It isn’t that I haven’t tried to think of something thoughtful and kind… quite to the contrary. For months, I have combed catalogs, browsed specialty shops and department stores, inquired of novelty shops, and even searched the Internet only to realize that no bauble or trinket or card could measure up to the feelings of a mother’s grateful heart and a teacher’s loving dedication.

How I wish a colorful bundle of fresh wildflowers could reflect the beauty of your way with children — the constant patience and nurturing, the gentle encouragement. A keepsake basket laden with soothing soaps and bath oils would eventually serve only as a common gift were its sturdy, woven walls not filled to overflowing with examples of the individual ways you have touched the lives of your students.

Jewelry would surely be nice, but what can I afford that would not soon tarnish or grow quickly out of style? You deserve the gems of royalty for your perseverance and creativity, your devotion and talent. During the past year, I have given you many small gifts, mostly intangible ones.

At the moment the first school bell rang last August, I placed in you my trust, believing you would teach my child and reserve respect for me as a parent. I added to that my constant and fervent prayers that you would be objective and fair with the ability to set limitations while offering my child a chance to learn self-control and to soar a bit in the process. I sincerely petitioned that your classroom would be a safe haven for my child to grow and learn, lending itself to the crazy, yet somehow perfect, mixture of self-discipline and controlled instruction. I prayed for your health and your happiness, and your ability to be supplied with the tools necessary to complete your task as teacher and educator and mentor. I offered you my time as often as I could, and my support for your endeavors. Occasionally, I even offered you a challenge when I spoke my mind, sometimes standing firm, sometimes backing down with a renewed assurance or a “wait and see” attitude!

I wish with all my heart I could put a delicate ribbon on a gaily wrapped package and give you a “something” to express my appreciation and affection, but I have nothing to give you that would surpass the most precious gift I have ever had to offer and which you already so graciously accepted months ago — the one you have held close to your heart, laughed with and probably cried with, applauded and scolded, lifted and encouraged, molded and shaped — my child!

And today, as my child returns to my side for the summer, the gift I humbly give to you is found deep within my heart…

I give to you my thanks.

By Amanda Krug

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Happiness is something you decide on ahead of time.

It’s a decision I make every morning when I wake up.

I have a choice; I can spend the day in bed recounting the difficulty I have with the parts of my body that no longer work, or get out of bed and be thankful for the ones that do.

Each day is a gift, and as long as my eyes open, I’ll focus on the new day and all the happy memories I’ve stored away. Just for this time in my life.

Old age is like a bank account. You withdraw from what you’ve put in.

So, my advice to you would be to deposit a lot of happiness in the bank account of memories!

Remember the five simple rules to be happy:

1. Free your heart from hatred.
2. Free your mind from worries.
3. Live simply
4. Give more.
5. Expect less.

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If you had read a recent front page story of the San Francisco Chronicle (Dec 14, 2005) you would have known about a female humpback whale that had become entangled in a spider web of crab traps and lines.

She was weighted down by hundreds of pounds of crab traps that caused her to struggle to stay afloat. She also had yards of line rope wrapped around her body, her tail, her torso, and a line tugging in her mouth. A fisherman spotted her just east of the Farallon Islands (outside the Golden Gate ) and radioed an environmental group for help.

They worked for hours with curved knives to free her. Just one slap of her tail could kill a rescuer. When she was free, the divers say she swam in what seemed like joyous circles.

“When the whale realized it was free, it began swimming around in circles…Moskito said it swam to each diver, nuzzled him and then swam to the next one.  “It felt to me like it was thanking us, knowing that it was free and that we had helped it. It stopped about a foot away from me, pushed me around a little bit and had some fun. It seemed kind of affectionate, like a dog that’s happy to see you,” Moskito said, “I never felt threatened. It was an amazing unbelievable experience.”

“You hate to anthropomorphize (the attribution of human characteristics to non-human creatures) too much, but the whale was doing little dives and the guys were rubbing shoulders with it, Mick Menigoz said. “I don’t know for sure what it was thinking, but it’s something that I will always remember.”

He said it was the most incredibly beautiful experience of their lives. The guy who cut the rope out of her mouth said her eyes were following him the whole time, and he will never be the same.

May you, and all those you love, be so blessed and fortunate to be surrounded by people who will help you get untangled from the things that are binding you. And, if so,  may you of giving and receiving gratitude.

