Lots of stuff

Gratitude Day 23
Today I'm grateful for a whole bunch of stuff. And since tomorrow's Thanksgiving, I'm not going to narrow it down to one main thing like I have been doing so far.

I'm thankful for the bright, warm weather today. It was such a pleasure to walk with the kids down to the Treehouse museum and back. It was a golden day - golden leaves, golden sunshine, golden moments of laughing and talking with my cute kids as we walked. Walking is such a great conduit for good talking.  After the museum, we all worked together on scraping and sanding our front and back porches that are in serious need of new paint. The sun felt so good on our backs and the work was satisfying. Some neighbor kids joined in and we just had a great time working together and enjoying a perfect fall day. Then we made pumpkin cookies and ate chicken noodle soup and it was just such a nice day.

I'm thankful that I was able to finish the video editing that's been hanging over my head for WAY too long last night. I was up until almost 1am but it was SO nice to get my part of that project pretty much done. Once our wonderful video guy uses my edits and works his magic to make the raw video into a beautiful final product, we'll have a "virtual video Retreat" that moms can attend online.

I'm thankful for thankful lists. My kids are sitting at the table next to me working on their thankful lists, asking for a little help here and there, "How do you spell vaccine?" "What do you call that stuff we had for dinner last night?" "Oh! I just thought of a great one - roofs! We would have serious problems without roofs." "You wrote 'everything'? You shouldn't write 'everything' because that would mean you're grateful for cigarettes, bombs, killing, all that and I don't think you mean that." Isaac's up to 400 things and Eliza's almost there. Oliver's up to 120. Silas is just getting going. Ashton's at scouts. They're really excited to show their lists to Grandfather (my dad) tomorrow when we meet up with him for Thanksgiving dinner. He's the one who started this whole thankful list idea more than 30 years ago and he challenged everyone to make masterful lists this year.

I'm thankful for people who are up for anything and who help make things happen. My good neighbor Emily was over here picking up her daughter an hour ago and I mentioned that I'd had grand plans of doing a little neighborhood fun run/Turkey Trot on Thanksgiving morning but that I hadn't gotten around to organizing it. She said "Let's just do it." And within 10 minutes we'd done a little brainstorming and she had sent a text to all our neighbors and friends inviting them to the first annual neighborhood Turkey Trot tomorrow morning at 10am. We'll meet in front of my house and jog down to the cemetery and back (about 2 miles). Feel free to join in if you're local!