Hey everyone! I've taken a short hiatus from posting for the holidays to get the most out of my celebrations. I will be back after New Year's. 

The below video reminds me of growing up somewhere small. I grew up in a town of 2500 people. Everybody knows everybody from the day you're born until you die. Everyone knew who my parents were, who my siblings were, and all of my relatives and I knew theirs. Life is slower, simpler, and for the longest time I hated it. When I was a teenager I was raring to go, to leave it behind and enter the wide world and explore. I needed to see new places and explore the world out far away. So I did. I moved, and I traveled when I had the money, and I still crave adventure. I still crave the newness of places.

The difference is, I always feel at home in remote places. Places of quiet lives. Places of simplicity. Being the child of a farmer wasn't easy. I had to do a lot less work at the farm than all of my brothers, but we weren't rich kids. We couldn't just take up and leave whenever we wanted, because my stepdad had lots of work always waiting for him. But we had fun. We learned the value of hard work, and the value of a brilliant sunset over the fields of alfalfa in southwest Utah.

I learned that everything isn't always handed to you when you want it, and that is ok. I learned that there is something to accepting life for what it is, and letting go of the need to control.

This video is a beautiful reminder of the life I will always have respect, and love, for. My heart feels peace watching this, and it is a similar peace to when I am in less crowded cities, small towns, and simple-lived lifestyles.

"We are all in the midst of the painstaking, glorious process."

+ Does it make you feel peace, too?

What is it about life that leads us to always have to face change? As humans we are born for change, we grow and learn things rapidly. We take in as much as we can and change rapidly from a newborn to an adult.  But... somewhere along the lines, we begin to fight against it. I believe this is because change takes away comfort. Sometimes, we begin to be so comfortable in where we are that, even if it hurts, we can't seem to let it go because 'what if what's on the other side of change isn't what I like?'

I am fascinated by this resistance to change. I, having been an anxious person my entire life, resist it as well. What ends up resulting from change is often a life I love and feel comfortable with. Even when I've lost people, life has proven to me that, if I rolled with the changes and learned to accept them, I'd find on the other side of the hurdles a life that I love. 

I don't say all this because I'm great at life. I don't say all this because I'm a phenomenal adapter. I say this because if there's anything I have learned in life, it's that nothing stays the same for very long. Good gets interrupted with bad, bad gets interrupted with good, and the cycles continue. 

We can either look at these changes and see what they have to bring our lives, or we can step back into our "safe zones" -- the same place we've always been. Sure, safety ensures that nothing else bad can  happen to you, but it also ensures that nothing new and good can happen either. 

Maslow hits the nail on the head with this when he states this above. He is the man responsible for the hierarchy of needs pyramid, if you've ever seen that. You can find more about him here. 

I've learned that life is too short to not roll with things. There won't be better times, there won't be more comfortable scenarios for you to go for your dreams. As he says above, you can either step forward into growth, or step back into safety... and sameness. 

+ So...what are you going to do when life forces change or an opportunity arises?  

  

[Photo Credit]

One of the boons of being lactose-free is not being able to have creamy desserts. Having only been lactose-free for a year, I am still a newbie about all the options that are out there. A lot of the ones I've tried have not tasted good or had weird after-tastes and textures. I can't get into soy milk, struggle to enjoy almond milk, and apparently have a mild allergy to coconut cream because a few hours after trying a deliciously whipped, dark chocolate coconut yogurt, I had canker sores all over my tongue. 

I started trying lactose-free dairy, after getting up some courage and deciding that I could live with the nasty after effects if they made me feel as awful as regular dairy -- a test had to be done! I found some awesome lactose-free yogurts, cream cheeses and sour creams, but I also tried Lactaid milk and found it to not bother me much at all and it tastes like real milk... because it is. 

Last week, when my husband was selecting his ingredients for his traditional "Thanksgiving Banana Creme Pie", I decided to try making my own version -- thus, the "Mini Lactose-Free Banana Creme Pies" were born. 

One (1) 3.4 oz. package of JELL-O Banana Cream Pudding & Pie Filling

1 & 3/4 cups Lactaid Lactose Free 2% Milk

One (1) Ripe Banana

One (1) pack of 6 - Keebler Ready Crust Mini Graham Pie Crusts (these are the tart sized ones)

1. Pour pudding mix into mixing bowl and add the milk.

2. Beat for 2-3 minutes to soft set the pudding.

3. Using a 1/4 cup measuring spoon, spoon the pudding into the graham cracker crusts and fill all of them equally. 

4. Place them on cookie sheet or plate, and set in fridge for at least an hour to chill and set pudding more solidly. 

5. When ready to serve, slice bananas and place on top. 

6. Serve and enjoy!

+ If you're making these with regular dairy, you can top them with whip cream 

+ Instead of sliced bananas, add strawberries or other berries, citrus, kiwi, or mixed fruits

+ Sprinkle with chopped nuts

Trust me when I say these taste every bit as delicious as your regular dairy banana cream pies, because it is regular dairy. All they've done is remove the lactose out of the milk by using the enzyme lactase which all you dairy lovers have naturally in your bodies. So, lactose-intolerant friends of the universe, unite around Lactaid-made creme pies!!!

