Giving Thanks

1. We had an enjoyable three day trip to Virginia. On Monday we visited the Manassas Battlefield (referred to as Bull Run by the Union) and the White House of the Confederacy. I had toured the White House on a family vacation when I was a teenager, but Paul and the kids had never been there. I was remembering how my brother used to tease me about "house tours," but then the last few years of his life he actually was interested in them because of his study of architecture and such. My brother's idea of an ideal vacation was one that involved a lot of bird watching rather than museums and house tours. On Tuesday went spent two hours at the Virginia Science Museum. The kids would have loved to spend far more than two hours there. All of the national parks we visited were free, and we got in for free to the science museum with our ASTC membership. We paid to visit the White House of the Confederacy, two Civil War Museums, and the Natural Bridge State Park. We spent Monday night at a hotel near Richmond and Tuesday night at my Dad's house. The kids

earned three Junior Ranger badges at Manassas, Petersburg, and Appomattox. Of the three museums, three national parks, White House, and state park we visited over the three days, all three kids said their top three (although the specific order varied) were the science museum, the Civil War museum in Appomattox, and the White House of the Confederacy. Part of the reason we did the Civil War museum in Richmond was because it was at the same site as a national park of where the south produced more than 1,000 canons during the Civil War. Unfortunately that national park was temporarily closed due to construction, and that particular Civil War museum wasn't as good as the one in Appomattox. Paul definitely enjoyed both battlefields even though he had already been to both of them before, but none of us had ever been to Appomattox before. Nadia and Ian liked Appomattox more than Manassas or Petersburg. Paul was impressed by the size of the natural bridge.

2. I am not one to do Black Friday shopping, although I do plan to go to the hardware store in town tomorrow as they'll be

selling gift certificates that are about half off, but I did go to CVS this morning. I bought 19 items (Coke, cereal, deodorant, razors, nail polish gift sets, Doritos, Advil, etc.) which after using $26.49 worth of coupons cost me $23.74, and my receipt included $25.49 worth of Extra Bucks to use the next time I shop at CVS. That means I really got everything for free!

3. I got three days off of cooking while on our trip. We had packed food for our lunches the three days. The boys enjoyed having bacon two days in a row as we had a free hot breakfast buffet at the hotel on Tuesday morning, and Margie cooked a hash brown casserole, scrambled eggs, bacon, and English muffins for breakfast on Wednesday morning. We used a gift card to have dinner at Red Robin on Monday night and enjoyed a potluck dinner at my Dad's church on Tuesday night. If we had stopped at Burger King last night we wouldn't have spent any money at restaurants during our trip, but we went to Wendy's because I didn't realize we only had around $9 left on the Wendy's gift card. We usually pay for one large pizza each week so we didn't spend *too* much more than that at Wendy's last night, and we won't get pizza this week.

4. Oliver has a loose tooth! His first two teeth had to be extracted by the dentist because of a case of "shark teeth" meaning that his permanent teeth came in behind the baby teeth and this meant the baby teeth weren't going to come out on their own. The same thing has happened to his top two front teeth. I am expecting the dentist to tell us next month he needs to extract those as well. I was starting to wonder if any of Oliver's teeth would come out the free way that didn't involve shots of Novocain. Also, our co-pay is $75 per tooth to have them extracted. So I am very thankful that at least one of Oliver's teeth will come out the usual way!

5. Paul's parents, brother, and sister-in-law came up to spend Thanksgiving with us today. I made the turkey, corn casserole, green beans and almonds, pumpkin bread, mashed potatoes, sweet potatoes, and stuffing plus purchased some jellied cranberry that Nadia adores. Paul's parents brought deviled eggs and carrot slaw. Al and Millie brought cookies, rolls, and a pumpkin pie. I also served some bread that Margie gave us yesterday. I had planned to make (yeast) dinner rolls, but I'm glad I didn't as we had plenty of bread. Oliver was VERY grateful for the sweet potatoes. Every year I have the kids each write a gratitude list in our Thanksgiving journal. Oliver listed eight things/people (God, hugs, kisses, Mommy, Grandma, etc.) and one of his eight was sweet potatoes! I also love sweet potatoes, but they didn't make it onto my gratitude list in our journal. :)

