Happy Thanksgiving

I'm off to where the internet isn't! So this is my Happy Thanksgiving to you.

I love Thanksgiving, and not just for the pie.  I love gathering.  I love pausing to appreciate what I've been given.  (And I love the pie.)

I'm thankful for my family and friends.  I'm thankful for a body that mostly does what I need it to do.  I'm thankful for food to eat, clean water to drink and a comfortable bed to sleep on.  I'm thankful for a job I love and the challenges and stretching it provides me.  I'm grateful for the gospel of Jesus Christ.  I'm thankful for the scriptures and the Follow Him podcast that I listen to each week that helps me understand the scriptures.  I'm thankful for temples and eternal families.  

It's a good life.

Christmas ornaments

There is a huge tree in the school library and every year, the teachers are supposed to have their students make ornaments for the tree.  I saw an idea for making shrinky dink type ornaments out of plastic cups.

I had the students decorate the cups with Sharpies:

 I punched a hole in the side with a regular hole punch.  Then I cooked them for about 1 minute at 350 degrees:

I'm going to string a ribbon through the hole and put their picture on the back (I get a page of stickers of their school pictures.)

They are cute + easy + unique and I am happy.  That is all.

(If you decide to do something like this, use a cup with a 5 recycling code.  I didn't try other types but my googling research said that was what to use.)

Weekend

Friday, over burgers, I asked Mark his hopes and dreams for Saturday.

He said he was getting a haircut and would go grocery shopping with me.  I told him I didn't want him to go grocery shopping with me.  He said, "Oh good, because I didn't really want to go."

It was a very amicable exchange, but he's fired from grocery shopping with me.  He gets cranky and impatient.  I told him other things he could do for me instead.  (Dishes, clean up the basement, bring in the couch cushions off the deck (the snow has finally melted and they were dry).  He happily did all those things and I happily didn't have an ill-tempered grocery shopping partner.

I stayed up late Friday night wrapping the books for my students.  It didn't need to be done yet, but I had nervous energy to burn and it was something to cross off the list.  I talked to Adam (in Orlando) before I went to bed and he asked why I was still awake and it was because my mind was spinning with all the things and I couldn't settle it.

I was glad on Saturday when I created the mother of all lists and I sorted out all the tasks and assigned them times and I got a lot done and felt like I could breathe.

I went grocery shopping (alone).  If you ever want to feel a part of something, go grocery shopping the Saturday before Thanksgiving.  The produce, dairy and meat sections were clogged.  Standing room only. Everyone was jockeying overloaded carts, trying to buy all the things.  I walked down the aisle to get the gluten free taco seasoning and I was the only person in the aisle.  We are all eating the same thing this week!  What a great time to be American!

In the line, which was really long so I had time on my hands, I tried to guess whether people were hosting Thanksgiving or being a guest for Thanksgiving based on what was in their carts.  

Besides the tasks I assigned him, Mark spent a good part of Saturday shopping for Christmas presents.  For the first time in his life, he has extra money to spend on gifts and he is reveling in it.  He was telling me about his gifts for Braeden and Anna and Eleanor and Emma and I said, "You're very generous, but you don't need to spend so much money on gifts."

He looped his arm over my shoulder and said, "I'm my mother's son."

It is true.  Gifts are my love language and I love picking out gifts.  Also, two thumbs way up that he is shopping in November.  Maybe he inherited more than curly hair and a proclivity to crankiness from me.

Sunday Adam flew home from Orlando.  He made it for the second talk in sacrament meeting (the guy got up very early).  We were happy to have him home.  Emma didn't come over because she was under the weather, but Adam and Mark built with Legos.  

I'm looking forward to Thanksgiving week with many of my people; I'm bracing myself for the ways an impending school break riles up the children.

Grateful Friday

Here are some random things I'm grateful for.

I'm grateful for liquid bandage stuff.  Tis the season when my fingers split and I glue them together.  I wish I didn't need to, but I'm glad I have it when I need it.

I was doing ministering interviews last night and I talked to a friend who has three kids with busy activities every night and none of them drive and I don't miss those days.  I miss my kids, not the busyness they added to my life.  If I was going to go back in time, I'd go back to when I homeschooled them and we mostly had quiet evenings at home.  That I miss.

Anyway, I'm grateful I'm not living my life around the schedule of cantankerous teenagers.

I'm grateful for my friends.  Near and far, old and new, the ones I talk to often and the ones I seldom talk to.  I love them.

