stop and smell the roses

Today is an exciting day for me... my blog is the "featured blog" today on For The Love of Blogs!  These ladies have created a fabulous community of bloggers from all corners of the world that blog about all different kinds of things.  Head over and check them out if you haven't yet!  And if you're visiting from there - welcome!  Thanks for stopping by, & Enjoy!  Be sure and take a minute to say hi - I loveee to hear from each and every one of you! :)


 The ladies over at FTLOB must be psychic or something, because I really needed a pick me up after the past couple of days.... and I've been all smiles since I saw my post up there this afternoon :)

I tried my best to keep a happy face on this past weekend while the hubby and I celebrated our first anniversary (don't get me wrong, I was very excited to be celebrating our first year of marriage!!) but I wasn't expecting it to be the only thing we were celebrating.

You see, Saturday would have marked the half-way point of my pregnancy.  I had had it all planned out in my head- we would find out at our mid-pregnancy ultrasound whether our peanut was a boy or a girl, keep it sealed in an envelope, and open it together on our anniversary for the ultimate surpise (although, who knows if I would have actually been able to hold out- knowing me I would have ripped the envelope open on the way home from the doctor). 

Once I realized that wasn't going to be happening and that we would instead, once again, be in the "trying" phase of starting our family-- I realized that this past weekend would be when we would get our potential positive test.

Ohhh, what a wonderful anniversary present it would be!  To off-set the sadness of not being able to celebrate the halfway point of pregnancy, we would instead learn that we were expecting again, right?!  We were 2 for 2 in trying so far, so it would always just be that simple every time, right?!

Yeah, right.  That would be way too good to be true. 

That would mean we'd be able to work things out for me to stay home the rest of the first trimester and head over to Finland only a month later than J's departure date.  That would mean our little one would be born at the end of the regular season, in plenty of time before playoffs and wouldn't delay us getting home after the season at all either. 

That would mean we'd catch a break for once.

But you know what, I'm sick of letting things get the best of me.  I'm sick of getting my hopes up, only to be disappointed.  I'm sick of constantly feeling that I'm being failed all of the time.  And I'm pretty sure my husband, Mr. Positive himself, is getting sick of me having these negative feelings all the time.  It's been driving him crazy that he cannot "fix" it.

Hockey doesn't grant us much control over any aspect of our lives, so I should be used to this aspect of "no control over things".  I think I'm finally ready to let go of it all and just let it happen.  I don't want to look back and realize how much time I've wasted being disappointed and not being happy with what I have right in front of me.  That doesn't mean we have to stop trying to reach our ultimate goal of having a baby (and hopefully still sooner than later!)  But maybe it's time to start appreciating what we do have.  What we can control. 

The rest will take care of itself from there.  Our time will come, but for now.... I'm going to make a better effort to be happy with what I've got.

What do you appreciate most about your life?  Do you ever find yourself so focused on something that you forget to "stop and smell the roses"?