Thanksgiving

Happy Thanksgiving!

Another list of the massive amount of things I have to be grateful for.

I am grateful for kids that get being grateful.  They have always been good with the words, but we did a Thanksgiving gratitude tree and they were eager to offer the things they were thankful for to put on the tree and came up with a lot of ideas and quickly.

I am grateful for the new traditions that Q and I have added to our little family.  We didn't have many traditions growing up and I love that we will have our own to share with our kids.  Some of the ones we have added are a separate non-Thanksgiving day Thanksgiving meal with just the immediate family and a few invites with no pressure.  Another is wrapping the books to open along with the advent calendar each day in December up until Christmas.  We have done both of these for three or four years now and they make the holidays more enjoyable.

I am grateful for crockpots and pressure cookers.  I am especially grateful that when my mother bought me a new crockpot because my older one required me to jiggle the cord to get it to work that the two crocks from the prior one fit not perfectly, but well enough, to work in the newer one.

I am grateful for customers that ooze enthusiasm over the quilts I make, especially when it is unexpected or a customer that is normally difficult.

I am grateful once again for the emergency 24-7 clinic near my home and this time I am grateful for shots of antibiotics, pain killers, and steroids because I ended up there once again with strep again, this time seemingly much worse and they took care of me right away and I felt better within 30 minutes.

I am grateful for all the good and kind people in my life that remind me that life is not as bad as it seems to be getting on the news and Internet.

I am grateful for all the people that adopt older children and children with disabilities here and abroad and especially those that continue to allow us to view their lives after the adoption as I feel like I'm missing out when some of them disappear after they bring the child home.  I am also grateful for those parents that love their children so much that after realizing that the adopted child would be better off somewhere else make sure that those children go to a home that is better and don't just try to dump them somewhere.

I am grateful for those not in the disability community that accept and welcome our children that do have disabilities and am especially grateful for the parents that bring up their typically developing children with the same attitude.

I am grateful that my daughters all show a love of reading and being read to.  I was worried about the nerdlet because she was really resisting learning sight words and to sound words out, but when I go to change her bed sheets, I am still finding a massive amount of books in her bed that I need to remove before I can do so.

I am grateful for a full pantry and refrigerator.

I am grateful that my girls are full of energy.  I love to watch them enjoy running and moving.  I love that we have regular dancing together and that they really get into it (though mostly the bear cub and Q and I dance while Darth Baby and the nerdlet run and spin).  The fact that none of them really stop are probably the reason that I am not 300 pounds or more.  I have a low metabolism and am within 10 pounds of what I weighed my first pregnancy and while I am still a big girl, I have never been this close to having a stable weight.