Ten Things I'm Thankful For

It's time once again for another installment of my "Ten Things" to be thankful for, always varied, always random bits in positively NO particular order. Most of these are overdue for posting, but here again, better late than never. :) Please allow me to babble onward then...

December is here! Whoosh, and the end of the year is almost at hand. Another 365 days for gratitude seeking, thanksgiving blessings, and monumental memory making abilities. Another year, and so much to be thankful for. Advent is upon us, and here we are in the midst of Jesse trees, empty manger nativities, and all things winter at the same time. A season to reflect, contemplate, and just be grateful for every itty bitty thing!

And I am grateful for these things the past few weeks;

• - Our oldest expectant daughter's health improvements from having to battle both gestational diabetes and hypoglycemia at the same time. It's been a fine balance and the threat of insulin shots still hovers greatly, however the doctor keeps choosing to delay from improvement the past few weeks. Plus, little missy has at last chosen to turn from breech position to head down. Yep, so thankful! Only a few more weeks lovely daughter, and all these challenges will become a thing of the past.

• - A telephone call to announce an "advanced" class for guitar lessons and one son who has proved a natural talent for picking up the instrument. All the middle aged ladies told me they hoped he would come again as he motivated them to practice and keep up with him. Loved that. So fun.

• - Another vehicle in the family! And this mama is driving less the past few days since our son picked up his new truck, and some "time" freedoms are at hand for both of us. How wonderful to see him with his own wheels at last, and how wonderful to find out the new insurance policy I switched to last year offered him our umbrella of same pricing until he turns 25 years old. Affordable insurance is such a great thing for these young adults in this province, and this guy hit the jackpot when we were determined to seek out the best options for him. I'm a happy mama! See my smile?

• - My decluterring continues and I seem to be stuck in some sort of nesting mode as I toss and file, and stack and dump the mounds of junk in our home. How did we accumulate so much crap? LOL Actually, I am deeply satisfied to perform such actions in our home office, the one where my hubby will work much during the winter cold season and snowy depths of dangerous roadways. Nothing was left untouched, the desktop emptied and a work station formed. I framed all of my husband's certificates, and they are currently decorating the space to create something very inviting for achieving much on a work day.

• - I've been smitten with the way our children are picking up a second language with their french lesson classes each week. Today we venture off for yet another session, this time the days of the week will be reviewed, and together our conversational chatting will fill the vehicle on our way home. Bonjour!

• - It's been so heartwarming to get daily telephone calls from the least expected little one. Our (almost three year old) granddaughter has discovered the telephone! She's quite a chatter box, calling to talk to her "Nana" (me), and even knows how to leave a message if no one is here. I've saved a few of those to listen to over again, so precious! One of them was of her sweet little voice saying; "I love you Nana, I called to say goodnight". How can anyone not melt over that? Ever cute! Makes my day!
  

Without further ado, let me present my "Ten Thankful Things", just sparks of thankfulness appearing in my days this past week.

Please know for certain that my own personal thoughts on true thankfulness can obviously never be offered, nor delivered in true completeness within one simple post. And in case you just might find it interesting and want even more today, you can always skip along to view other "thankful" posts by clicking onto the archives located - right HERE.




1 - I'm thankful for "sugar dustings" when winter comes to play.

Actually I'd be even more thankful if this current rain went away and the land was fully blanketed and sprinkled with deeper dustings. It sure feels like winter is late this year! Bring it on!


- 2 - I'm thankful for love letters from our grandchildren. The note above was written by our grandson, a complete surprise one day in the mail.

It fast becomes heart rendering to see the love action of these wee ones when we are the recipients of their artistry and thoughtfulness. But then again, we aren't the only ones so that makes it double-fun when their young aunt and uncles get their own mail too.


The note above was a letter by the same grandson to his thirteen year old uncle, a little penmanship practice along with his soccer update. So cute!


