Found our 2010 focus

Today after a quick morning of homeschooling, we took off for Pizza Hut and bowling with some of the other CC families. We were so thankful to be among the friends we've grown to love and anticipate having time together. Another friend and I both had a knitting project to work on, which I enjoyed.

It's supposed to sleet and get downright nasty with wind chills below zero tomorrow! We, like so many others, hit Walmart to stock up on groceries, which were already low. Hard to be motivated to cook much with only one adult. I'm thankful Buddy is not doing his usual work right now. Some days he comes home with wet feet and I can't imagine the misery that would be!

I think this year we're going to be focusing on gratitude more in our home, and gracious attitudes. Let me just say that while Buddy's been gone, I've seen it more and more. Could be it's always been there, but when you're the only one dealing with everything all.day.long, it pops up a bit more than I realized. Perhaps it's that I've been in daily pain since my crown process started over 3 weeks ago and I'm more sensitive to the bickering. Perhaps it's because every night Buddy's been gone Caleb has either woken up and cried in the middle of the night, or has woken up shortly after he's gone to sleep to cry for an hour if you even think about putting him down! (Catherine is with him until we get a mattress for his bunk bed and gets woken up when he cries.) Perhaps it's because I think about what Buddy is seeing, what I imagine Hannah is experiencing, what I remember my life was when I was their age. I'm somewhat frustrated that when God blesses us, we come to expect it, and more instead of being grateful and realizing we truly deserve death for our behavior. What ever the reason, my eyes are open to what we need to do.

On a more positive note, Catherine realized during my heart to heart with Samuel that I needed some loving coming my way. She wouldn't let me come into the kitchen and made a lovely dinner of ramen noodles, mint tea and dessert of oatmeal, cinnamon, vanilla, and sugar (breaking only one crystal bowl.) Samuel lit about 8 candles, (the wax of which had to be scraped off the table after they were done.) I told them they I'd clean the mess, since if you cook you don't clean. "Yeah, but you cook AND clean," Samuel so wisely noted. "Right, but maybe it shouldn't be that way,"I replied. "We'll cook for you everyday, then," he said. Wouldn't that be interesting!

4 days down, 4 to go. Thankful for the 2 minutes 58 seconds we got to talk to him tonight and that someone lent him their phone to call.
Off to write the kids a note of thanks.