Thankful Thursday

1. I am very grateful that Paul, Oliver, and I had a safe flight from FL to DC on Friday, and it was greatly appreciated that we only spent 2 hours on the plane this time. Paul and I also enjoyed the VERY comfortable seats we were given. I greatly appreciate that my parents took us to and from the airport so we didn't have to pay for two weeks of airport parking.

2. I am also thankful we had a safe drive home on Saturday and that aside from very tall grass and a bird building a nest in the wreath on our front door (which caused the wreath to fall down and resulted in a lot of bird poop on our front porch), our house fared just fine during our absence.

3. Oliver's pneumonia didn't result in a hospitalization this time, and I'm thankful we could use the urgent care clinic instead of the ER (saved us $50). Our co-pays are much higher this year than we've ever had before. From Sunday- Wednesday we spent $90 on medical bills for Oliver ($10 for antibiotics and $80 in co-pays for two appointments).

4. I'm grateful Paul was able to push back the time of a meeting yesterday at work due to Oliver's doctor appointment so I could just take Oliver to the appointment and leave the other two kids at home. I thought we would be in and out of there pretty quickly since we had an appointment at 8:40, but we waited in the exam room for more than an hour before the doctor showed up. We were at the hospital for 90 minutes and spent about 3 of those minutes with the doctor. I would rather have waited in the waiting room where there is a tv and toys to entertain Oliver. It was hard keeping him out of trouble in the exam room for that length of time, but it would have been much worse with three kids in there.

5. Paul's parents, Nadia, and Ian made it back safely home on Tuesday! It was wonderful they could have so much time with their grandparents the last three weeks, but I was also glad to have all of my three little "chicks" at home.

6. On Sunday afternoon I used a couple of coupons at JCP to get some good bargains including a top for myself  for $2.99 to match a new skirt I got using a gift card I got at Christmas. I also used some coupons to get some bargains at CVS on Saturday night, and this week I did a survey online and CVS gave me a $10 coupon (off anything) for doing that survey. Gotta love coupons!

7. Although Oliver did have a few incidents over the past three weeks (by incident I mean him hitting or throwing something at someone), in general he did MUCH better than usual. The worst incident was the morning we were heading out the door to Hollywood Studios when Oliver (for whatever reason) picked up Grandma's glass jar of chicken bullion and hurled it at Ian's forehead. Ian immediately had a black and blue lump on his forehead. We applied ice right away, and it looked much better by the time we arrived at the park.

8. I loved the salad at Panera Bread last Friday night. YUM!

9. One perk of being back at home means we can get books and dvds from the library again. Two that the kids are really enjoying this week are Interrupting Chicken by David Stein and Parts by Tedd Arnold. The dvd Nadia is really enjoying this week is seeing "Anne of Green Gables" for the first time. I am only letting her watch the first one right now as we've only read the first book. We also have been able to get back into reading Railway Children again. I had brought it to Florida (on the Kindle), but we read very little of it while we were on vacation. I missed that!

10. I am very thankful to all the men and women who have given their lives serving in the military. I don't want to take our freedoms for granted!

11. Nadia and Ian missed the first summer musical rehearsal last week, but they attended the second one last night, and Nadia was very excited because she was assigned one of the speaking parts. We are planning on sending the kids to AWANA at this church again next year (not at our current church but where they went to AWANA from 2011-2014). Next summer Oliver will be old enough to be in the summer musical also!

12. Paul was planning to devote at least three days a week to working on a research project for Bucknell this summer, and yesterday another professor said Paul will be paid a stipend through a grant for his work on the research. We are very grateful for this! It will give us a little wiggle room in our budget for things like buying pizza. We had decided not to go to Sesame Place or Hershey Park this summer or join the swimming pool. In light of this extra money I want to plan a trip to Idlewild instead. We've never been there before. Hopefully Paul's research will be helpful for the other profs at Bucknell, and it would be really wonderful if his new research could result in a publication in the coming months.