Day 19: I am so grateful for the Friday Farmers Market today and the first night off in ages so I could go! Charlie and I braved the heat to stroll the vendors and came home with some great food. Oyster mushrooms and okra filled my plate tonight!

Day 20: I am grateful today just to get to hang out with my family. We don’t get the opportunity to do this as much as I would like and I am just happy to be in a room with the hubby and baby. The hot and cloudy day means we may even have an excuse to do as little as possible. I am grateful for my friend Meghan, who regularly shops for me at Costco and Trader Joes. She just texted me the good news that Costco is carrying avocado oil again. So I guess I am really grateful for avocado oil and a friend who gets me.

Day 21: Grateful for a new dress to wear on this muggy day (thank you again Meghan!). Grateful for family time at church, a picnic, and a birthday dinner for my niece Sayla. Kevin called it an activity filled day 🙂 and I am just really feeling the love for a wonderful weekend with my husband and child! It was so nice to feel connected!

Day 22: Kevin goes back to work today and I am grateful for wonderful babysitters to leave my Charlie with! While I hate being away from my baby, I also love the flutters of excitement I get when I get to pick her up. She is starting to get excited when Kev and I get home after not seeing her for awhile and it just makes my heart leap with joy. Being a mother is simply amazing!

Day 23: Bit of a tough day today. It is amazing how quick we forget things and I had forgotten how hard it is to go a whole day without touching base with my husband. He got home at the end of the day and I was exhausted and on my way to bed. I didn’t want to just rush off to bed and I hate feeling like I have to cram the whole day into a brief conversation. Especially when we have both had heavy things weighing on our minds and hearts. So much going on…too much going on really! I have doubts that humans are meant to handle so much stimulation. So today I am grateful for my faith. Being able to turn to God in these times that cause stress and anxiety makes so much difference in how I handle things.

Day 24: A new day brings a chance for a new attitude and new look at life! Today I am grateful for the means to buy tickets to go see my mom for Thanksgiving! It was a relief to get the tickets purchased and now we can focus on the excitement of the upcoming trip. I am also grateful that this is the last day I have to do burpees before the upcoming Burpee Mile event at work! 550 down, 4000 total for the month of August and two glorious rest days…my arms are spent!

Day 25: I am so grateful for my sister-in-law, Lindsey for giving up one of her days off to help watch Charlie! Truly an awesome thing to have family around, but even more awesome when the family is close and there for eachother. I love you sister! (I also feel that the squat rack Steve ordered for the gym deserves an honorable mention. I put it together today and am super excited to use it!)

Day 26: Always grateful for a Friday! I am grateful for an awesome husband who goes out of his way to bring baby to me so I can pump less. I am grateful for a morning with my family before work. I am grateful for being able to come home and have things like ribeye steaks and fresh garden kale for dinner. I am grateful for my friend Meghan and our conversations that I am pretty sure no one else would understand. And finally, I am grateful for the writings of Stephen King. I spent my Friday night in bed at 8:00 with Dr. Sleep.

Day 27: It’s Burpee Mile Day! And while I am not necessarily grateful for the Burpee Mile, I am grateful for the healthy body that will (hopefully) allow me to do this! As I am writing this before the mile, I will have to update the end results later… I am also super excited and grateful for the trip to see my sister and nephew today too! Celebrating Ethan’s birthday with them will be wonderful. – Update on Burpee Mile (All 4 laps completed, and the only reason I did the 4th lap was because I NEVER want to do this again…My body was CRUSHED for two days!)

Day 28: A wonderful day at the Childrens Museum for Ethans birthday! I so enjoyed the day with my sister and her family. I am grateful for the awesome relationship I have with my sister. She is one of the few people in this world who I feel just “gets” me. Thank you for being you Mally!

Day 29: I am grasping at straws for something today…the end of my SoDak trip was a little rough. I am grateful for my husbands sense of humor today. When I got home he joked that Mallory and I needed to start planning destination get-togethers…We are both inclined to agree! I am also grateful for a wonderful baby who could have made a long drive home even longer, but when she wasn’t sleeping, she was chattering and playing happily. #rockstar

Day 30: So hard coming back to work after a long weekend and always hard to leave the baby! Grateful for a wonderful set of babysitters who watch her in our home. Grateful for homemade mayonnaise, which makes an otherwise boring meal a zesty mouthful of fun. And since we are on food, I am grateful for ground beef. It is versatile, it’s delicious, it fills me up and more importantly, there is still around 20# in my freezer!