- 3 - I'm thankful for this marvelous invention, and though not a current one, we are reaping many rewards already from having them in our home for only a short time! And when there was quite an alarming "Amber alert" (that ended happily with two little boys ages 5 & 10, lost overnight and found three miles away in a corn field) in our general area two weeks ago, I'm especially pleased with this purchase.


One remains in our home, and one each for the younger two when out visiting or riding bikes with neighborhood children. Shhhh, don't tell them, but they think these are much cooler than cell phones with instant access to their parents for their requests when out and about. They even work at the barn, so perfect and no worries about cell phone lags on texts and telephone calling as the norm is here.

When the trees are filled with leaves, it's difficult to see where they are even if only on our street riding their bikes. Now we have this great communication device, good for ten miles (though we won't be needing that range just yet) and a bit of comfort when needing to summon them home.

Rather than having to resort to using my hefty-ranged hockey-mama (great) whistling skills to get their attention, all it takes is one click of a button to ring them up. And they are also able to ring one another up while out and about, meeting up with their friends for longer bike rides together as one big bunch. Motorola, where have you been all my life! Costco apparently...


- 4 - I'm thankful for a little smirky sweet revenge after my hubby had reminded me (over and over again in this past spring) that there were three boxes downstairs yet unpacked. As they were stacked one on top of the other, I had assumed they were school curricula all along, deciding it was stuff I didn't use anyway, leaving the content in the boxes without anywhere to place them.

One day before summer I braved the monsters and began to slice open the packing tape on those unmarked boxes (don't you just love those unmarked boxes!) and much to my first dreaded but fast turned delighted surprise -nothing was mine! I laughed to myself in utter excitement when I felt that horrible task-dread roll right over my shoulders, also knowing this lousy detail was no longer my problem. It was all my hubby's work books from his former office HE never unpacked! Ha, loved this surprising discovery to bits!

At long last this past week, these boxes were finally taken to task (my oh my he procrastinates doesn't he? LOL) and had to be dealt with because they had been moved last summer, ending up in our little office closet, taking up way too much space. Finally, to my thrilling semi-revengeful silly pleasure, I sat near with a big wide grin on my face, slowing kicking one box at a time in front of my hubby as he sat perched and ready to tackle his own dreaded task. It was like Christmas watching him go through it all. Great discoveries abounded, many treasures were packed up again to take to his office here, and others set about our own office. Finally, combined with other file cabinet paper pile decluttering, not only were these three moving boxes filled with books and papers reviewed, two full boxes of accumulated stacks went to the curbside for recycling!

It felt marvelous not only to beat my best weekly goal of filling up the recycling bins (blue and gray), we filled them both and added a stacked set of jam packed moving boxes filled with paper goods for recycling disposal. I can't even begin to tell you what a feat it felt like to see those boxes at the roadside! And best part? It wasn't even my own junk....snicker.


- 5 - I'm thankful for shuffling picture frames again, this time the white 8x10 inch ones in our younger daughter's bedroom.

As per my yearly usual, the bedrooms were completely ransacked and organized again, and these five empty white dollar store (GREAT DEAL) frames were filled with (what else?) horse photo pages from her favorite horse magazines. Now she has a few favorite photos lined up and hung over her dressers. And one big smile appears when she gazes and dreams about owning her own horse someday.


- 6 - I'm thankful for map making cheating once in a while. I've always encouraged our children to draw maps, familiarizing themselves with the study of lands, including; continents, countries, assorted worldwide destinations, rivers, oceans and globe particulars.

Thick in our study of Canada, this time geography, they are allowed one cheat map to get the overall picture of a country, the first practice if you will, and then it's free hand all the way from then on. One province at a time, one territory at a time, this is our country, the land that we love. Oh Canada!


- 7 - I'm thankful for last week in general! My husband had a vacation week from work, and together we accomplished many assorted tasks and goals with a twist. We decided on purpose to take the bulk of our days to enjoy "quality time" together any way possible, at our leisure, and in our own timing. Dinner came when we cooked it, coffee shop visits occurred if the mood struck, we attended the local art studio tour, sat by the fire for as long as we desired, rolled with the flow of driving kids around, and just plain ole lapped up every minute of "quality" everything!

