Better late than never...

On October 1st Stacy Julian, scrapbooking friend and mega star issued a challenge. To give yourself a present by recording one day in photo's and create a mini album. Then carry that little album around with you, or put it somewhere you will see it often, for one year, look at it and appreciate life when ever you stumble over it in your purse or drawer etc. Then one year later create a page about the experience. It sounded like a cool idea. I thought, I think I can handle a mini album 10 pictures (mine ended up being more) while I am at home resting and recuperating. I knew I had photo's to pull from. So I took Stacy up on the challenge and created a little album. I love it! It was fun to do something creative.

However I did not follow up part 2 of the challenge and send photo's of it back to Stacy or post the pictures here on my blog because, well I did not think my day rated. The day was not particularly different than any other of late, but it is not one of those cheery life is good sort of renditions. It is a fairly honest look at the things that make up life 8 days post surgery.

Then I thought - hey this IS today THIS is what LIFE looks like for me right now. In the middle of fighting Breast Cancer, having a mastectomy, resting and recovering... it may be hard, it may be painful, it may be sad - but it is what it is and it IS MY LIFE today. I do not want to forget where I am today, or what we have gone through as a family because of this - This will be important, it will be a page in the history books of my life & my family's. Despite the challenge that is this disease I KNOW that I have it pretty good, the tumor is gone, the pathology reports have come back good and there is no follow up treatment required at this time. It could be so much more challenging, ugly and hard. But it is not so it is GOOD!

Life is not guaranteed, there will be highs and lows, challenges and celebrations. Everyday is different - everyday is new - everyday is a chance to make the best of it. Everyday we wake up and have 24 hours to make choices and live the life we have been given. We can make choices that make life miserable or we can make choices that make life worth living. But we have a CHOICE..... it is ours and ours alone.

So here I am 2 weeks after creating my "PRESENT" and I am finally posting. (and I emailed Stacy with a link...challenge complete!) I realized that no matter what this will still be a very valuable exercises - because LIFE ONE YEAR later will be so very different. It may be better, it may be worse, we do not know for sure but one thing that is certain it will look a whole lot different than this day that I recorded. Let's see what the journey will bring, what adventure will follow. I am willing to travel and see what I will learn from this day forward..

Here are some pics of my Present... a photo journey of today ( well actually a 72 hour period) created October 3rd, 2008.