Happy St. Valentine's Day!!!

Hello All! Happy Valentine's Day! Lucy's outift number one for Valentine's Day advised you to "hug her." Don't you wish that you could?

Here are Lucy and Mommy when Lucy was in outfit number two. =) The first one fell prey to a poopy diaper!

Sweet Stinker!

Smiles By Wire Link

Happy Wednesday All!

I wanted to post this link where it would be easily accessible to all! These are some of Lucy's 6 months photos that I had taken at JC Penney's. The clarity of the web photos is poor, but you get the idea! She hammed it up a bit, but refused to really smile for any of them. Not that I blame her since she was running a fever...poor thing! She was greatly amused by the silk flower, though!

To get started, click below and enter your Customer Name (Molly Smith)

Lucy Pictures-Smiles By Wire

Life Should Be Curious, Fearless...And Creative

As I watch my daughter become acquainted with the world around her each day, I am reminded of how much there truly is to discover in our world. It is so amazing to watch her become her own person, full of enthusiasm that refuses to be dampened! While it is certainly true that we do lose the "wonder" of childhood, I think that it is far more dehibilitating that we lose our curiousity, creativity, and courage. Upon this epiphany I realized that there is much God wants to teach me through my daughter; I need but to listen.

These thoughts came to me in meditation recently as I have been contemplating some career pursuits that would require me to "go out on a limb" of sorts. Some of these pursuits would put me at risk for failure in some measure. I find myself realizing just how unwilling I am to face that possibility. Then I contrast myself with my pure, innocent, trusting daughter. Lucy never considers failure; she does not even recognize failure as an option. Lucy keeps trying until she obtains her goal; until her failure becomes success. Once success is acheived, does anyone even remember the "failures" along the way? Then what is there to be afraid of? I need to learn from her courage. The only thing lost if I do not try is what could have been...success.

Lucy can play with the same small toy over and over again, all day long, and yet she still thinks up new and (apparently) fascinating things to do with it. Just this morning she decided that she will now play with her Drop N' Roar Dinosauer with her feet. (Above) She had a grand time moving the different parts about with her toes, watching the activity from a reclining position while chewing on a teething toy. Now I'm not positing the need to start using our feet for completing tasks (although a very entertaining way to kill some time), but rather that sometimes life will only provide different answers with a little creativity! In short, sometimes ya gotta look at things from a different angle! The same location and position usually provides the same view...all of the time. I need to color outside the lines, or at least redefine where the lines are. I need to learn from her creativity.

I think that we all wish we spent more time indulging our curiousity in good pursuits. It's important to learn a new skill, figure out what makes people tick, attempt something a little bit outrageous. We need to feed our curiousity to avoid becoming stagnant. It is truly this static existence that robs us of the joy life has to offer. I need to imitate Lucy's curiousity.

Of course, I don't plan to start putting every item that passes through my hands into my mouth, or touching people faces, pulling their hair, licking their watches, or scratching every possible surface with my nails. I'll leave those methods of exploration to Lucy! However, Lucy is God's little reminder to me to live life! Be courageous! Take chances! Use your intelligence and skills! Don't be afraid of what you can do! She is God's reminder to me that the same way He is watching over her in her living life fully and with confidence, He is also watching over me.

I'm finally doing it! I'm starting to use my blog again. This will be where I will post pictures, updates, and general ranting and raving about everyday life. I look forward to sharing with all of you!

Money, money, money...

With gas prices fluctuating up and down these days, money, or at least the cost of things, has been weighing heavily on everybody's minds. (Or maybe it's just poor law students???) =) However, while I was busy being concerned about how the increasing price of gas and foods was affecting my carefully planned budget, another hideous price caught my attention: the price of medical care. May I just say, "Eeeeeeek!"

Now, if you're like I was up until a couple months ago, you probably are blessed enough to be covered by insurance. If you've been that way for some time, then you might not even actually know how much the fees are at your doctor's office. I know that I seldom paid attention to the cost of office visits; I only had to pay a $20 co-pay, so I really didn't give it two thoughts. However, I recently was moving out of state, so I wasn't working and wasn't covered by insurance. Fortunately/Unfortunately, God saw fit to make that window of opportunity the time for Justin and I to conceive our first child, and then, sadly, also lose that child through miscarriage. We ended up in the Emergency Room because sometimes cost can't be an object when health is on the line. Yikes! We only had an Ultrasound and bloodwork done, never actually saw a doctor (he just looked at my chart) and still was hit with a bill from the doctor for $335.00 and an additional one from the hospital for $1500.00. Ouch!

