Thanksgiving is a wonderful time of year. It's the start of the holiday season which is a really special time. I love Christmas and the warm fuzzy feeling you get thinking of others, time with family and friends and just the all around good cheer. Thanksgiving starts us off right. We stop to take a little extra time to be thankful for all that we have and are blessed with. And I'm not talking about material things. I'm talking about our family and friends, our freedom, our country and communities, and our health and happiness. There is so much to be thankful for. And although we are thankful throughout the year it is only right to have a special day to be extra thankful. And what a great way to start the holidays off. Because the most important thing we have to be thankful for is our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. And how fitting that we can have thanksgiving right before the season of Christmas. Because without Christmas and the birth of our Lord, we really would have nothing to be thankful for.

Life is a blessing. All of life; the good, the bad, the fun, the chaos. It all has meaning and in each ad everyone is a blessing. It's often very hard for us to find that blessing because we forget to look for it.
When things are good we reach out and grab the blessing. But when they aren't, we focus on what's wrong and forget to find the blessing.
Trust in the Lord and look for the blessing.

Home.....I'm so ready to be back home. It's great to go places and visit. But as Dorothy says, there's no place like home.
I was hoping to be headed home today but it's looking like it's going to be tomorrow before we get headed that way.
Will miss all the family here but ready to be back home with my family and friends.

Bless the kitten. The sweet little kitten passed away this morning. I held him all morning and he passed in my arms. Tomorrow he would have been two weeks old. My heart is sad and I'm sad for my daughter who had rescued him and hasn't seen him in over a week since I've been caring for him.
I feel a personal responsibility even though I know the odds were against him not having his mother to care for him. Life is precious.

Family is such an amazing thing. You don't realize how wonderful it is until you spend time with them. We've been with the hub's extended family for the last few days and it has been such a blessing.
I had forgotten the enjoyment of time with larger families. There is so much love and caring. You can feel it in the room. There's noise, food, laughter and love overflowing. We are truly blessed.

We are in Pennsylvania this week for my hubby's grandmother's funeral. She was a wonderful lady and I was fortunate to get to know her for the last ten years.
My hubby's mother passed away when he was only four and this is his maternal grandmother. So needless to say she is very important to him. It's going to be very hard for him to say goodbye to her. We don't like letting our loved ones go, even though we know we will see them again one day.
I am excited though knowing she is reunited with her daughter who died so young, her husband and the rest of her family.
Goodbye Nanny. We love you and miss you, till we see you again......

It's a tough day. The hub's grandmother is nearing the end. We are trying to decide when to head up north. Luckily he did see her earlier in the summer.
I feel really bad for him. She means the world to him and it will be very hard for him when she is gone.

My empty nest is overflowing. I have the grand girl, an eleven week old puppy and a four day old kitten. I just thought I was going to be all alone and bored.

A Kitten for Mimi

So my daughter recently rescued a less than week old kitten. The poor things eyes aren't even open yet. She goes to college and works two jobs. So she's trying to feed this kitten every two hours. So I feel bad knowing she's done a good thing rescuing this kitten, so I offer to meet her halfway and pickup the kitten and take care of it for a week or two. I figure by then it won't require being fed quite so often and she'll be able to handle it easier with her schedule. The funny thing is she doesn't like animals. I'm hoping this little kitten will change that for her.

Her previous pets, all gifts from boyfriends, have all been raised by me or her father. We took care of her fish for probably 4 years until one day it passed away. She has a yorkie that lives with her father, always has since she got it. The cat that was given to her two and a half years ago I keep and care for. She actually thought about taking the cat with her to college but we knew he wouldn't be very happy being locked in an apartment after being allowed to roam in and out of my house and around the countryside.

Last night I didn't sleep too well, waking every hour or so. As I'm lying there awake I realize I'm fixing to not be sleeping well any nights since I volunteered to take the kitten. I'm going to be listening to it meowing all night long, feeding it every few hours and having to take it with me pretty much wherever I go. But if we can keep the little thing alive and she learns to love animals, I guess it'll all be worth it. What's one more pet to our zoo.....

Through the eyes of a child

I love watching children play. I was blessed to watch the grand girl playing this morning outside. She was driving her escalade, digging in the dirt and playing with the puppy. The other day she was outside playing when she heard something and started yelling "Mimi, Mimi, it's a dolphin". How wonderful is that? She heard what sounded exactly like a dolphin and didn't let the fact that we don't live anywhere near the ocean negate her perception. It was actually a bird that sounded just like a dolphin.

