Thankful Thursday

1. There were lots of raffles at the Kids' Day event last Saturday. I only entered one of them. I guess I should have taken the time to fill out more entry forms, because I got an email on Sunday from the Bible church who ran the one I entered (they had the clowns who were making things with balloons), and we won a $75 gift card to Dick's Sporting Goods! What a pleasant surprise!

2. You're probably tired of me mentioning it, but I really like the Motivated Mom's planner. I never had a routine for how often I did things like wash the bathroom rugs (on last week's list) or wash the bedspreads (on this week's list).

3. I'm thankful for public libraries. I save a lot of $$ by borrowing books instead of buying them. I recently read Bringing up Girls by Dobson, and now I'm reading his Bringing up Boys. I also have read several novels lately such as the Yada Yada House of Hope series. I won't have time to read once I go back to work in 2 months; I'm seizing the opportunity while I can! (And thanks to Jenn for checking some books out for me that our library doesn't have.)

4. I'm grateful for individualized instructions. In a couple of weeks I'll start supervising 3 of those for 6 weeks, and then while I'm teaching 2 courses starting on July 6 I'll also be supervising 2 more. I'm also scheduled to do 1 in the fall. It's a pretty easy way to make a little extra money from home. I'm planning to use some of this extra $$ to buy my first DSLR camera because I still get so many blurry shots of the kids with my point and shoot camera. If any of you have any recommendations on which one to buy, I'm all ears!

5. I've loved watching the trees and flowers blossom. I love tulips, hyacinth, and daffodills, and the trees look so much better with blossoms or leaves.

6. Although we still have a day now and then where it's rather chilly (like yesterday), most of the time lately the weather has been VERY pretty. I've enjoyed mowing the lawn (every 5 days) and taking the kids to the park (almost every day). The warm weather has also been appreciated since our furnace/air conditioning unit has been turned off for almost 3 weeks now.

7. When the weather has been cooler, I've been very thankful for our gas fireplace. What a blessing!!

8. I got a good report at the dentist yesterday. I do not take those for granted!

9. We were planning to go to MD tomorrow night as my sister and her two youngest children are visiting from Chicago. I was looking forward to seeing them and spending Mother's Day with my mom. Those plans had to be cancelled yesterday because we can't go away until the water in our basement problem is resolved. No, I am not thankful that our plans were changed, but I am thankful that there are some other fun things to look forward to instead. Tomorrow night I'm going to a 2 hour Zumbathon at my church (which is a fundraiser for a mission trip some are taking to Africa this summer), and Saturday night I'm going to take Nadia to a Mother/Daughter dinner at my church. That will be our first, and that will be very special! The town where our church is located is having their huge annual yard sale this weekend; I also plan to check that out for the first time since we'll actually be around this weekend. Lord willing, we'll be down in MD in about 10 days when Paul is at a conference in Baltimore, and hopefully we'll see my sister and her family in Florida in August.

10. The feeding sessions with Ian went much better yesterday. Maybe he's finally getting the hang of the new program! He ate about 24 ounces of solid food yesterday, which is definitely a new record for him. Now if only he'd go back to sleeping through the night....

11. I still love my choir. Last night we rehearsed one song with a cellist. It was gorgeous!! This past Sunday we sang "We have seen the Lord." The pastor and his son have amazing voices, and they had the solos (Thomas and Christ). You can click to listen to the song at the link I gave, but in my opinion we sounded better than this recording (because of the high caliber of our soloists). I was in tears by the end of the song on Sunday morning.

12. No ants have been seen in our house over the past week. YAY! Now to reassemble the trampoline. Thankfully Paul doesn't mind parking his car in the driveway as the trampoline is being stored in his side of the garage.

13. My hearing is almost back to normal! I am very thankful it didn't take as long for it to come back this time. PTL!