Giving Thanks

Since Oliver turns 15 months old tomorrow, I'm going to do my weekly thankful post today instead.

1. Nadia and Paul had a good time at Home Depot on Saturday morning. Nadia got to use a hammer and do some painting. This Saturday he's taking both Nadia and Ian to Lowe's and dropping Oliver and I off at the mall so I can do some Christmas shopping while they do their car project with Daddy. It's nice that these hardware stores offer these free programs!

2. While getting new tires put on Paul's car (yikes are tires expensive!!!) on Saturday afternoon, Nadia and I were shopping. I think it's the first time in almost four years that she and I went shopping together. I got myself a new watch and two sweaters at Macy's. Nadia picked one of the sweaters out. Then at JCP I got some clothes for Ian to wear in the future from the clearance rack. The original prices totaled $132, but I paid only $15.79 total for the 10 items (88% discount).

3. Paul's mom seems to be doing better. Hopefully that will remain true even when she goes off of her medication in a few days. Tomorrow she's having a small surgery to have some skin cancer removed from her shoulder. We're praying that #1 she'll soon be healthy enough to have the two treatments for her lymphoma and #2 everyone will be healthy enough that she can come up and spend some time at our house on Thanksgiving.

4. Nadia and Oliver seem to have adjusted to the time change! Nadia was the first to adjust (yesterday) and Oliver was the second (today). Ian is still waking up an hour early. We shall see how long it takes him. In the past it has sometime taken him quite a few weeks to make the shift. Last night the kids were still very cranky once we got to 6:30pm. Nadia actually asked to go to bed at 6:30! I kept them up until 8pm, which was a challenge. Oliver almost fell asleep lying on the kitchen floor at one point.

5. In general I think girl's clothing for infants/toddlers is far cuter than boy's, but I do love to see my boys dressed up in suits or sweaters. Ian must have picked up on my preference because sometimes when I ask him to pick a shirt to wear on a week day morning, he opens his sweater drawer and tells me that he wants to look handsome. Aw, he sure knows how to melt my heart. I am grateful he's gotten over his aversion to sweater vests that he had last year. And Nadia still loves to wear dresses. I am not complaining about that either although there are times I insist that she wears pants (such as to Home Depot when paint is involved). I imagine she'll outgrow her love of dresses some day, but I'm going to enjoy it for as long as it lasts.

6. Ian can now do up to a 100 piece jigsaw puzzles by himself. Yesterday he did a 99 piece puzzle because Oliver ate the 100th piece. He didn't swallow it, but he chewed on it until it was so mushy I had to just throw it away.

7. There had been a lull for a little bit in terms of me being able to add more schools to the list for Paul's job search for 2014, but over the past few days I was able to add 5 more to the list (#12-16). Those five schools are in PA (2), MI, WV, and IN. Hopefully in the near future he'll be invited to participate in a phone interview at one of these 16 schools.

8. Nadia is now starting to try to read various things throughout the day of her own initiative. It's so exciting! I took a short video of Ian reading 3 words this morning.

9. Nadia and Ian really enjoy AWANA. Tonight they sang two songs for the adults attending the missions conference. Ian was singing with gusto!