I'm Old, But I'm Alive, TToT Week 31

I am grateful for what I am and have. 

My thanksgiving is perpetual... 

O how I laugh when I think of my vague indefinite riches. 

No run on my bank can drain it 

for my wealth is not possession but enjoyment.

Henry David Thoreau

My thankfuls for the week:

1.  The moon and snow have saved my life.  It's too long and boring to explain our house's floor plan.  Suffice it to say, if that moon wasn't out, and the snow wasn't there to reflect it, I would have killed myself on one of my many walks to the little boys' room or down the stairs in the pitch black of the night.

On a related note, as soon as the wind dies down and the snow stops, COW will be on a 30-ft. ladder to replace the front porch light bulbs.

2.  Buttercup and Phoenix finally have pants to wear to school.  Buttercup hasn't grown out of hers as much as she's destroyed them.  She was down to one pair that fit and didn't have a gigantic hole in them. We got to the mall and found some new ones for her pretty easily. Phoenix has completely outgrown the pants I bought him on the first day of school, to the point where even he was self-conscious about how short they were.  I was finally able to find some online at The Gap.  Let's hope these last him through the end of the year.

3.  I was able to keep my cool this week, despite severe antagonizing by my tired, grouchy children who are not the least bit happy about having to get up at 6:00 each morning after 3 weeks of not getting up at 6:00 each morning.

4.  My house is getting cleaned up and out, thanks to Lisa's post about removing distractions and working on decluttering for a mere 15 minutes each day.  It is amazing how doing little bits each day adds up to great big things over time.

5.  All five kids had great report cards.  I'm especially happy with Star's.  It seems watching his older siblings lose their minds during their 7th grade years, when they decided doing homework wasn't all that important, as long as they did well on tests, made an impression.  The boy has not lost his mind, and has even done better than he did in 6th grade.

6.  My kids really like to read.  Sure, it comes with a gigantic price tag in the form of library fines, but all of that reading is a huge contributor to those great report cards.

7.  The big kids will wrestle with the little kids.  When the big kids were the little kids and we lived in our old house, we had a big family room with not one piece of furniture in it.  Each night, that is where we spent our time, wrestling and just having fun being silly.  Now, COW and I are old.  Wrestling with us isn't what it used to be.  As I type this, I can hear Phoenix, Buttercup, Turken, and Cuckoo in the other room, giggling up a storm, wrestling and beating the tar out of each other.

8.  I am alive.  On Thursday, we had some more snow.  There wasn't much, but the roads were pretty well covered. On the drive to pick Turken up from school, I was taking my time, driving cautiously.  The light turned yellow, so I slowed down.  By the time it turned red, I should have had more than enough time to stop.  Unfortunately, the weight of the van and the slickness of the road combined to prevent me from doing so.  I slid 25 yards and right on through the intersection.   Thank God there were no cars coming.

9.  I got to spend some fun time with Bible study friends on Friday afternoon.  We always have lots of fun, many times laughing so hard we have to wipe tears away.  An odd thing about the group, though, is the age difference.  (It came up today (don't ask how) that I am the only one who is old enough to remember Luke and Laura's wedding.)  With these women, I get to share some tricks of the mom trade.  They seem to find all this weird knowledge and odd tips floating around in my head to be useful.  Today's lesson was on keeping kids' socks and underwear straight.  (Each child (and adult, now that the kids are as big as us.) has his/her own brand of white socks and his/her own brand of underwear.  Sorting is as simple as tossing each brand into its own pile and handing to the owner.)

10.  My family finally understands and follows the rules around here.  Take tonight for instance.  I was quickly putting a salad together, and jazzing it up with carrots, cucumbers and hard-boiled eggs.  There was lots of noise and commotion all around, with people setting the table and talking to me.  At one point, Giant gasped as he saw what I was doing.  There, in the salad, were the egg shells from the hard-boiled egg I was peeling.  I was dropping them right on top of the lettuce instead of the compost bucket.

Immediately, COW and 4 kids started yelling, "Blog post!  Get the camera!"  Someone grabbed me so I couldn't clean up the mess, another grabbed the camera and got the photographic evidence.

I couldn't have been more proud, even though I was the one getting called out.  Crossing my fingers they now remember to do this when COW does something dumb.

Your turn!

Have a lovely day!

OOOOHHHHH!!!!  Hold up!!  Once again, we have another announcement.  Dear Joy will no longer be able to co-host, so we are happy to have Lisa (the one from the decluttering up above) as our new co-host.

Welcome, welcome!

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A Fly on our (Chicken Coop) Wall, Considerings, Finding Ninee, Getting Literal, I can say mama, I Want Backsies, Mother of Imperfection, Rewritten, Thankful Me, The Wakefield Doctrine

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