May 13

I'm grateful for the remnants of Team Gams for Mams and the other 13,999 people who walked and ran in the Komen Race for the Cure this morning. And I'm especially grateful that my mom won her battle and hope a cure is found soon for everyone.

May 12

I'm grateful all of us kids were together with Mom and Dad under the same roof this evening. We got a chance to spoil the youngest grandchild, Aidan, and eat too many brownies while taking photos of each other with Jo's cellphone. The relentless teasing that went on was almost like being a kid again. I hope we never turn into the kind of family that gets together only for funerals.

May 11

I'm grateful for those rare times when dessert comes before dinner. My black-cherry vanilla diet coke was almost as good as their chocolate ice cream, but not quite.

May 10

I'm grateful this whole ipowerweb vs. Blogger thing that kept me from my daily posting the past four days is finally over! ipowerweb turned some switch and restored access, but I don't trust any of them anymore. It could be just like that chair... it looks like you can sit in it, but I'd be willing to bet you end up on the ground pretty quickly.

In the next week or so, Snapshot Gratitude will be switching over to Wordpress which, if I can get my head around the tweaks I have to do to make it mine, will make this blog searchable and the posts categorizable! Plus, I'll have that nifty little calendar that I've been coveting since I first started this project. It'll be a good move.

May 9

The orchestra students gave their end of the year concert this evening. There had to be at least a couple hundred kids, ranging from 4th to 12th grade, jam-packed onto the stage. I am grateful to the wonderful music teachers in the district who can not only get all the kids in one place at the same time, but also get them to play identifiable tunes together!

May 8

I have a Japanese maple in my backyard, probably around 50 years old. Its branches are wide open arms, offering shade and aphid spit to any who sit below it and a perfect climbing cradle to any who want to climb it. During the fall, we hang pinatas from it and kids scramble in its shadow, searching the grass for the treasures that were released from some well-landed blow. In the spring it produces these tiny yellow flowers that fall to the ground and are picked up by people shoes and dog feet to be tracked throughout my house. The red color in the leaves doesn't last for long; by summer it will be deep green, like all the other maples in the neighborhood.

I'm grateful for the presence of this tree. I know it sounds silly, but it's become a member of the family.

May 7

Every year, the Job's Daughters sell beautiful hanging flower baskets as a fundraiser. And every year, I buy one or two and they end up dead within about three weeks. Today I'm grateful not only that Mom picked the prettiest European-style basket out of the bunch to bring to me, but that she also took a look at the location where I usually hang them and proclaimed it "Not Light Enough". Hopefully this year I'll keep the basket of sunshine alive longer.