Today I'm thankful for...

1. No training wheels. Lillian has been asking for weeks to take the training wheels off her bike. Today was finally the big day! Bobby took Lillian for a ride around the block without her training wheels. She's starting to get the hang of it- as long as she remembers to keep pedaling! I'm so proud of her!

2. Four new teeth. While Sydney and I were playing dentist I discovered that all four of her 2-year molars are coming in! That explains why she's been more clingy, temperamental, and dependent on her ba-boo the past few days. I thought it was just the terrible two's, but it must be her new teeth (at least I'll keep telling myself that to make me feel like there's an end in sight...haha).

3. 80 degrees. That's how warm it was today. In the middle of March. Crazy. This time last year there were still piles of snow all over the place. We went to the zoo this afternoon, grilled hamburgers for dinner and watched the sunset on our little patch of grass that we like to call a front yard. I could get used to this kind of March weather.

4. Memories. My father-in-law passed away last week and we attended his funeral this past weekend. I've been thinking about him a lot. It makes me sad to know that my children will not grow up with one of their grandpas. And it makes me sad to know that my husband doesn't have a father he can talk to anymore. However, I'm very grateful for the memories we have and I hope we can use them to help our children remember him. Things like this- how he liked his watermelon ice cold and his grapes frozen in the freezer; he always brought back soap and lotion samples from the hotels on his business trips; traveling to England, India, Australia, Germany, PEI- he was always going somewhere; books- LOTS of books; silver spoons, little toast holders, sovereign cases, antique bags and suitcases that he would collect during his travels; how he has his mouth open in every picture we have of him because he was always in the middle of saying something; the beach- he loved the beach and horseshoe crabs and the little purple and white shells called wampum; how he would take the time after Thanksgiving dinner to pick through the turkey to get all the good meat out so nothing would go to waste; the heart-felt email he sent to Bobby when he didn't match into residency; how he always told me that he prayed for me my children by name every night; the way he shared his raspberries and strawberries with Sydney and that's how he gained her trust; the photo at Christmas of three generations of Williams- William Dennis (grandpa), William Robert (father), and William Thomas (son); how he came to Liam's baby blessing a few weeks ago even though he was really sick and had to leave right after; the picture that I found in his room the night before he passed away that was taped to his mirror- it was a drawing that Sydney and Lillian had made for him and he had attached two photos of the girls to it....all these little thoughts and memories make up who he was. And there are so many more. I appreciate the person he was, especially for raising his son who became my husband and father of our children.

5. Picking up where I left off. The past few weeks have thrown us off our regular schedule. I'm grateful that we can now focus on getting things back together and getting into a good routine again.