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Just before take-off, a line of soldiers came down the aisle and filled all the vacant seats, totally surrounding me. I decided to start a conversation.

“Where are you headed?” I asked the soldier seated nearest to me. “Petawawa,” he answered. “We’ll be there for two weeks for special training, and then we’re being deployed to Afghanistan.”

After flying for about an hour, an announcement was made that sack lunches were available for five dollars. It would be several hours before we reached the east, and I quickly decided a lunch would help pass the time…

As I reached for my wallet, I overheard a soldier ask his buddy if he planned to buy lunch. “No,” the buddy answered, “that seems like a lot of money for just a sack lunch. Probably wouldn’t be worth five bucks. I’ll wait till we get to base.”

His friend agreed.

I looked around at the other soldiers. None were buying lunch. I walked to the back of the plane and handed the flight attendant a fifty dollar bill. “Take a lunch to all those soldiers.’ She grabbed my arms and squeezed tightly. Her eyes wet with tears, she thanked me. “My son was a soldier in Iraq; it’s almost like you are doing it for him.”

Picking up ten sacks, she headed up the aisle to where the soldiers were seated. She stopped at my seat and asked, “Which do you like best – beef or chicken?”
“Chicken,” I replied, wondering why she asked. She turned and went to the front of plane, returning a minute later with a dinner plate from first class.

“This is your thanks.”

After we finished eating, I went again to the back of the plane, heading for the rest room. A man stopped me. “I saw what you did. I want to be part of it. Here, take this.” He handed me twenty-five dollars.

Soon after I returned to my seat, I saw the Flight Captain coming down the aisle, looking at the aisle numbers as he walked, I hoped he was not looking for me, but noticed he was looking at the numbers only on my side of the plane. When he got to my row he stopped, smiled, held out his hand and said, “I want to shake your hand.” Quickly unfastening my seatbelt I stood and took the Captain’s hand. With a booming voice he said, “I was a soldier and I was a military pilot. Once, someone bought me a lunch. It was an act of kindness I never forgot.” I was embarrassed when applause was heard from all of the passengers.

Later I walked to the front of the plane so I could stretch my legs. A man who was seated about six rows in front of me reached out his hand, wanting to shake mine. He left another twenty-five dollars in my palm.

When we landed I gathered my belongings and started to deplane. Waiting just inside the airplane door was a man who stopped me, put something in my shirt pocket, turned, and walked away without saying a word. Another twenty-five dollars!

Upon entering the terminal, I saw the soldiers gathering for their trip to the base. I walked over to them and handed them seventy-five dollars. “It will take you some time to reach the base. It will be about time for a sandwich. God Bless You.”

Ten young men left that flight feeling the love and respect of their fellow travelers.

