think what causes a lot of us problems, is we think the little we could save and invest won’t make a difference, so why not spend what we have on little enjoyments?

Small amounts invested grow over time and the earlier we start the less we need to save because the power of compounding works for us. Those who turn eighteen now have the opportunity to invest in the TFSA their whole working lives. The rest of us could only invest in it since 2009 but the contribution limit we haven’t used accumulates, and we can take money out and replace it at a later date.

Knowledge is power. Information on many subjects is available to us, and the more we apply it to our lives the better our lives will be. Have we learned everything we should about creating a good retirement, or is there more to learn?

Do not save what is left after spending, but spend what is left after saving. Warren Buffet

Financial peace isn’t the acquisition of stuff. It’s learning to live on less than you make, so you can give money back and have money to invest. You can’t win until you do this. Dave Ramsey

Earn as much as you can. Save as much as you can. Invest as much as you can. Give as much as you can. Rev John Wellesley

Thank you for reading this post. Please come back and read some more. Have a blessed day filled with gratitude, joy, and love.

To subscribe, comment, and see archives or categories of posts click on the picture and scroll to the end.

Thank you to everyone that reads my books, and a special thank you to those that leave a review on Goodreads and Amazon. If you click on the Amazon link and purchase an item I receive a small percentage of the purchase price through the Amazon affiliate program.

Posted on by BWThomas

If we bring more laughter into our lives will it make our lives better?

Painting by Belynda Wilson Thomas

A merry heart doeth good like a medicine but a broken spirit drieth the bones. Proverbs 17:22

Laughter is the best medicine haven’t we all been taught that and yet do we laugh enough? Do we see the humor in the situation? Sometimes I think we are in a bit of a mirthless time as people who see the funny in situations that aren’t really funny are called out as not being politically correct enough.

But, isn’t empathy and seeing the humor from the victim’s point of view two ways of looking at the same thing? When we choose to laugh instead of cry over whatever has happened isn’t that better? Gallows humor might not be politically correct, but when we can’t laugh about horrendous situations they will bring us further down than if we can find the humor in what really isn’t a laughing matter, but laughter may be the best way to get through it.

Don’t we love to spend time with people who make us laugh? Are we someone that makes someone’s day with a laugh or are we bringing them down with the dark and dreary news and wringing as much angst and fear out of life that is possible?

Laughter connects you with people. It’s almost impossible to maintain any kind of distance or any sense of social hierarchy when you’ve just howled with laughter. Laughter is a force for democracy. John Cleese

We aren’t getting out of this life alive, whether we look on the bright side or the dark side. There is a lot of laughter in our house right now because the antics of a fourteen-month-old give us a lot to laugh about. When did we lose this natural enjoyment in life? Have we quit giggling with joy? Have we quit seeing the funny side of life because we fear we might offend someone?

If we can’t greet negativity with playful optimism and if we can’t find the funny in a situation it makes sense we will feel worse. Laughter may be one of our greatest self-help tools, the problem might be when we most need a laugh is when we find life the hardest.

When we are in a group of strangers if we all laugh at a joke the ice is broken. A good sense of humor will help us get along in life. One of the reasons we enjoy time with friends is we spend so much time laughing.

Can I bring more humor into my life? A long humorous life will be more enjoyable than one where we always look for the sad, unfair, and injustice in life. What if looking on the funny side of life could put things into perspective for us? What if for life to change we have to change, one of the best ways to change might be to look at our life with gratitude and see the humor in the big and little things in life.

Do we have enough humor in our life? How can we smile more, laugh more, and enjoy life more?

Your body cannot heal without play. Your mind cannot heal without laughter. Your soul cannot heal without joy. Catherine Rippenger Fenwick

Always laugh when you can. It is cheap medicine. Lord Byron

Laughter is the sun that drives winter from the human face. Victor Hugo

Thank you for reading this post. Please come back and read some more. Have a blessed day filled with gratitude, joy, and love.

To subscribe, comment, see archives or categories of posts click on the picture and scroll to the end.

Thank you to everyone that reads my books, and a special thank you to everyone that leaves a review on Goodreads and Amazon. If you click on the Amazon link and purchase an item I receive a small percentage of the sale through the Amazon affiliate program.

Posted on by BWThomas

Technology and unforeseen consequences.

Painting by Belynda Wilson Thomas

There are downsides to everything; there are unintended consequences to everything. Steve Jobs

“I’m not accusing you, but…” a young boy stood on our front step Tuesday evening showing me his phone which showed his missing earbuds were at our address. On the screen in big black letters, was our address.