You see most times when my hubby has time off, he rolls into recovery mode from respiratory health induced fatigue, or he battles a lung infection yet again and needs the time off to do so. Last year at this time he had already battled two of them by now, so we are thrilled there have been none yet to date this fall/winter.

Although there were times of catching up on sleep with a midday nap, it was like having a vacation at home, when we were offline for the bulk of it just because. Actually I shouldn't say that. I spent oodles of time editing slurped up blog posts to publish more blog books for our family library. That task is so time consuming to me, my own fault with the growing number of posts I publish here. To date I'm just under 1500 in total, so I have to get rolling to catch up on publishing them all into more books.

I need to publish two books per year to assemble and contain all I've written, but most of all to accent or blow up my favorite photos as well. The last one was a monster with 386 pages (single sided so divide in two) and 786 photos! I use BLURB to slurp up my blog into print, time consuming for my personal taste but half the price compared to Blog2print. Just a personal choice for me tis all.

With internet issues at home (SLOW!) I had to head up to Starbucks for high speed usage for uploading my book to the website for safe keeping, but sadly only to find the coffee shop's server down. I ended up at a little library ten minutes away with my hubby and children in tow. Turned out to be a lovely calming time for all to relax, read and enjoy all available to them by way of newspapers, magazines and books. We even took home a few "quality movies" to watch. I love libraries! Don't you?


- 8 - I'm thankful for this delectable yummy indulgence not available in Canada, or at least very much NOT the same if there is one.

Yes, the folks in the USA have this little luxurious coconutty treat readily available for all those passing by confectionery stands, the occasional item I grab and savor for a very long time with a coffee or two. Okay, okay, so it's like being able to buy any type of bubble gum without added poisonous (!) aspartame included in the ingredients list, with the only exception of "hubba bubba" or something from the health food store. Only in the USA will I be able to stock up on my favorite chewies. Okay, so I'm weird like that....laughing.


- 9 - I'm thankful for times when the dinosaur computer age meets the modern age, like in the photo above!

The younger ones wanted the Compaq 3.1 all in one (circa 1991) computer in the kitchen for some math review games (Mathblaster, Algeblaster and others) for their free time. Complete with our "Holy Heroes" mouse pad, and perched next to the laptop where this daughter is completing a research assignment, I had to chuckle at the thought of this beloved and ancient technical piece of equipment in our home because ALL have forbidden me to get rid of it. Come on guys, I'm on a permanent quest to get rid of all our JUNK around here. Can't I even begin to appease you on this? Apparently not.

Even with its antiquated graphics, they tell me there's nothing quite like a great game of "A-train", "Sim City", "NHL 1992", "Dangerous Dave" and other age old games. What's a mother to do? Nothing. It stays because the family vote says hands off. So there it is, a novelty to all those with computer skills for none of them know quite what to do with it, how it works (we use the program "Kiddesk" as entry), unusual technology way before their time. Hilarious so far to see the faces on kids who enter our home and wonder "what that thing is" sitting on the desk in the kitchen! :)


- 10 - I'm thankful for healthy snacks provided by the younger children, the spontaneous ones when they know a snack must consist of something healthy around here. Current love for munching on is apples and peanut butter! Oh yum!


Bonus photo of the day;

The Canadians were HERE at the CLE Browns versus NE Patriots NFL football game. Freezing cold temperatures and threatening snow forecasts almost ruined the day for attending this "outdoor" stadium game, but all was just a fabulous experience for this mama who needed a "football for dummies" tutoring from son before attending with my sister.

More to come...

Meanwhile, what are your own "grateful things" this past while? Jot them down, keep rereading them for that is when you will definitely know - You are indeed so very blessed!

Have a great day!
Renee