Positive Attitude

Yet another cheesy title but the best two words to explain how our household survived 2020…  Luckily the word “positive” was only associated with the attitude and NOT with COVID. :)

December is always all about the holidays, which gives this family a nice boost of excitement.  This year, that excitement was more important as we tried to keep our positive attitude.  It is a true attitude boost, when you see the kids not caring about anything but the surprises of holidays.  In this household, Santa comes twice… :) Once on Christmas and then on New Years Day…. Therefore the tree is the magical place that creates gifts.  Who doesn’t like gifts?!  For me gifts are more than buying…. I like creating stuff but the problem is that the inspiration comes just days (if not a day) before the actual time of celebration.  This time around, I did try to trick my mind so that my creative juices could start working before the 24th. :) As I went through pictures to prepare something special for my love, I saw all the joy in our faces in every picture.  The settings were all the same - around the house, in the neighborhood, up in Tahoe and up in Santa Cruz Mountains.  But we were happy, even when we posed with our masks!

One colorful smile!

When dreams come true you act cool…

This year had its significant challenges and moments where a positive attitude was hard to keep.  It toughened our skin and taught us to be even more resilient, adaptive and creative.  It taught ME to miss family with a smile on my face, to let my eyes tear up in front of the camera, to take a deep breath while trying to teach a language, that is not my own, to my toddler, to create new routines with the expectations that they could change the next day, to grow our mini community of YMCA to a larger family…. I am certainly ready for this year to be over but at the same time I am truly grateful for all the new skills that I learned in 2020.  I don’t want to put high hopes into 2021 because I do not like disappointments.  Instead, I will keep that positive attitude no matter what the new year will bring to us.

Train and Smile had been a key part of this year.  We have completed 75 classes with 38 different themes and 38 different items from our houses used as our equipment.  There were total of 41 unique participants and in two separate classes, we managed to have 6 members of the same family join the class from different cities/countries.  Our largest class ended up being 19 people (not including me and Kaya) and the smallest class was 10.  I collected total of 75 smile captures at the end of every class.  And those smiles made my day every single session.  

Instead of a workout routine this month, I have a simple experiment for you.  When you are least feeling like it, put a pen/pencil in between your lips (side ways, NOT pointing in) so that the tip of the pen/pencil will be on the right side of your mouth and the other end will be on the left side.  Don’t bite the pen/pencil, just try to hold down to it with your lips.  Then do a wall sit squat for 30 seconds.  Once you are done, take the pen/pencil out of your lips and look at yourself in the mirror.  Let me know what you see in the mirror once you remove the pen/pencil. 

Let’s keep the cheer and the smiles up in 2021 to bring us even more joy…. We made memories in 2020 to celebrate in 2021… I wish you a Healthy, Happy and Sane New Year and no matter what it brings to us, I wish you all a strong heart, body and mind.

We made it! High five to you all…

True Joy…