The earbuds were taken out of his backpack at school, he said, but it isn’t one of our local schools. No one in our area goes to his school. No one in our house is of school age, but there on his phone is our address. He and his father leave, and we are left with a mystery. Why is our address on his phone the location of his missing earbuds?

Last night his mother showed up. We go through the same information, but now the earbud tracker is dead and the last known location on the phone is our address at three o’clock pm on Tuesday.

Evidence like this could get someone in real trouble. What if the item missing was more valuable than a pair of earbuds? What if the police were called? What if the earbud tracker quit working at the precise time it went past our house in a vehicle, and that is why it shows our address? There is an explanation and I believe both of our stories are true, those earbuds must have been by our house at 3:00 pm on Tuesday to register our address, and we don’t have anything to do with the missing earbuds.

If a tracker in a vehicle registers as being at an address when it is in a vehicle traveling on a road there are all kinds of ways this can point fingers at innocent people, and the accusers might not always be willing to believe what they are seeking is not at said address.

Technology always has unforeseen consequences, and it is not always clear, at the beginning, who or what will win, and who or what will lose. Neil Postman

Situations get out of control over seemingly benign things, tempers get heated, things get said, and actions get taken because people with an address on their phone don’t believe what they are seeking isn’t at the address their device says it is. What if a missing child’s tracker showed their last known location as our address because the vehicle whisking them away drove past our house?

Technology is wonderful and knowing we can locate missing items might make us feel good until we are on a stranger’s doorstep saying, “I’m not accusing you, but…” As we’ve seen in the news, showing up at the wrong stranger’s house can have dire consequences.

Tracking devices can and are used in nefarious ways, and seemingly innocent things can have devastating consequences. As a society are we equipped to deal with what our technology brings, both the good and the bad?

One of the great mistakes is to judge policies and programs by their intentions rather than their results. Milton Friedman

The law of unintended consequences is the only real law of history. Niall Ferguson

Fear makes come true that which one is afraid of. Viktor E. Frankl

Thank you for reading this post. Please come back and read some more. Have a blessed day filled with gratitude, joy, and love.

To subscribe, comment, and see archives or categories of posts click on the picture and scroll to the end.

Thank you to everyone that reads my books, and a special thank you to those that leave a review on Goodreads and Amazon. If you click on the Amazon link and purchase an item I receive a small percentage of the sale through the Amazon affiliate program.

Posted on by BWThomas

Happy families and unhappy families may be the difference in how we look at the realities of living together.

Painting by Belynda Wilson Thomas

Family is the biggest support system in the times of trouble. Invaly

Last Thursday one of the speeches at Toastmasters was about lessons a member learned from her mother. As I listened to her talk I thought, how many of us listening are thinking, it’s like we have the same mother.

Tolstoy said, “Happy families are alike, each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.” Could it be that in happy families people realize no one is perfect and they allow for imperfections with humor, forgiveness, and mercy?

What if we all have a story to tell about our families, and the big difference is how we view the realities of another’s imperfections and how they view ours? Haven’t we all disappointed others and been disappointed by others? This is the nature of life with other people, but how we react to the disappointments may be what is important, do we sum up our partner by their faults or do they sum us up by our faults? It isn’t important or even possible to marry someone without faults.

We are watching a show, “Match Me Abroad,” people who couldn’t find love in their own country are going abroad with picky, picky attitudes looking for someone who will not irritate them. I’m not a psychic but I have a pretty good idea that if no one in your own country is good enough for you, going to another country won’t likely be that much better. Because what they are taking with them is their attitude.

A good sense of humor goes a long way in relationships, but not if we make jokes at the other person’s expense. Sometimes we have to dig deep to find the funny in the situation, but if we look at things with a critical heart we might end up with a black hole where love should be, and all the life gets sucked out of the marriage.

If we can laugh together over things that could make us cry, realize we aren’t perfect, but we are still lucky to have each other, and the fact we don’t see things the same way can give us a bigger view of life. It’s our choice, we can carry every sling and arrow, every thoughtless action, every selfish act as if it was meant to hurt us, or we can believe they have the best of intentions even if it doesn’t look that way, and we can hope they view our faults the same.

You go through life wondering what is it all about, but at the end of the day, it’s all about family. Rod Stewart

If someone has stood by our side through the thick and thin of life, sacrificed some of what they wanted so we could get some of what we wanted, and if we can acknowledge that the disappointments our partner has faced are at least equal to what we have faced, but at least we have someone to share these disappointments as well as the joys and accomplishments with, how lucky are we?