+What's your favorite holiday dessert?

This time of year always brings a wave of nostalgia, memories from beautiful holidays gone by. 

There is the Thanksgiving where my mom used a swear word at me for the first and only time. "Get up here and make the damn potatoes and stop being such a brat!" I was a preteen, a tween, and my hormones made me a pain to be around. I was so stunned by her use of a swear word, I promptly spun on my heels and helped her cook. 

There are the holidays where we would all drive up to my grandparents' house a few hours away, and tables would be in every room on the main floor, surrounded by uncles, aunts, cousins, and my ever-wonderful grandparents. I'd sit at the kids' popup, metal, picnic table with its worn brown top, and yellow seats. I always thought that table was magical in a way -- it folded up into a suitcase. 

Today, the ones that stick out the most in my mind, are the ones from the years after I moved out of the house. If I close my eyes, it's almost like I can travel back in time to those sweet holidays from the past decade.

I walk up the cracked concrete steps, through the brown front door of the pink, adobe-brick house that has lived through a century of family, and head into my parents' house. She'll greet me with a smile from the kitchen or her sewing room, with her sing-song “Hel-low" and we’ll smile at each other. We'll gather around the kitchen island made from a wooden pub-height table, and I'll make my toast with butter and cinnamon sugar from a shaker that is older than I am. We'll laugh and talk about my drive and the goings on of life while I eat my sugary toast. 

We went for a walk this morning on the Utah Lake walking path, bundled up in hats, coats and gloves. We talked all about our dreams, which is something we do often, and he helped me take my mind off the emptiness I now feel this time of year. I thought this year would be completely normal, I felt fine until last night. We passed out on the couch at 10:00 pm after watching a few episodes of Brooklyn Nine Nine, because I desperately needed to laugh, and woke up at 5:00 am, both still on the couch. Luckily, it is better than last year. I feel less depressed most of the time. It's a nice improvement. 

I sit here, now, writing this, eating veggies off a veggie plate complete with black olives -- a signature dish of our Thanksgivings at her house.  Veggie plates just aren't complete without baby dill pickles and black olives. The kitchen is clean in preparation for our steak dinner tonight. Justin and the cats are all sleeping in opposite parts of the house, and I'm writing and listening to relaxing music. Our dinner tonight will be a low-key, candlelit meal on her fancy dishes that I've now inherited. We'll start our own traditions, and carry on some of hers, and life will go on. We'll celebrate more holidays with family, and we will laugh and have merriment.  It will always be obvious that she's not here anymore to celebrate with us, but they will still be awesome nonetheless. We have so much more life to live, she'd want that. 

+What types of memories of holidays gone by do you have this year? 

Please share in the comments.

Since I did my gratitude post a few days earlier, today's post is just a bunch of pictures I've taken during this lovely fall season we've had in the Intermountain West. It's safe to say, I love the way nature changes during fall. It's evidenced in my many photos of leaves, and scenery. Happy photo gazing, and Happy Thanksgiving! I hope today is full of food, and the people you love most. 

I want to take a minute today, as we approach this Thanksgiving holiday, to let you all know about what I'm thankful for this year. I love doing posts like this, because it causes me to reflect on the previous twelve months and what they have meant in my life. Often, I find that while times of the year felt particularly wretched, it wasn't all bad. 

I spent some time, before writing this post, to look back on the previous Thanksgiving blog posts I've done on my old blog, The Truth About Blondes. (I stopped writing there earlier this year because I needed to set my grief down, and I couldn't do it without a complete fresh start.) You can find several of those posts here. 

My favorites are: 

The Best of Holidays

Happy Thanksgiving 2014: With Gratitude

2015 was quite a year. Aren't they always quite a year, regardless? I started this year with so much hope that this was my year, that the grief and pain of 2014 would be gone. It was for a while, then my mother's year anniversary hit. For whatever reason, (my therapist says it's quite common to feel horrible near anniversaries of traumatic experiences) I was in a state of misery. I started having panic attacks, I cried every day for thirty days, and I couldn't shake it. Then, the anniversary passed. Suddenly, warm temperatures came, the sun metaphorically, and literally, came out. I dove head first into spring and summer and built my patio oasis. I spent all summer engulfed in plants. 

It healed me. 