6. Tuesday night was a rough one in terms of sleep. My back is rather picky, and I was in pain on the futon on Tuesday night. To make matters worse, Paul and I were sleeping across from Julianna, Micah, and Oliver, and Oliver and Julianna decided it was time to get up for the day at 4:30am. I eventually shared a twin sized air mattress with Oliver in the hopes that he and Julianna would stop talking and fall back asleep. Thankfully they did. I was very grateful to sleep in my own bed last night. Oliver slept until 7:50, and Nadia and Ian slept until 8:10 this morning. We were all tired, and it was heavenly to get a good night's sleep last night.

7. I got a shower on Tuesday morning at the hotel! We haven't had access to our shower for 7 of the past 9 weeks. It had been over two weeks since I had a shower. I'm really hoping and praying we aren't doing additional damage to our master bathroom floor while we're using the Jacuzzi tub, but we can't go 7 weeks without a shower or a bath. I really, really miss the shower, but I keep reminding myself that this too shall pass, and to be thankful that at least we have running water and a functioning hot water heater.

8. We had safety in our travels to Virginia and back. I'm grateful I didn't replace the tires prior to our trip as we got a bit more mileage out of those. I did the driving on Monday and Tuesday. I had a headache on Wednesday, and I was thankful Paul did the lion share of the driving that day. This was our second time driving home from Lynchburg. The first was for the wedding in August 2017. Oliver really struggles with drives that last longer than four hours. The drive home last night was rather unpleasant toward the end as I was nauseous (car sickness) and Oliver was crying, but he's come a long way. Even a three hour drive used to be very challenging with him when he was younger. We drove for about seven hours total yesterday, which was definitely past all of our comfort zones, but we survived. Driving that many hours in the van isn't cheap, but thankfully the gas is much cheaper in Virginia. I had paid more than $2.80 last Saturday for gas, but in Virginia we saw gas as cheap as $2.12 per gallon! The savings add up when you are putting 17 gallons in your tank.

9. The kids were able to enjoy playing with their cousins last Friday and Saturday morning at our house. I wasn't expecting to see them when we visited my Dad and Margie in Virginia this week. One downside is that it greatly decreased how much time they had with Grandpa and Gubba because naturally they wanted to play with their cousins. It was a breeze to leave the hotel at 8:30am on Tuesday morning, but we didn't leave until 10:00 on Wednesday. Leaving 90 minutes later than planned meant that #1 we skipped part of the Civil War Museum as we only could spend an hour there, #2 we got home later than planned, and #3 the native American village was closed by the time we got to the Natural Bridge State Park. I was very disappointed that we missed the Monacan Village, but knowing how much the kids love playing with their cousins so it was very hard for me to tell them it was time to leave that morning.

10. Originally I had planned to take the kids to the Pennsylvania Military Museum last Saturday, but when I found out Paul wouldn't be able to join us as he needed to go to work, I decided to postpone that trip for a few years because that museum is one of Paul's MOST favorite so it seemed crazy to take the kids on a day Paul wasn't going to join us. I took the kids to see Frozen 2 instead. Thanks to coupons and a gift card, our tickets, popcorn, and drinks didn't cost us any money.

11. The sermon on Sunday was on Psalm 23, and the adult choir sang a beautiful anthem that contained the text from that Psalm. The anthem included a gorgeous oboe solo.

12. Our three day trip plus Thanksgiving meant we had four days with Paul. WOOHOO! I purposefully picked a book for us to listen to that I thought he would enjoy (Across Five Aprils) as I know he's not a fan of books like the Vanderbeekers (we recently enjoyed three of those books) or All-of-a-kind Family.

13. We're all healthy! Usually in the past time spent with cousins has translated to some or all of us coming down with a GI or respiratory bug, but over the the past few months we've spent time with cousins without anyone getting sick. Yahoo!! It's especially important that we are healthy if we are going to spend time with Paul's mom.

14. The weather was REALLY gorgeous on Monday and Tuesday. It wasn't quite as nice on Wednesday, but thankfully the rain stopped by the time we arrived at Appomattox. I'm also thankful we didn't encounter any snow given the condition of the tires on the van.