Children see beauty in everything.... it can be dirt, grass, flowers or bugs, but they always see something wonderful in them. That must be how God sees us. I wish we could all see things the way children do, what a wonderful world it would be.

A beautiful Sunday evening sitting in the hammock watching the hub mow the lawn while the grand girl drives her little escalade around and plays with the puppy.

A Good Day

Today was a great day. It was my husband's birthday, both of my children are home for the weekend, as well as my grand girl. It's been over a month since everyone was home at the same time. It's so nice. I miss my kids so much. We had a beautiful, warm and sunny day and had a nice little festival in town. I'm sitting on the couch reading up on news as my husband watches a ball game. My sweet little puppy is sitting beside me chewing on everything he can find, including me.

I have a little chihuahua and it is hard to find things small enough for them at the local stores. I'm fixing to go puppy shopping online. He needs some teething toys and I also want to get him a better harness. It's amazing how much happiness an animal can bring to a person. As a child and young adult I never cared for animals. It wasn't until I had my own children that I started appreciating animals. Now we have three dogs and a cat. The funny thing is we have a large great dane, a west highland terrier and a chihuahua. We have one of every size. They are all very smart and entertaining in their own respect. The best one is the great dane. He is exceptionally smart and well behaved. He thinks he is a lap dog! He just loves to be loved. They all do actually. It's just very funny to see a huge dog try to crawl into your lap like he's 15 lbs instead of 150.

Today I'm counting my blessings for my children, husband, grand girl and our pets. I would recommend everyone have some sort of pet, something you can hold and love.

Sarcasm

Why is sarcasm so funny? And for that matter why is other people's misfortune so funny when told in a humoristic fashion. (Is humoristic a real word). I love reading other blogs. I try to be positive most of the time. Yet I find sarcasm and other's misfortune so entertaining. I myself can be pretty good at sarcasm, many times to my own detriment. I have one friend in particular who I have so much fun talking to. She's so easy to be sarcastic with. We talked forever yesterday on the phone, which of course rarely ever happens, because it's all about the texting now. I actually don't like texting but yet I find that I do it ALL the time. I even avoid phone calls sometimes because I don't want to talk on the phone. Then I'll text later to see what they called for. Makes no sense to me.

Anyway, back to the topic, we talked for like an hour and a half yesterday. Even though the topic we were discussing was quite serious, I kept finding us laughing and making sarcastic comments. I haven't decided if I'm good for her or she's bad for me. Gotta lover her though. I also find myself quite often being sarcastic to my husband. I don't do it to be mean or belittle him, it's just funny. This is only going to be increased by the fall weather. I love fall and it somehow makes me feisty - aka sarcastic. I find myself full of sarcastic quips and comments. So although I don't know why it's so funny to me, I continue to get great pleasure out of it......

Loving Life

I am sitting here with this wonderful, cool fall weather and I'm thinking how happy and blessed I am. God has blessed me with a wonderful husband, two terrific kids, an awesome granddaughter and lots of friends and family. I would like to use this blog to try to count my blessings and observe good things in this life. I read several blogs, which I enjoy reading for the most part, but one thing I notice about most of the blogs I read is that they are for the most part negative and/or narcissistic. Maybe mine will be narcissistic too, but if so, I hope that it is so in a positive manner.

I have the fortunate position in my life right now to not have to work. I know that this one detail makes it so much easier for me to relax and enjoy the good things in my life. However, when I was still working I still tried to notice and enjoy the good things. One thing I like to do that helps me relax is watch cartoons. Why? They allow me to clear my mind of all other things except for the funny goings on of the toons on my TV. It allows me to relax, my pulse to slow down, and to laugh. My favorites are the "old time" cartoons. Tom and Jerry is a classic. This is the easiest way for me to relax. When I used to work, sometimes I would come home so stressed. I could turn on Tom and Jerry and lose myself. I literally would either zone out of my current surroundings or relax enough that I could actually just fall asleep. I think cartoons are terrific therapy. There are only so many however that work in this manner. They have to be simple enough to not make you think about the story, but still funny to make you laugh. Try it sometime if you are a cartoon lover. Just let it relax you and you might find yourself in a much better frame of mind.