I started noticing that little by little, and then almost overnight, I was feeling whole, or maybe almost whole, and it was miraculous. Glorious. Fantastic. Our home began to feel peaceful again, Justin relaxed, and I became healthy enough to handle a little change. He quit his well-paying-but-bad-for-his-health job. He took a huge risk and has started his Twitch Channel, and is becoming quite popular. It's become a regular source of income for us, and we hope to one day have it be one of the main sources! (Check him out here.) We became strapped to a zero-extras type budget, because he left his toxic, well-paying job to start fresh with new ideas. 

And the best part of all? We are happier than we have ever been. 

We buy almost nothing but the necessities, with a splurge few and far between of restaurant food, or a new shirt (usually on a big sale!), and we live below our means. We eat vegetables and herbs from my patio garden, we wait for movies to come out on iTunes so we can rent them for $3.99, and we use a family member's Netflix account. We spend more time focusing on our goals, than on consumerism. We laugh a lot, and have impromptu dance parties. We regularly spend an hour of time trying to convince the feral stray kitten, that has taken up residence on our patio at night, that she wants to be tamed. 

We have both begun to often say the phrase, "I really enjoy being married to you." 

Our relationship has been riddled with grief since we first met. We never had a honeymoon phase because he was in the military, and then my mother got cancer right after we got married. He's been out of the military since New Year's Day, and it's now been over eighteen months since my mother's passing. We are finally coming into a new life together.

This year I'm thankful for miracles. I'm thankful for a year of healing. I'm thankful for a year of growing -- growing within, growing my marriage, and growing my garden. I'm thankful for this blog. It has allowed me to keep my focus on happy things, instead of dwelling on my grief. I don't know what the future holds, no one really does. I'm sure, though, that it will be filled with more sadness, more laughs, more growth, and more impromptu dance parties.

And...what more could a girl need? 

(Oh yeah, the ability to tolerate lactose would be cool. I'd give my right kidney to be able to digest cheese again, but I can live without it.)

What are you thankful for this year? 

Please share in the comments!

It happened one day. I was 23. I was telling my brother not to do something. He was visiting my apartment and he was bothering me. I don't even remember what I said, but he responded with, "You're just like mom." It was supposed to be an insult then, but it wasn't. 

Figures it would happen eventually. I mean, I am her only biological daughter. 

It started happening more. My dad would say it to me as we drove to another of my brothers' house for a family dinner when I was 25. "You're just like her, you know." 

It started happening the most when she got cancer. The less life she had left on earth, the more people told me I was just like her. It's like they were trying to pass her torch to me. The day of her funeral, I think I was told by every single person that walked through the line at her wake that I was just like her, or look just like she did at my age. It was both comforting and frustrating.

I wanted to run and hide. It felt oddly pressuring in a way. Almost like I'd be letting everyone down if I didn't turn into her. The ways that I am just like her were hardly known to me. I never thought we were alike. I always felt like she was more stable emotionally, more healthy and strong, and more calm. It's funny though, she told me once that she admired my willingness to always speak up. I guess we admired what we didn't have.  

Sometimes I find that I'm similar to my dad. I forget to call people for months. I am content in my own little world 95% of the time. I assume that no matter how long I go without socializing with my friends and family, they'll still be happy and feel loved by me. I know that this can't be true for all of them, but it is how I feel about them. I don't doubt their love for me at all, I assume it picks up where it left off whenever we see each other. This is one of the ways my dad parented -- from a distance. Apparently this is part of how I love. Weird. 

I am the most like my mother, though. I notice it more the older I get, and the longer she's gone. Justin tells me I'm just like her. My brother from before, tells me it often, now. He means it now as a compliment. I've even caught myself coughing in the exact same way she did. It's weird. A cough? How can one cough identical to their mom? Apparently, it's not impossible. 

I'm thankful to have her genetics. Her taste in natural makeup and hair, hippie style clothing, folk music, and gardening. She gave me her talent of carrying a tune, and playing the piano. She taught me to be silly and laugh a lot. She taught me the art of hanging out and, also, stacking things for "later". We both grew up feeling like ugly ducklings, so we developed a healthy sense of humor. 

When I was young we didn't see eye to eye on much, and I felt like we'd never really understand each other. She probably felt the same. But that didn't last long, we became buddies when I moved away from home. Soon, she was one of the few who really "got" me.

When she died, I read her journals from when she was my current age. It turns out, she and I are soul sisters. She wrote similar things to my own journal. I felt like I was reading me. The experiences were different but her heart was the same. I've always wondered how I'd ever turn out to be such a peaceful woman as her. It turns out, I just have to live at least as long as she did because I'm already on my way.

In what ways are you like your parents? 

In what ways are you not? 

Happy Friday! One of my favorite poets is Shel Silverstein. Since I was a kid and first was introduced to Shel Silverstein by my mom, I've loved his poetry. Some of these still carry special advice for all of us adults. Some are just plain silly. Have a great weekend!