Now, at the time I just shrugged this off as the price to pay for emergency care. The next day, I tried to make the prescribed follow-up visit with a doctor. The doctor wanted $300.00 for me to walk in the door, and any tests were additional. Also, he refused to take me until I could show proof of insurance. What?!? I have since found that this is the "norm" in the area in which I live. I am horrified to think about all of the people who don't have insurance. What do they do? I know what I ended up doing to ensure that I got good care: I flew home to South Dakota. The cost of my ticket home $335.00 and the cost of a visit to an OB/GYN $164.00 still did not total what they wanted here even if they would have agreed to see me! (and I got to see my family) Praise God for simple SD!!!

The question that this begs, in my mind, is what is healthcare heading towards? Are we going to end up in a situation where, without insurance, you cannot be seen except by an institution that participates in a sliding scale, such as Planned Parenthood/State run clinics? Are we looking towards a situation where only the insured or very rich can get "the best" medical care? Are we forcing the poor to want a national healthcare system, such as in Canada? It seems as if doctors are forcing the people's hand in one undesirable direction, or another. We need to ask these doctors why they became doctors. Was it to help people? Or only to make money?

I'm thankfully counting the days until I will be insured again: 4 days to go. But, it made me so very conscious of what a decent little chunk of America has to go through every day. The farmers in SD are very lucky that they still can recieve great medical care, even if they're not insured; other parts of the country aren't so lucky. What are we going to do about it?

Celebrating the Little Things...

I felt the need to be deep today. No, not deep enough to ponder the Creation of the world, or the Meaning of man's existence, but just deep enough to think about the things that I need to change about my life. Just deep enough to think about who I am and where I'm going. I began to think about the blessings in my life; I have so much to be thankful for! I spend far too much time evaluating my life by all of the big things that go wrong in my life. I could fill more than one blog with complaints; there is no need to question that. But I started to think about how I no longer celebrate the little things in life. These are the things that really make life feel worth living: The sun shining on my face, the wind whispering through my hair, the rain clattering on the windowsill. The marshmallow s'mores over a fire, running in the early morning, when everything is fresh and new, catching snowflakes on your tongue, and building snowmen. These are some of the little things in life.

I am not sure when we lose this beautiful and child-like ability to find joy in the drippy ice-cream cones of the world. We no longer know how to live in the moment! When we were young we were so thrilled by an ice cream cone! We enjoyed being allowed such a treat, and enjoyed them to the max! We were not even concious that it was dripping on our pants, nor did we care. We just sat back, relaxed, and enjoyed that ice cream cone. Now that we are grown we might still enjoy the ice cream cone, but we are more concious of the dripping (these slacks are dry clean only!) or the price (they want HOW much for an ice cream cone?). Now we have lost the ability to just enjoy the ice cream cone as such, and be thankful for such a sweet "little thing" in life. For me, as a child, it was always Dairy Queen's Oreo Blizzard. Now, they don't have these sweet little babies where I live and quite frankly, I miss them! The last time I ate one I probably obsessed over the price and over how many calories I was adding to my hips. It's very rare to be able to just chuck all of your responsibilities in a corner and enjoy those little things.

Today I longed for a Blizzard. If I'd had one I wouldn't have cared for once about it's impact on my hips; I would have just enjoyed. I'm reminded of a saying that I really love, but had forgotten to live: "The good stuff is in the details." This introspection complete, I was led to think about all of my complaints that are so petty when weighed against their alternatives in life; it made me feel more thankful about the more humdrum aspects of life. I'm thankful that I have dishes to eat off of, even if I do have to wash them all by hand. I'm thankful that I have a bathroom to get ready in every morning, even if I have to constantly clean it. I'm thankful for my dog, even though she "talks" a lot and drives my husband crazy. I'm thankful for my husband, even if I have to clean up after him all the time (I'm very thankful that he was able to break me out of the bathroom when I got "trapped" in it--thank you, sweetie.). I'm thankful for the roof over my head and the bills that pour in every month, even though I have to work hard to pay for them; I still can. I'm thankful that I can fall asleep every night with a soft pillow under my head, and a prayer in my heart. Thank You, Lord.

Oh, and the next time you have an ice cream cone, just enjoy.

Justin and Molly 

In the beginning...

In the beginning there was a man and a dog--and a job and dirty dishes and stuff, but that's beside the point. That man and that dog were the beginning of my little family. That man's name is Justin, and that dog's name is Daisy. I realized that my life essentially revolves around them at this time, so I thought the title for this blog to be rather apt. (At least, I prefer to think that my life does not revolve around my Hermit Crabs or the dirty dishes. What a sad, pathetic little life... Who am I kidding?!? I am writing down my life on a Blog!) Anyways, that's the beginning. So now I have a man, a dog, and a blog. Life is good.