A Thankful Three Weeks

Thankful for a new medication: Due to the hospital stay in Round 1, my oncologist prescribed neupogen shots to encourage my bone marrow to produce more white blood cells. I had to give myself shots for five nights after my chemo treatment. The result-I have been healthy and hospital free.

Thankful for health insurance: The above mentioned shots carried a price tag of $1537.27 of which I was responsible for 0.

Thankful for hats: You don't realize how warm your hair keeps you. I am cold ALL THE TIME with this bald head so I am thankful for my ever growing hat collection. I have yet to brave the bald head in public, but it sure does make getting ready easy.

Thankful for amazing meals: You have all been keeping my family well fed. We have been spoiled with amazing meals. My children may be disappointed to realize that when this is all over dessert doesn't come with every meal :-)

Thankful for a chance to be creative: I often say in another life, I am a stay at home mom who crafts her days away, makes all of her children's clothes, and blogs DIY posts about my projects. We know in actuality I am a worker bee who loves all of my jobs, so I just obsess about that life while pinning items on Pinterest :-) So over Thanksgiving break, I had a chance to put the computer down and get creative. We bought new furniture which created a blank wall.I created a gallery wall with family photos and other items. It was nice to not spend the week grading.Thankful for a chance to be with friends: Parties and Parades. My friends also share the above issue of pinning/planning projects and yet never completing them. We decided to get 7 girls together at my house and craft the night away. We all left with 7 (almost complete) projects. It was a night of good food, fun projects, and wine of course! We also had a chance to enjoy the Elk Grove Santa Parade with great friends. It was a wonderful night and the kids sat on the curb through the whole thing. It may have been because they were frantically eating as many candy canes as they could without us seeing.

Thankful for family traditions: The 15 foot ceilings in our house beg for a HUGE tree so each year we plan a day to cut one down. The last 3 years we have bought a USFS permit for $10 and gone into the forest to cut our tree down (the perfect price). It is an adventure to say the least. This year the four of us traveled the fire roads of Mormon Immigrant Trail to find the perfect tree. It is harder to find the specific type of tree you want in the forest so four hours and two trees later we had the one :-) Once it was cut and we managed to get it into the truck, we started to get a little worried. It looked like it may have been a Clark Griswald Christmas "little full lotta sap", but we got the tree home and it fit perfect. Last night we hung 366 feet of twinkly lights and the tree is ready for decorating when the boys get home tonight.

Thankful for kids at Christmastime: My house is alive with Christmas excitement. My little Jack can't contain himself. He proudly announces that "Christmastime is getting closer" to everyone he sees and couldn't wait for the calender to change to December. He sings Christmas songs in the stores and keeps me smiling. We adopted an Elf which Jack named Blueberry Mashed Potatoes (yes, that is his name) who keeps an eye on the boys in the day and reports to Santa each night. This Elf has proven to be the best parenting technique ever and we wish he could stay all year long. Jack gets up every morning and can't wait to find out where Blueberry Mashed Potatoes is (he changes spots each night).

Can you believe he was fishing in the toilet?

Ready to conquer Round 3 on Friday with the hope that the next three weeks are half as good as these three were :-)