Turkey Hangovers and Seven Days of Gratitude

Hope everyone had a wonderful Thanksgiving Day if you celebrate that sort of thing.  We had the in-laws and youngest SIL in town to celebrate the holiday and meet the New Kids in the House!

Youngest SIL (cropped out) did the bulk of the cooking

We were just a little beyond our capacity because Nightingale's Auntie Em has been staying with us as interim child support until we can hire one of those many godforsaken immigrants Obama is letting across the border (sarcasm mine).   We only have three bedrooms, ours, the nursery and the guest room which will become Boris or Natasha's rooms when they are older.  The basement is okay for a younger person or two without any back issues to sleep on the furniture for one, maybe two nights but not an entire week.  So we were just a little cramped.

I did exploit the opportunity to utilize FIL to get a few more things done around the house, specifically:

• put together the 8" drill press
• finish attaching the hinges to the antique smoking table that will now become a nightstand
• fixed leaky toilet in half bathroom
• installed window frame in bedroom
• installed a new gate fence

the last one was huge.  Even though it was essentially just swapping out the old boards with new ones from a fence building kit, FIL was able to re-engineer the doorway so that it works better.  I'm bummed that we had to reuse the old hardware though I suppose that is technically "being green."  It did save me several hundred dollars of paying a handyman to do the same thing, which is good because I'm going to need that money for a new dryer.  Every so many loads something causes the drum to come off the rails and make a sound like an ostrich being sodomized by a Dingo. 


Ten Weeks

So if I was sporadic at posting here before, you can imagine how hard it is to write a meaningful content-filled post now that I have two germy projectile-barfing poopsacks to deal with when I get home.

I've done even worse with ChicagoNow, having only posted a couple of times since the kids were born.  Many of these posts have to be done in piece-mail, with me writing them and adding pictures later, or uploading photos and then writing a post related to them afterward.

Looking at the stats to the left, I have about 5 posts to go to meet my 2012 number (93) and then another 20 posts to match last year (113). 


I was going to write a little more but I'm gonna add those thoughts to a different post and end with something a friend posted on her newsletter:

Sometimes we can get bogged down with daily life stressors that it can be difficult to take a moment to appreciate the wonderful people and things in our life. Here are a few exercises for the next 7 days, starting with today, that you can use to think about and show your gratitude.

Day 1: If you could re-live one day with someone in your life, what day would that be? If possible, share this memory with this person.

Day 2: When was someone close to you thoughtful? What did they do and why was it meaningful to you? Tell them.

Day 3: Name 3 things that you like about yourself.

Day 4: Do a random act of kindness today.

Day 5: Call someone you haven't talked to in awhile. Tell them why you appreciate that they are in your life.

Day 6: Think of something in your life that at first seemed a "negative," but ended up being a blessing in disguise.

Day 7: Happy Thanksgiving! Who or what are you MOST grateful for? Why?

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