I'm grateful for my family.  Adam and our kids (including Anna) and Eleanor.  She's the bees knees and we all know it.  I'm grateful for our parents and siblings and their spouses and all our nieces and nephews. I'm grateful I'll get to see a bunch of them next week in Nevada.  

I'm grateful for the smile I get when I see the board in the workroom where someone started us writing our favorite Christmas movies.  Can you beat Christmas movies?  (These are actually good Christmas movies although I really like watching the super awful Christmas movies on Netflix or Hallmark movies with Emma.  They are so bad they're good.)

I'm grateful that my mouth feels all better.  Who knew dental work could throw you for such a loop?  But I healed.  Bodies are pretty amazing like that.

I'm grateful for really good pens.  My friend Jamie has started me down a path of pen snobbery and I can't go back.  There is such joy in a good pen.

I'm grateful it's Friday.  I will never not love a good Friday.

Embracing the chaos

 The only certainty is that chaos is unpredictable.

                Matthew Terrill

This is a pep talk to myself that it's OK and my eye will stop twitching eventually....

Yesterday morning I talked to Olivia while I was getting ready for school.  She's busy. I'm busy. We don't want to be.

We do want the things that prompted the busyness in the first place.

It's a conundrum.  And just life.

I can spend time fretting about the chaos or just embrace it and triage it and forge ahead.

Clarissa and I walk most days.  Lately, we've been walking around the Mt. Timpanogos temple because it is pretty well lit and we walk after dark.  Also, it is cold.  Clarissa warms me up.  She is a ray of sunshine. Marianne and I both had sunshine-y first born children.  We tell each other about the craziness happening in our various lives and we laugh and take quick steps because it is cold and I always go away feeling energized.

Life is just going to be crazy sometimes.  It's what I signed up for.

Five things I'm grateful for

 1. I had a chiropractor appointment (always grateful for those) and I mentioned I had dental work and my jaw seemed out of whack.  He said, "Oh wow," and "This will hurt."  He's never wrong about it hurting, but my jaw feels a lot better now.

2. I bump up against chaotic families a lot at school.  It makes me grateful for the stable home I grew up in and the stable one I go home to.  Also, I'm grateful for my school.  Yesterday I was in an interaction with a parent who can only be described as a hot mess.  Kristie, our principal was there too.  She must have texted the secretary, because Rachel showed up quietly and set down three bags of groceries.  Kristie simply said, "These are for you," and gave them to the parent, who replied that they could now eat tonight.  There is good in the world and I'm proud to be associated with a school that brings so much good.

3. I had a stack of books to pick from for my students for Christmas presents.  I didn't have enough books!  At least not enough that were easy enough for this crowd.  I was SURE I had more.  But where?  I looked and looked and finally gave up, thinking I must have only imagined I had more.  Then I found them!  I had plenty that were just right.  The melodrama is never too far away....

4. I'm looking forward to Thanksgiving and Christmas.  This is my favorite time of year.  It's busy, but wonderful.  The scented candles alone make it great!

5. There are many genius inventions that make life better.  Zip ties, letter openers, boot jacks, car play, watering cans, magnets, pens, needles, to name a very few.  What a wonderful world!

Kindred spirits

Yesterday, my diabetic student's mom came in because he had forgotten his cell phone.  He uses it for a medical device.  She told me he also had a treat in his backpack in honor of Diabetic Awareness Day.

I hadn't been aware of Diabetic Awareness Day.

Wow, it matters to me though.

Yesterday commemorated the birthday of one of the co-discoverers of insulin.  Without that discovery, my uncle, cousin, brother and son would all be dead by now.

And my cute little student too.

I felt a kinship with his mother.  How we appreciate modern medicine!

My son also gifted me with a kindred spirit when he married Anna.  What a good boy!  She sends me Pride and Prejudice memes and loves Anne of Green Gables (which I could never get Emma into!).  

Yesterday my team was meeting after school and Janelle said, "Have you thought about what to get the BYU teachers as a gift?"

I said, "As a matter of fact I have!"  I went to Anna's Etsy shop Green Gable Girl where I want one of everything, please and thank you.

I ordered this cute tote bag for my BYU teacher (who works at the library, she will love it).  It came yesterday!

So three cheers for Frederik Banting!  Thank you for saving the lives of people I love!

And three cheers for Anna, my very own Green Gable Girl.  She created cute designs in her Etsy shop and an even cuter granddaughter!

Kindred spirits are not so scarce as I used to think. It’s splendid to find out there are so many of them in the world.