Best Gift of 2009

Gwen Bell asks the following question for today's prompt: What's a gift you gave yourself this year that has kept on giving?

I could be repetitive here and say it was the happiness and peace of mind that my focus on practice brought about, but I don't like repetition nor do I see the point of repetition in blogland.

This question can be taken figuratively or literally, of course. Maybe the best gift was letting go or maybe it was a new coffee pot.

I am going to take this prompt more literally and talk about two things I spent money on that were for me. The first, which rings in at less than five dollars, is this coffee cup. It sounds silly, I know, but there's something about drinking coffee out of a mug that is both pretty and that also happens to fit nicely into your freakishly small hands. It's a gift that I appreciate every morning when I take that first sip of steaming hot coffee.

The second was a retreat, but not a meditation retreat. On my weekend birthday, three of my four best girlfriends and I attended a scrapbooking retreat at Saint Mary's retreat center in Virginia City. This was a special gift for me for a number of reasons: I got to spend quiet time with my close friends, I met some cool people, I got a lot of scrapbooking done, and I discovered the very cool place that is Saint Mary's. I scampered back to Dharma Zephyr to tell them about this place, since we just recently lost our gorgeous retreat center. They were already onto the site, which means we're going to have at least a couple retreats there in 2010. It's such a cool, old place, complete with ghost stories and creaking hallways, and it's surrounded by rolling fields of brush, which makes it incredibly quiet and relaxing.

My goal for 2010 is to do a residential retreat, but if none work out for me, I just may rent a room at Saint Mary's for a weekend and do my own, personal meditation retreat.

Best of 2009: Night Out

*YAWN*

That's not because of the topic suggested by Gwen Bell. It's because it's 7:00, and bedtime approaches. When you have a youngster in your house who gets up at 6:00 without fail, it's almost impossible to ever sleep in. Even when he decides to sleep in or he is at a grandma's house for the night or DH gets up with him, I'm up by 6:00, even earlier most of the time, wide awake unable to go back to sleep even if I desperately want to.

So nights out are rare for me because they usually require being out past a bedtime that allows for me to get some sleep. Still, I will occasionally venture out.

I have had a few fun nights out with the girls eating and drinking or eating and then catching a movie. The picture below was from a very fun night.

And tomorrow night will be another one of those nights. We don't often get wild. Sometimes we enjoy wine; other times we eat dinner and go window shopping. But just being with my girlfriends, enjoying their company, is a blast in and of itself.

However, I still think my best night was the one in which Jason and I went to La Strada and then saw Bill Maher. I knew we were going out to dinner, but my husband had tickets to Bill Maher purchased long in advance as a surprise. The dinner was great; the company even better. The kids had their first sleepover together, so we got to not worry about what time we got home or paying a babysitter. You can't beat that!