ONE YEAR of Dallas Sunshine!

An entire year has gone by since we made it to Texas!  I cannot believe we have been here for 365 days! (Ok there were quite a few days spent back in California this year lol, but most of the time we were here!)

Looking back over the past year, I am so grateful that life just plugged along.  There were many busy days full of fun and laughter.  We even had one broken bone and one major surgery (what would a 365 day journey of Sunshine be without that? LOL) But mostly every day was learning something new, going somewhere new, meeting someone new.  A whole lot of newness came to pass!

We are now experts at which restaurants serve the best Queso and Guacamole in town.  We are now patrons of a restaurant every tuesday for Taco Tuesday with the neighbors.  We now own a 15 foot trampoline and have kids over ALL the time jumping on it!  Our animals love exploring our neighborhood with walks and escaping.

Some of my happiest times are walking around our local pond/lake and letting Ginger swim to try and catch the birds or trying our hand at fishing.

I made a promise to myself to NOT be a hermit like I was when I first moved to South Orange County.  I threw myself into organizations like MOPS, became a room mom for Joel's class, volunteered for local charities, became part of a preschool co-op for Connor's school, got Connor enrolled in a local preschool in town, went to every church meeting I possibly could to make new friends, got involved in a book club, joined a "Ladies who Lunch" group, joined a dinner for couple's night group, became a scout leader for our local cub scouts, and got involved in Joel's PTA as much as possible.  It all worked!  I probably did a bit TOO much at times, but I made friends that I cherish.  I have some of the most deep and meaningful friendships I have had in a long time.  It took me 3 years to find really good friends in my old town, and I cherish my friendship with them, but I am so thankful it took only a few weeks to meet new people here that I have had SO many adventures with already!  The people of Texas are so GOOD.  We feel blessed each and every day to know such amazing, warm, FUN people!

I am so thankful for all of the movie nights we have already had in our movie theater room with friends.  I cannot wait for many more!  I am so grateful for all of the people here that love to eat the most amazing food!  We have truly had some of the best home cooked meals of our lives with some of the best conversations about our kids and life!

Life has been super busy this past year.  Most of it involved us doing something with or something FOR our children.  That is the part of our life's journey we are currently on.  It will end all too quickly I know, but I am so glad I got to document just a little bit of it.

As always, our family's mantra will continue to be "Find the Joy" That is what this blog is ALL about.  There is so much sunshine and happy moments yet to be had.  Maybe from time to time I will hop on here and let them out.  I mostly try to treasure them up in my heart and treasure each moment.  I have learned NOT to take a lot of pictures when I am with my kids or watching them...I try to soak it all up with my eyes and let my children know I SEE them and love watching them in THAT moment.  I don't have any particular words of wisdom to write THIS time around.  I feel like we have learned so much and I hope we continue to make new friends, keep the old, and carry on with our days of sunshine!

April and May and a little bit of June!

Can I just say how happy I have been that I have not had the time to blog as I did for my last Sunshine blog?   I know that sounds funny, because this is a blog, and I am supposed to like posting our activities on here, but the fact that I am running around like crazy, having fun with my kids, DOING things at both of their schools, and not lying in bed for an entire year...well...it is just awesome!

April and May were fantastic months filled with laughter and sunshine.  It FINALLY started warming up enough in April that I was able to plant some flowers in the front yard and create a little garden...or so I thought lol.  The next day a freeze came in and promptly killed all of the flowers I had planted...all except one!  A gardenia bush I am slowly nursing back to health. I am happy to say there are green leaves on the stems now and I am hoping for some blossoms soon!  The other plants that froze over the winter...well, they ALL came back and surprised me and now I do have a lovely garden of green plants with tiny buds that should all be blooming soon!

Also in April we had visitors from all over the country for a month!  Our friends from California had their Spring Break and decided to drive route 66 and check out Dallas and the surrounding areas.  One day we called our realtor and she took them to look at homes out in the country.  Well, they fell in love with one, put an offer in and are moving here in July!!  We are so happy for them and can't wait to go out to their home in the country and have some adventures!  Visits with friends is always fun!  Our next set of visitors came from Oregon.  They are our former neighbors and good friends who have 2 Golden Retrievers that were Daisy dog's best friends.  They also have a little girl that was only 6 months old when they left California for Oregon.  It was so great to spend an evening talking and catching up and looking at pictures of their daughter and fuzzy girls.  We are so grateful that we live in a busy city that many companies consider a great place to have their conventions!  Here is hoping for many more visits for years to come!

In May we were OH SO busy but in a really good way!  Last year it was just me and the boys and our neighbor and her son for Mother's Day.  This year I got a brunch, a corsage, and my family back together again!  It was really nice!  The following week, David and I celebrated our 12th wedding anniversary by going to downtown Dallas to stay at a fancy hotel overnight....away from the children...for the first time in a year!  It was fantastic!!  We ate at a super fancy restaurant, had hours of conversations, hot meals, long walks, and all without any interruptions.  It is nice to have 24 hours away from the kiddos but we were also happy to get back to them.  The week after that was Joel's birthday and we flew out to California!  Joel turned 8 years old which in our religion we believe is the "age of accountability" where a child CAN be tempted from Satan whereas before they were perfect.  So off we flew to California to be with ALL of our family and close friends back there.  We were so happy so many people were able to share in our special day.   We did the baptism, then had a party down at my dad's work, then we went out to dinner at the kid's favorite tepanyaki grill!  It was a funfilled day but a SUPER long Saturday as well!  Sunday morning we woke up early and headed down to the PCH Grill at Disneyland area for breakfast with Mickey and our friend Tim.  It was a great time!  Then we headed back to church so Joel could go for the first time as a member!  After that, my family, parents included, all came home and took 3 hour long naps! The next day we were off again to Texas...PHEW!  It was a busy weekend!  But one filled with love, laughter, family, and the spirit of the Lord.

One amazing thing that happened in May that I for sure don't want to go without talking about is my Essential Oil called doTerra that I began to buy...and now sell.  This whole school year had been a difficult one for Joel and we prayed to try to find the best solution for him.  Whether it was a child psychologist, more Occupational Therapy, whatever it would take, we were willing to do.  Someone told me about these oils and I decided to try them.  I didn't tell the teacher and for 3 weeks we experimented with them.  Well, at the end of 3 weeks, the teacher thought we had put him on medication because he was doing SO well and had improved in focus and emotional stability SO much!  Oh what JOY!! It was one of the greatest HAPPY MOMENTS of my year hearing that something was working for Joel so well!  He truly has been changed by essential oils!  He uses a combination called Serenity, Balance, and In Tune.  And here is my website that you can go to to check out all of the other essential oils that I personally believe have helped my family SO much!  My little kitty Aladdin can now breathe better without his prescription cat meds for kitty asthma thanks to an oil blend called "Breathe"

 http://mydoterra.com/doterrawithmely

So there is the website my readers.  I hope you look around and find oils that help you relieve stress, increase YOUR joy (there is one called Elation that is pretty awesome lol) and get a bit healthier!

So here we are in June...I will write on the 365th day of our journey here, but as it comes to a close, I am so grateful, as ever, that we moved to such a wonderful place.  There are so many good, positive friends that we have met here that have truly changed our lives.  We have a wonderful backyard with a great trampoline we just got this past week thanks to my mom and her joyful memories of ME having one.  We consider ourselves SO fortunate to live where we do, to be able to have the friends that we have.  There is sunshine all around us and we find more and more each day!  I hope you take the time to find the joy as well!