Thankful Tuesday

1. Last Monday and Tuesday were stay at home days. In particular Ian and I enjoy having days like that at least some of the time.  Usually Wednesdays will be like that aside from church in the evening. Last Wednesday was more hectic than usual as I had a dentist appointment, filled out the paperwork and paid the fees at Meadowbrook for Nadia to take art and chorus and Ian to take art, went to the library, took the van to Walmart to get one new tire for the van, took the kids to AWANA, and then drove to the Mazda dealership to pick Paul up as he dropped off his vehicle to have work done while we were away. Whew.  So again, days like that make me appreciate days when we can stay home all day. Today should be one of those days as I don't have any plans to leave the house today. Yay!

2. We had a lovely three-day trip to New York last week. Oliver was surprised that Paul was joining us. I appreciated having someone to help with the driving. Of course the trip had been planned with Paul in mind so I fully expected him to come!

We were able to tour the USS Slater (the only destroyer escort that is still afloat) in Albany, visit the Children's museum of science and technology in Troy, spend a day at Fort Ticonderoga including a cruise on the Carillon, tour the battlefield at Saratoga, and visit the Museum of and Science in Schenectady. There was no cost to enter the museums or the national park. We only paid to enter the Fort and USS Slater. We saw far more of Paul than usual!

3. I also had a three day break from cooking thanks to the hotel's hot breakfast buffet, packing lunches, and using gift cards to have dinner at Texas Roadhouse, Red Robin, and Wendy's. Speaking of cooking, I have to stay I am still really enjoying the MealBoard app I'm using. It's helping me get out of a rut in terms of what I bake for dessert, cook for dinner, etc. We used our new grill for the first time on Sunday. I had purchased porterhouse and T-bone steaks awhile back. At first the kids were very skeptical of trying something new (none of them had eaten any steak before), but after one bite Ian declared it was AWESOME! I did tell them not

to expect we'll eat steak very often because it's not cheap, but I can buy steaks for everyone for the same cost as it was to buy one steak for Paul at Texas Roadhouse. So I am planning to buy steaks at least once or twice a year at the minimum. I'm not a big fan of steak so I had leftovers instead. Paul said we'd better get the kids cholesterol checked if we are going to serve them steak to make sure they don't have the genetic condition that lead to Maurice's death. When the kids weren't sure about trying the steak I told them that Grandpa, Pop Pop, Daddy, Uncle Maurice, and Uncle Joe all really loved steak. I'm sure there are others in our extended families who like steak, but those were the first names that came to mind.

4. I enjoyed teaching the 1st and 2nd grade girls' Sunday School class during the second service yesterday. The lesson was on the Bible - books, chapters, verses, OT/NT, etc.

5. Nadia enjoyed going to the Middle last night. She wanted to go to a meeting at our church for the middle school girls at 3:15

yesterday, but I told her that was not a good day/time for us to add something to our schedule since Ian's choir rehearsal starts at 5pm.

6. Oliver usually has gymnastics on Monday nights, but he had to miss his class last night because he threw up twice yesterday morning. The first time he threw up at 6:45am in the bathroom, and the second time he threw up was about three hours later in the van on the way home from taking Paul to the Mazda dealer so he could get his car back. Because Paul was already going in to work much later than usual (due to the time the Mazda repair shop opened on Monday morning) and because Oliver threw up, Paul worked from home yesterday so that I would only have to take Nadia and Ian to choir. Ian's rehearsals are from 5-6, and Nadia's are from 6:15-7:15. That would have been a long time to hang out with Oliver at the library or some similar place hoping he didn't throw up at all. Oliver threw up again at 9:45pm so my day began and ended with cleaning up icky messes. I'm hoping he's over his bug and that

none of the rest of us get it. We were washing our hands and using hand sanitizer like crazy yesterday. I'm very thankful Paul was able to help out so that Oliver could stay home last night. If he's feeling better, I can take him to a make-up gymnastics class at 4:00 on Wednesday. They added a rock wall to the gym, and they are using it in gymnastics this week. Oliver would enjoy that!

