The Love of the Library!

I grew up surrounded by books.  My dad was an avid reader and always had a book in his hand, or laying on his chest during naps. hehe.

We had this set of encyclopedias that I was just enamored with.  Back in the day - the encyclopedia was our internet.  If you wanted to know about something, anything, you'd either read an entire book on the subject or you could find the encyclopedia that started with the letter you needed and read a short entry about it.

While my dad was a reader, my mom was a researcher.  She had the genealogy bug and we would spend a lot of Saturdays at the library.  (Now you know why I'm such a nerd 🤓)

Some of my best memories are just being "let loose" in the library.  We could roam around and explore.  Which book caught my eye?  I could just walk up and down the aisles and browse or if something peaked my interest, I'd head over to the card catalog and look up some books on that subject.

Oooh, the smell of the books.  The perfect organization of that card catalog.  All those type written cards, and numbers all perfectly labeled and ordered.  My OCD was in hog heaven.

While my mom was going through the microfiche machine and scouring old newspapers and death certificates,  we were reading. We were learning.  We were learning to love the library.

So when I had kids of my own, I had to introduce them to one of my favorite places! We went to the library at least once a week.  I would let them have the same autonomy and roam the aisles.  Although, there weren't any more card catalogs, and computers and entered the scene, the kids still had just as much fun as I did in the library.

We would take home heaps and heaps of books and I would lay them out on the coffee table for random reading sessions.  I would read to the kids, they would read to me, and sometimes I'd just curl up on the couch and read my own book, or something the kids had picked out.

Now all my books are via Kindle.  I still love a good book in my hands though.  I just started reading this book that is about a library fire!  It got me reminiscing about libraries.  It brought back a lot of great memories.

I hope my grandkids are readers.  I hope to introduce them to the library someday too.

New Year in progress!

This is a new year.  

Really every day is a new day.  His mercies are new every morning.  No matter what choices we've made, we can make new ones.

Sometimes it seems so overwhelming.  How do I eat right, read my Bible, do the dishes, be a good wife, drink all the water, fit in my 12, 000 steps, close all my rings, oh and be a good person???  How???  Every. single. day???

It's tough.  I get it.

I've always told my kids, how do you eat an elephant?  

One bite at a time.

Not that elephants taste all that great.

But you get the gist.

Take one step.

Do the next right thing.

Read the ingredients.

Put back that cookie.

Open God's Word.

Say a kind word.

Take a drink out of that cute cup you got.

Just one thing.

Then another,

then another

and before you know it, you are doing all the things.  Just wake up and do one thing again and you got this!

You can do it!

Sometimes, you'll take a step backwards, but that's ok too.  Just start over.

It's a new year!!  New you!