Thankful Tuesday

1. We enjoyed watching episodes 4 and 5 of the second season of The Chosen. Sunday's episode was a cliffhanger so hopefully we won't have to wait too long for episode 6 to be aired. 

2. An ALDI is going to be built 15 minutes from our house!

3. In late April our neighbor who has an inground, heated pool invited Oliver over for a swim. 

4. My friend and her husband surprised us by attending Paul's mom's funeral.

5. I really, really enjoy playing piano duets with Ian. My grandma taught my mom to play the piano, my mom taught me, and now I'm teaching Ian = at least the 4th generation (I'm not sure who taught my grandma to play the piano). 

6. The office where we have our life insurance notarized our homeschool affidavit at no charge. I wrote a list of objectives for each child for next school year last week. 

7. Our church gave Paul a flower arrangement in memory of his mom. It was the first time in 51 years that someone gave him flowers. I have enjoyed having daisies and carnations in a vase on our kitchen table.

8. We got an estimate for replacing our roof in 2019. I wanted to do it in 2020, but Paul wanted to wait. We were afraid the costs for materials had skyrocketed since then but thankfully we'll "only" have to pay an extra $850 to have it done this year. Our roof is 22 years old, and we plan to have it replaced in September. Paul wants to do it now because he wants us to have solar panels installed on our roof.

9. Oliver, Nadia, and I planted some flowers in our flower bed. 

10. We enjoyed a play date at a playground/skate park on Wednesday afternoon. I enjoyed being able to talk with Tab some while the boys played. 

11. We didn't wear our masks or shields at church on Sunday. WOOHOOOOO! I so greatly appreciate steps

toward what used to be normal. 

12. Milo spent a lot of time alone at home in his crate on Saturday and Sunday, and he didn't have any accidents or throw up while we were gone. We were gone from about 9-3 on Saturday and from 10:30-12:30 and 2:45-7:25 on Sunday. The morning worship service was 90 minutes long, and Pastor Arlie's retirement service was three hours long. We each grabbed a piece of cake and then immediately left the dessert reception after the service because Nadia was already late for youth group at FBC. 

13. Paul and I were recently discussing how many times we used my time share over the 20 years I owned it. We went on nineteen vacations through the time share, but we actually booked a total of forty-nine weeks through the time share as sometimes a relative or a friend used a week, and other times we booked more than one unit for a week. For example, when we went to Florida in 2015, we used four weeks that year because we stayed at a resort in Orlando for one week and spent a second week at a beach, and Paul's parents also had a unit for two weeks on that same trip. Of the 49 weeks, two of them were not actually used. The more recent instance was when we booked a week in Williamsburg and didn't end up going because of the damage a hurricane had done in that area. The first time was when we chose not to go to Puerto Vallarta, Mexico because I was offered additional courses to teach (on campus) in the summer. At that time in our life it was very helpful for me to earn as much money as I could because we were spending tens of thousands of dollars on adoption. I would estimate that between what I paid to buy my time share in 1999, the maintenance fees we paid over the years, and the annual fee we paid to Interval International that we spent about $8,000 altogether on our time share. We think we got our money's worth out of it if it enabled our family, friends, and relatives to enjoy a total of 47 weeks of vacation over a period of twenty years.