As I walked briskly to my car, I whispered a prayer for their safe return. These soldiers were giving their all for our country. I could only give them a couple of meals. It seemed so little…

~~~

A veteran is someone who, at one point in his life, wrote a blank check made payable to ‘The United States of America’ for an amount of ‘up to and including my life.’

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Click here to view the embedded video.

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Thank You

and may God bless you and America

forever.

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This is one of the nicest e-mails I have seen, and it really puts things into perspective…

I dreamed that I went to Heaven and an angel was showing me around. We walked side-by-side inside a large workroom filled with angels. My angel guide stopped in front of the first section and said, “This is the Receiving Section. Here, all petitions to God said in prayer are received.”

I looked around in this area, and i t was terribly busy with so many angels sorting out petitions written on voluminous paper sheets and scraps from people all over the world..

Then we moved on down a long corridor until we reached the second section..

The angel then said to me, “This is the Packaging and Delivery Section. Here, the graces and blessings the people asked for are processed and delivered to the living persons who asked for them.” I noticed again how busy it was there. There were many angels working hard at that station, since so many blessings had been requested and were being packaged for delivery to Earth.

Finally at the farthest end of the long corridor we stopped at the door of a very small station. To my great surprise, only one angel was seated there, idly doing nothing. “This is the Acknowledgment Section,” my angel friend quietly admitted to me. He seemed embarrassed. “How is it that there is no work going on here?” I asked.

“So sad,” the angel sighed. “After people receive the blessings that they asked for, very few send back acknowledgments .”

“How does one acknowledge God’s blessings?” I asked.

“Simple,” the angel answered. “Just say, ‘Thank you, Lord.’”

“What blessings should they acknowledge?” I asked…

“If you have food in the refrigerator, clothes on your back, a roof overhead, and a place to sleep, you are richer than 75% of this world. If you have money in the bank, in your wallet, and spare change in a dish, you are among the top 8% of the world’s wealthy .”

“If you get this on your own computer, you are part of the 1% in the world who has that opportunity.”

“If you woke up this morning with more health than illness … you are more blessed than the many who will not even survive this day.”

“If you have never experienced the fear in battle, the loneliness of imprisonment, the agony of torture, or the pangs of starvation … you are ahead of 700 million people in the world..”

“If you can attend a church without the fear of harassment, arrest, torture or death you are envied by, and more blessed than, three billion people in the world.”

“If your parents are still alive and still married … you are very rare .”

“If you can hold your head up and smile, you are not the norm, you’re unique to all those in doubt and despair.”

OK, what now? How can I start? If you can read this message, you just received a double blessing in that someone was thinking of you as very special and you are more blessed than over two billion people in the world who cannot read at all.

Have a good day, count your blessings, and if you want, pass this along to remind everyone else how blessed we all are.

ATTN: Acknowledge Dept:

‘Thank you Lord, for giving me the ability to share this message and for giving me so many wonderful people to share it with.”

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I just want to thank all my friends and loved ones for the educational emails over the past year…

           Because of your warning I live in a zip-lock plastic bag with clean oxygen piped in after passing through 18 filters which are replaced each hour.

           Thanks to you, I no longer open a public bathroom door without using a paper towel.

           I can’t use the remote in a hotel room because I don’t know what the last person was doing while flipping through the channels.

           I can’t sit down on the hotel bedspread because I can only imagine what has happened on it since it was last washed.

           I can’t enjoy lemon slices in my tea or on my seafood anymore because lemon peels have been found to contain all kinds of nasty germs including feces.

           I have trouble shaking hands with someone who has been driving because the number one pastime while driving alone is picking your nose.

           Eating a Little Debbie sends me on a guilt trip because I can only imagine how many gallons of trans fats I have consumed over the years.

           I can’t touch any woman’s purse for fear she has placed it on the floor of a public bathroom.

           I must send my special thanks to whoever sent me the one about poop in the glue on envelopes because I now have to use a wet sponge with every envelope that needs sealing.

           Also, now I have to scrub the top of every can I open for the same reason.

           I no longer have any savings because I gave it to a sick girl (Penny Brown) who is about to die in the hospital for the 1,387,258th time.

           I no longer have any money at all, but that will change once I receive the $15,000 that Bill Gates/Microsoft and AOL are sending me for participating in their special e-mail program .

           I no longer worry about my soul because I have 363,214 angels looking out for me, and St.Theresa’s novena has granted my every wish.

           I no longer eat KFC because their chickens are actually horrible mutant freaks with no eyes or feathers.

           I no longer use cancer-causing deodorants even though I smell like a water buffalo on a hot day.

           Thanks to you, I have learned that my prayers only get answered if I forward an e-mail to seven of my friends and make a wish within five minutes.

           Because  of your concern I no longer drink Coca Cola because it can remove toilet stains.

           I no longer can buy gasoline without taking someone along to watch the car so a serial killer won’t crawl in my back seat when I’m pumping gas.

           I no longer drink Pepsi or Dr Pepper since the people who make these products are atheists who refuse to put ‘Under God’ on their cans.

           I no longer use Saran wrap in the microwave because it causes cancer.

           And thanks for letting me know I can’t boil a cup of water in the microwave anymore because it will blow up in my face…disfiguring me for life.

           I no longer check the coin return on pay phones because I could be pricked with a needle infected with AIDS .

           I no longer go to shopping malls because someone will drug me with a perfume sample and rob me.

           I no longer receive packages from UPS or FedEx since they are actually Al Qaeda in disguise.

           I no longer shop at Target since they are French and don’t support our American troops or the Salvation Army.

           I no longer answer the phone because someone will ask me to dial a number for  which I will get a phone bill with calls to Jamaica , Uganda , Singapore and Uzbekistan .

           I no longer buy expensive cookies from Neiman-Marcus since I now have their recipe.

           Thanks to you, I can’t use anyone’s toilet but mine because a big brown African spider is lurking under the seat to cause me instant death when it bites my butt.

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