Every day is the best day.

"Write it on your heart that every day is the best day in the year."
-Ralph Waldo Emerson



Wouldn't it be something if you would wake up each morning with as much enthusiasm and zest for life as you do for the big moments in your life? Holidays, birthdays, vacations, milestones. These are all packed with so much excitement and anticipation of something big and important and momentous. These are the days you log in your memory, scrapbook, blog about, photograph, document for always. But what if each and every day carried the same treatment as the big days? What if each day was approached as having the potential to be document-worthy? Because isn't each moment in itself kind of amazing?

Sure, doing the millionth load of laundry that week, making yet another meal, cleaning another mess, disciplining the same action over and over--the mundane everyday things--may not seem like the most thrilling things to celebrate. But that's life; and without the hum of the day to day, the big ones wouldn't shine.

Now that the 2013 chapter of my life has closed, I want to adopt a new attitude for the 2014 chapter. No, I'm not going to turn into some overly excitable, unrealistic person who thinks every single moment of every single day is extraordinary. Because, let's be honest, it's just not true. Some moments are truly awful. Some days need to be shelved under Worst Day Ever and never visited again, except to remember how to avoid repeating it. But I think Emerson was onto something when he said we should make every day the best day in the year. It's all about how we approach things, after all, isn't it? We choose our moods, whether or not that's always easy to remember in an especially irritable moment.

I am not a resolution type person. I never make them. But this year I do resolve to have a more Emerson approach to my everyday life. I'm going to try to wake up with the notion of making today the best day in the year. Maybe everyday won't be as big and exciting and momentous as a holiday, birthday or vacation; and I know there will be plenty of those Worst Day Ever moments filed away in the dustiest, darkest corners of my life's basement. But here I am, a few days into the new year, resolving to take joy in the everyday. Won't you join me?

To close out the year, I'd like to look back at some of the highlights from 2013, both big and small.


January.

February.

March.

Easter.

Dave's surprise Iraqiversary party.

April.

The C Word.

May.

Mother's Day.

Dave's big 3-0.

June.

Sisters.

Father's Day.

July.

August.

Spencer's birthday.

My birthday.

September.

October.

Ashton's birthday.

November.




December.

Here's to many more big and small moments in 2014. Happy New Year!