7. Nadia and Rachel have been enjoying talking to each other via FaceTime. I'm grateful for the relationship they are continuing to build as cousins and pray it will last for many years to come!

8. Last Wednesday the kids and I bought a new shoe rack. The other one was a lot less visible as it sat under the kids' coat rack in the foyer, but it wasn't working very well lately for several reasons including 1. all their shoes didn't fit on the old shoe rack, 2. now that they are bigger their coats hang farther down and the top level of that shoe rack was covered by coats, and 3. the vast majority of the time the kids would just put

their shoes in the vicinity of the shoe rack but not actually on the shelves or under the bottom shelf. The new one is a tiny bit of an eyesore in my opinion. If our coat closet was bigger I'd put it in there, but the new one is preferred for several reasons - #1 it holds far more shoes so now all their shoes easily fit (with a lot of room to spare), #2 the coats are not longer hanging over the shoes, and #3 I believe they will have more success in actually putting the shoes on the new spinning shoe rack. So in the end my desire for tidiness was more important to me than the appearance. Practicality wins out over décor in my opinion.

9. Last year when Amazon had the three month special of Kindle Unlimited for 99 cents for 3 months I used it a little bit, this time around when Amazon had the special of three months for free - we have really been taking advantage of it. By "we" I mean Ian and I. He finished all four Prince Martin books and now has started the Growly series on the Kindle. Yesterday I also received several free books in the mail from submitting Kellogg's receipts online. Some

I ordered for my kids and some for Christmas gifts for nieces/nephews.

10. We hadn't heard from the guy who was going to replace the A/C in almost a month, but he showed up again yesterday to do more measurements. The first estimate was based on using one particular manufacturer. That one couldn't given him a date when the equipment would be available. So yesterday he gave us a quote using another manufacturer. It was $900 cheaper!! However after he looked at our furnace he suggested we should replace that at the same time given it's twenty years old. The furnace adds another $1,600 to the total cost. Have I mentioned houses aren't cheap? I'm thankful that in general the temperatures have been a bit lower lately which has helped keep our house from turning into a sauna. I'm also thankful that sometimes this month we should have a new air conditioning system with a heat pump (something we haven't had before) and a new furnace. It's supposed to get up to about 90 degrees tomorrow, but thankfully that hasn't been the norm lately.

11. With all the driving Paul does to and from work and that we have done this summer traveling various places, I am still thankful for safety on the roads. We put almost $1K into Paul's car over the past two months which is to me a lot of money especially as we only bought the car last year. We are going to try to avoid going to the Mazda dealer in the future as I believe we could have gotten a better price on the repairs done last week elsewhere. I'm also thinking our next car shouldn't be a Mazda. Previously we've owned Hondas and Toyotas, and we never had to spend that much on any of our other cars when the mileage was this low on the car. Hopefully we can go awhile before we have to spend much money on either of our vehicles aside from oil changes, but again I'm thankful that our cars have never broken down on us and that aside from Paul hitting a dead deer two different times, we haven't had any accidents in the past 15 years.

12. One area I often have felt I could improve upon in homeschooling has been including more hands-on activities in science. Yesterday I took the time to include a simple hands-on activity related to our discussion of buoyancy and density. The kids had a blast. Hopefully I will be more consistent in taking the time and effort to include hands-on activities in science this year. They are making a puppet show in Bible today related to conflict resolution. I have wanted to include puppets more in homeschooling in the past, and I am happy we are off to a good start with that as well this year.

13. Walmart sent me another $10 off a $50 grocery coupon. I placed my order online on Sunday and picked it up last night during Nadia's choir rehearsal. I'll take 20% off my groceries any day of the week! Sometimes they make a substitution if they are out of the exact thing I ordered. Usually it just means they give me a different brand. Yesterday one thing I ordered was three bags of carrots (frozen). They planned to give me three bags of peas and carrots instead. Nope! It's the first substitution I've rejected. My kids don't like peas. I made them eat peas and carrots from time to time but three bags would be too much considering they don't like peas.