If we have a partner, and we aren’t looking for someone to fill the chair on the other side of the table, that is a blessing. We can plan dinner and have someone to share it with. We can laugh at the antics of our children, grandchildren, or even great-grandchildren. We can share our dreams and our disappointments; we can make plans for the trip we’ve always planned on taking.

If we have a partner, we have someone that has our back, someone to call if the car breaks down, someone to hug, and share small and big moments with. I wonder how many people gave up on an imperfect relationship, only to find themselves in another imperfect relationship wondering if they shouldn’t have stayed in the first imperfect one.

Jim Rohn tells us, “Don’t ask for things to be easier, ask to be better.” We can’t change our partner and they can’t change us, but can we give the other person as much grace as we hope they will give us? If we look at their quirks and shortcomings with humor and forgiveness perhaps they can look at ours the same way. We won’t be a perfect family but maybe a happy one. Pope Francis said, “The family is a factory of hope,” and isn’t that a wonderful way to look at our family as our own little hope factory?

Let your first interest be in your home. The baby you hold in your arms will grow quickly as the sunrise and the sunset of the rushing days. Gordon B. Hinckley

The strength of a family, like the strength of an army, lies in its loyalty to each other. Mario Puzo

That’s what people do who love you. They put their arms around you and love you when you’re not so lovable. Deb Caletti

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Posted on by BWThomas

Creating good habits, our habits create our life, we should depend on our habits not our discipline.

Painting by Belynda Wilson Thomas

If you have good habits, time becomes your ally. All you need is patience. James Clear

We plant our garden and then we have to water, weed, and take care of it. I’ve never planted a huge garden like Mom used to plant. We ate out of it all summer and then all winter from the canned and frozen food, and what would keep in the cold cellar.

I’ve long considered the grocery store my pantry. Anything we want is just a short walk or drive away. How wonderful to live in a country that works and we can count on our supply chain to deliver what we need and want on time and at a reasonable price. We have the opportunity to eat better than at any time in the past.

The question is are we eating better than we’ve ever eaten in the past, or are we just eating more without having to do more? I was listening to Warren Buffet and he was talking about how we want to live in a society that no matter what circumstances we get at birth we can live a life of dignity. What will we do when we don’t have an underdog to fight for? There will always be levels of wealth and if there aren’t we would never be able to strive to build something or create something that creates wealth.

Some of us may think less work and more play would make us happier. My sister has a four-day workweek and loves it. I would love to try a four-day workweek and some weeks that would work well, but some weeks we need that day and even the weekend to keep up.

We need to have a rhythm to our lives and when we do, everything goes well until something interrupts our rhythm. The gym isn’t fitting into my life again yet. What is taking so long? There are so many excuses if we want an excuse. Sitting in the backyard watching my grandson play in his sandbox seems like more of a priority, and following him as he climbs all the way to the top of the stairs. This new little person in my life takes up all the time I let him, and it is wonderful. I get up a little earlier so when he comes to visit me in the morning he doesn’t interfere with my blog, and I can fit a little walk in with my dog before getting to work. We look after him while our daughter goes to the gym, but we aren’t getting there ourselves as often.

You’ll never change your life until you change something you do daily. The secret of your success is found in your daily routine. John C. Maxwell

I keep telling myself on Monday I need to go to the gym. Another Monday comes and goes without getting there. The habit of going to the gym has been broken and I need to develop a new habit. Some habits are hard to break and some are easy, we might tell ourselves we just need a little more discipline but I find a good habit is better than trying to accomplish things with discipline.

When we create a routine we generally do everything in our routine, we don’t think about it, we just do it. The better our routine the better our life will be. We need to be careful about what habits we form in our lives because each habit will help determine our progress. It is too much to expect bad habits to give good results. Some things we do we might not consider habits, but if we continue to do them they become habits, and some of them we might not be happy with, others we might be glad we created.

What if every day we make a slight change to improve our lives in some way? To some degree, our life is what we make it. Is it all up to us, probably not, but probably more than we might want to admit.  I have to go my little dog is ready for her walk.

Chains of habit are too light to be felt until they are too heavy to be broken. Warren Buffet

First forget inspiration. Habit is more dependable. Habit will sustain you whether you’re inspired or not. Octavia Butler

Practice isn’t the thing you do once you’re good. It’s the thing you do that makes you good. Malcolm Gladwell

Thank you for reading this post. Please come back and read some more, and have a blessed day filled with gratitude, joy, and love.

To subscribe, comment, and see archives or categories of posts click on the picture and scroll to the end.

Thank you to everyone that reads my books, and a special thank you to those that leave a review on Goodreads and Amazon. If you click on the Amazon link and purchase an item I receive a small percentage of the sale through the Amazon affiliate program.