Thankful Tuesday

1. A few weeks ago the kids received Junior Ranger patches through the mail for the first time. The first one they completed online was for the Lewis and Clark National Historic Trail. Last week they completed the activities to earn their badges for Clara Barton and Frederick Douglas. Hopefully in the near future we'll receive those badges in the mail. Their collections are growing! Hopefully they'll complete several in person in Virginia next month as we plan to visit a few Civil War battlefields.

2. I have price points for most of the things I buy at a grocery store. If it's something that's harder to get at a certain price, then I try to stock up on it so that hopefully I won't need to buy it again until it's at that price again sometime in the future. Even though I can't stand soda, I have been buying quite a bit of soda for the past 18+ years since Paul drinks a lot of soda every week. My price point for all these years for soda has been $1. Rarely have I been willing to pay more than $1 for a 2 liter of soda. Most of the years it wasn't

challenging to find Pepsi or Coke for that price. CVS usually alternated from week to week which was on sale - Pepsi one week and Coke the next. Lately (maybe the last couple of years?) it's been more challenging to find soda for that price. It certainly isn't a weekly occurrence these days. To be honest I wish Paul would give up the soda habit - however I don't see that happening. He likes both Pepsi and Coke, but given the choice, he prefers Coke. In general it's easier to find Pepsi on sale than Coke. Our local grocery store had Coke on sale for 99 cents last week without any restrictions on how much you buy. Many stores place a limit on the quantity. He has been to the grocery store twice since it went on sale, and I also bought a bunch on Saturday. We bought more than thirty 2 liters

of Coke so that should last him several weeks. I'm grateful to have a break from looking for a soda bargain, and I use the Coke caps to earn other things like popcorn, drinks, and free movie tickets. We don't get anything from Pepsi.

3. The kids enjoyed their field trip to Refreshing Mountain on October 3. Their favorite parts were the elevated obstacle course, ziplining, and the farm animals. As an added bonus, Tab drove (yahoo) and we spent the day with Tab and her boys.

4. Paul took Nadia roller skating on October 3.

5. We enjoyed our tour of a bank on October 10, and Nadia and I enjoyed the Building 429 concert on October 11.

6. Paul's mom is OFF the ventilator. She can eat! She can talk! She can sit in a chair after being in a bed for almost two weeks!

7. We got to spend a couple of hours with all ten Towfighis on Friday, and we're enjoying the company of four of their kids for an entire week. My kids LOVE to spend time with their cousins!

8. I took seven kids to Ard's Farm on Saturday to enjoy the large slide, shooting corn, a corn maze, hayride, etc. They also enjoyed getting a slushie or ice cream at the Purple Cow.

9. I planted some grass seed a couple of weeks ago, and this time I bought a bale of straw so I'd have some to put on top. I didn't succeed completely, but I got a lot more grass this time than earlier this summer. I have been trying to get grass to grow in the place that used to be covered by a deck but isn't any longer because our new deck is smaller than the old deck. I definitely am not ready to be a landscaper, but I'm happy that more grass is growing near the deck. Part of what had me

motivated is the kids were tracking a lot of dirt on the deck when there wasn't any grass at the bottom of the deck. Yesterday I also started a project I've wanted to do for several months of putting some stones in behind the bush on the one side of the deck so I'll have less weed whacking to do.

10. Paul has made a lot of progress with the bathroom repair. Whenever we're allowed to use the shower again I am going to be SO appreciative. I haven't had a shower in more than 2 weeks, and I really miss it!  I'm not a big fan of using the jacuzzi tub to shampoo my hair, but I'm thankful we have had that option or we'd really be up a creek without a paddle! We've also been waiting for him to repair that toilet. The timing hasn't exactly been ideal to go from 3 to 2 toilets when we added more people to the house and to have zero showers when they are 9 people living here for a week, but the end is in sight. Paul never expected it to be such a huge project! He took off work Thursday through Saturday and put in a lot of hours on it Thursday thought Sunday. It

makes me wonder how long it's going to take to finish the master bathroom, but for now I'm just focusing on the fact that soon we should be at least be able to use the bath/shower in the kids' bathroom!

11. I'm thankful the weather has been nice. The kids have played outside a lot including at a playground in Lewisburg last night while Ian, Nadia, and Oliver were in choir/gymnastics. Speaking of which, last night was Oliver's last night of gymnastics for the year, which means I won't be running around quite as much the next four Mondays (last four nights of choir for Nadia and Ian). He's made definite progress on the beam, with his cartwheel, with his backward tuck roll, etc.