Feeling Grateful for Grouse Creek

It's been kind of fun reading other people's gratitude posts on facebook everyday this month. I've enjoyed coming up with my own too. The great thing about gratitude is that the more you count your blessings, "and name them one by one," the more you seem to have. It has been so easy to think of something to post. I've thought back to my childhood friends, wanting to name them one by one, then on to college, and my early married life, then on to Grouse Creek where I started to really find myself. Then on to Paradise where our children really grew up, had fantastic friends, teachers, and neighbors. Now, here we are in Avon where we look out and see the beauties of the earth and feel the bounties of the earth. 

I am grateful for my years in Grouse Creek. Here's a few of the reasons why. Not everyone can live seventy miles from a town with a grocery store and most of that over dirt roads. We only had one station on the television and that one was fuzzy. My husband and I taught school together, twenty-four kids total from ages 5 to 16. We could throw a frisbee from out porch and it could hit the back of the school--that's how close we were to work. Our children played outside a lot. They read books, hiked, rode bikes, played in the gullies and hills, and did a lot with us--their parents. Kids in Grouse Creek learn how to communicate with adults because there were almost as many adults in the school as students. Instead of playing a ball game in the gym with only fifth graders, they learned to play with first graders too. Cooperation was the norm, not the exception. At the church, just a little further from the school, everyone who showed up had a job to do. It didn't matter if they were very active, it took everyone in town to run the ward. Life was simple. And it was good. It was in Grouse Creek that I really began writing stories.  A few were published. Once we moved into "town," it would take years before I would start writing again. I wish every kid could have a Grouse Creek experience. I wish every family could have a Grouse Creek experience. For me, it made such a huge difference in my life.

34 years ago Today...

Happy Anniversary to my husband. Thirty-four years ago, I placed my wedding dress and all that I needed to go with it in the back seat of the car. My mother and I traveled together from Orem to Logan. Of course I was a little nervous, but mostly excited. For some reason, we were late though I don't remember why. When we stepped into the LDS Logan temple, my soon to be husband was standing in the foyer, waiting for me. The look on his face when he saw me was total relief. He later told me he was really afraid I wouldn't show up. After I got ready in a special room reserved for brides, I climbed the stairs and entered a sealing room. All of my brothers and their wives were there. Both of our parents were there. I don't remember everyone who was in the room. I don't remember anything that the officiator said. I just remember feeling completely confident that the man kneeling across the alter was the best person I'd ever known. And I was confident that for some reason, he believed that about me. I was told that everyone behind me was giggling because my feet were jiggling the whole time. They thought I was scared, but they didn't know that my legs always jitter during occasions both big and small. It's not intentional. My dad once quipped that sitting between me and a sister-in-law was like being on a teeter-totter. It's a prominent genetic thing in the family too. Once at a farewell sacrament meeting for a niece, I looked down the row and all the Thayne cousins legs were pumping in unison, but that may be another story.


I was crazy in love with my husband then  and even more crazy in love with him today. I feel so blessed and so lucky that I can say that. It seems impossible that 34 years have passed since that day. We were blessed to welcome a darling boy a year later and four years later a beautiful girl. We are pleased to have three grand children too. Mick has calmed my life. I have energized his. Together we make a pretty good team.

April 19th and days in and around it have become a day for terrible things.
 April 19, 1993 – Waco conflict

April 19, 1995 – Oklahoma City Bombing
April 20, 1999 – Columbine High School Shootings
April 16, 2007 – Virginia Tech Shootings
April 20, 2010 – BP’s Gulf of Mexico Oil Spill and now Boston. 

Had I known perhaps I  we would have chose another day. Each year, it seems like we breathe a sigh of relief if the month is uneventful. But through it all, my husband is the calm in the storms and struggles of life. But he's been there for the moments of triumph too. Thanks Mick for thirty-four years.

Enough

One of the constant blessings in my life are friends. True friends. The faces flash by as I recall my childhood and beyond. Friends have always lifted me wherever I've been in my life. Some people collect coins, stamps, spoons, or numerous other things. I collect friends. Every spot I've landed on this planet, I've been blessed with friends.

I have walking friends, lunch date friends, writer friends, art buddies, ski buddies, book-reading friends, hiking friends, DUP friends, church friends, Liberal friends, not-so Liberal friends, conservative friends, doubting friends, believing friends, online friends, not-on-line friends and so on. Then there are the friends who intersect in and out of several of these groups. And those who aren't in any of the groups, but still know how to be there when I need them.

I've been surprised by friends who recently have shown an outpouring of love and acceptance for me. Sometimes we're afraid to show who we are for fear that who we are isn't good enough, fun enough, smart enough, or whatever enough. I'm blessed with friends who see me and show me that it is enough.