God gave you a gift of 86,400 seconds today. Have you used one to say "thank you?" ~ William A. Ward

I have no specific reason for the photo on here this evening.  It doesn't illustrate what I'm going to write about because, to be totally honest with you, I'm so sleepy tonite as I sit here I have no idea what I'm going to write about.  It was taken from the back deck of my son's house just before dawn on a very frigid morning last week.  I am continually amazed at the quality of the pictures my little Android phone's camera takes.  It captured the various shades of blue in the sky and on the snow just as they looked in the viewfinder.  And it looks every bit as peaceful and serene as it was out there that morning.  We've been here in Michigan for almost 11 months and I have taken photos from their back deck thru every season now.  Each has had its own exquisite beauty, from the bare limbs of winter silhouetted against a crystal cold sky to the gold and russet leaves in the canopy of autumn.  How people can look at scenes like this and not appreciate God's hand in its creation mystifies me.

I didn't look at the date of my last post.  Sometimes I hate to, when I know it's been a while since I've written.  I can only say the busyness of daily life has been overwhelming me and not leaving me with much time at the end of the day before it's time to collapse into sleep so deep I marvel I even awaken in the morning.  But it's a good busyness, being with the grandboys.  I realized the other day it's been at least a couple of months now since Cooper, the younger one, has thrown a major temper tantrum.  Hopefully I'm not jinxing myself by mentioning that here because when he decides to throw one, he throws a whopper.  But the last few times he has I've found something so simple in dealing with them I kick myself and wonder why I didn't think of this a year or so ago.  I pick him up, take him into the extra bedroom, gently lay him on the carpet, and tell him quietly, "You can come out when you can be a good boy."  Then, amidst the screaming, the tears, and flailing arms and legs, I turn, leave the room, and pull the door shut behind me.  That usually triggers off even more squawking and screeching...but Dylan and I go about our business in the living room totally ignoring him.  I can hear the temper slowly fade away.  And sometimes I can hear him rummaging around in the toy box talking to himself before he decides to crack open the door an inch and calls out, "Gram, I can be a big boy now!"  So we welcome him back into our little circle, all of us acting like nothing has happened, and he's good as gold.  Go figure.

Every now and then I scroll down my blog page here and look at the cities around the world where visitors who read my blog come from.  Sometimes, just by the name of a town or city, I'll know it's a friend who's come to read.  Most often, tho, the cities and towns from around America and the world are towns and cities I've never heard of.  Tonite I spotted Oakville, Ontario, Canada.  Before I moved to the Midwest I'd never heard of it before.  But I know now it's not too far from Kitchener where I've visited several times.  I see a city from The Netherlands who visits regularly tho I have no idea who that might be because they've never commented on here to my knowledge.  And while a dear friend was visiting her homeland of Norway last year, I saw the city of Stavanger several times and thought it was her.  But she said no, she never got a chance to read while she was traveling.  I thought that was a pretty funny coincidence!  My little map is dotted with red spots all over the world...over 17,000 just in the last year.  I can't imagine why they all stop here but I'm so glad they do.  Not the mega-numbers of blogs like "Pioneer Woman" but enough to make me feel like "You like me!  You really like me!"  Ha...poor Sally Field will never live that down, but I know how she feels.  It's the readers who validate who we writers are, especially the ones who come back over and over again.  You know they wouldn't take the time, not with the millions of blogs out there, if they didn't like what they were reading.  I read somewhere a few years ago in the height of the blog-writing frenzy that a new blog was created every second of the day.  If you had one visitor you were lucky.  So I consider myself lucky.

I don't know if there's such a thing as Blog Reader Appreciation Day...there seems to be one for everything else in life.  I think I'll take it upon myself to make it so, at least here on my blog today.  Many of you have been with me from the beginning when I first stumbled and bumbled my way into the blogosphere almost 7 years ago.  Some of you are newly arrived.  All of you are special to me...you didn't have to stay here and read once you landed on my page but I'm so glad you did.   I've only used a small portion of my allotted 86,400 seconds to say it, but "thank you".  Sincerely.  From the bottom of my heart.