Thankful Tuesday

1. My Dad and Margie made it back safely Mexico after spending three weeks in Cancun.

2. The Echo dots are a big blessing. It's funny how a device can go from something you've never heard of to something you use in many different ways every day in not that long of a time span. We use them to listen to music, as a Bluetooth speaker for listening to the Bible and books on Hoopla or Overdrive, to hear the weather forecast, to set umpteen timers a day, as an intercom to communicate from the family room to the kids' bedrooms, to listen to books on Audible, ask how to say a particular word in Spanish, etc. Since we don't own a landline and the kids don't own any cell phones, I am very, very, very thankful that they can call my cell phone through the Echo dot when I'm not at home - whether I'm outside taking a walk with Milo or picking up some books at the library. The next time they have a great sale on Echo dots, I want to buy one more and assign that one a different wake word (not Alexa) and have that Echo dot ONLY speak in Spanish. We have our family room Echo dot set up to respond in either English or Spanish.

3. Today through Friday it's supposed to be in the 60's, and we might even get into the low 70's one of those days! The warmer temperatures aren't here to stay yet, but I'll take what I can get! I'm so looking forward to taking long walks with Milo four days in a row this week. He will also be thrilled!!

4. I did some shopping at CVS on Saturday, and I bought nine boxes of cereal for less than $3 total. In general I haven't done much couponing lately, but I have been using coupons at CVS at least once a month for about 18 months. Actually I didn't pay any money at CVS because I used a gift card Al and Millie gave me at Christmas toward the cereal purchase. We'll see how far I can stretch that gift card! :) 

5. We have finally been getting into a routine of playing games together as a family on either Saturday or Sunday. For example, the previous weekend we played Quirkle (it was Paul's first time ever playing that game), and this past Sunday afternoon we played Suspend and Pit. Paul won all of the games! 

6. Paul and I watched a movie together on Saturday night - the Queen of Katwe on Disney+. I thought Paul would enjoy it because it's about a true story of a young chess player in Uganda. It's very rare for Paul and I to watch a movie together so I savored it.

7. Yvonne's husband is slowly starting to recover from COVID. He has been very sick for more than 2 weeks. I am also on the mend. I didn't feel well last Monday through Friday. I began to feel better on Saturday. I'm not 100% back to normal yet, but I'm feeling much better than I did last week.

8. The kids participated in a program put on by the Penn Museum today that was about Holi. I hope to take the kids to the Penn Museum some day, but for now we participated online. Maurice was a tour guide at the Penn Museum during the last 6 months of his life. I've started buying the materials so I can make the color powders for the kids to throw later this month in conjunction with Holi as we're learning about different holidays this year. In the beginning of the pandemic we did more of these virtual field trips. We haven't done any since last spring, but I signed up for two this month. The next one will be a tour put on by Chick-Fil-A. Virtual field trips certainly have the advantage of not needing to spend hours in the van traveling to and from the sites.