Advil

Tonight I am grateful for modern medicine and all the comfort it gives us. As crunchy as I can get when it comes to food and eating naturally, I don't eschew medicine. I try to use it as sparingly as I can but man. Sometimes you gotta hit the Advil and then the couch. Which is where I am going next.

Stuff

Today I am grateful for stuff. Even though I rail against having to clean, sort, store all this *stuff* I am blessed to have such a problem. It's a self made problem. My girls don't need all the toys we are able to give them. I am lucky I can indulge whims--both theirs and mine. I don't need all the kitchen gadgets and cook ware and serving platters and such that I cram into my cupboards. Surely I don't need to keep five different types of sugar and at least four flours on hand at all times, but it makes me happy to have a well-stocked larder.

There are bigger things. We are lucky to have a dishwasher. A washer and dryer. A television and stereo system and all the goods that come with that including a closet full of movies and albums by our favorite artists. A sewing machine. Computers. Books. Tools and crafty items. Art supplies. The little things that make life fun and a house an entertaining place to be.

We have a house. No mean feat in the South Bay where just last year only 18% of the population could afford the median home prices. And within this home we manage to fit all this stuff.

In my cleaning and organizing and dusting and washing and stepping on things and finding pockets of clutter that make me crazy moments I need to remember to step back and be grateful because I am able to have this stuff. This fluff. This cherry on top kind of life. And not everyone does.

Pie

Tonight, gratitude in pictorial form. This is how I was able to spend my afternoon while John was running errands and the girls were sleeping. Baking centers my soul. And for this, I am grateful.

Sliced and Spiced--waiting to be arranged in the crust


Mile High Apples--the recipe called for 3 1/4 pounds of sliced apples


Cinnamon Crumb Topping--I really wanted that Dutch apple complexity for these lovely apples


Out of the Oven--golden brown and smelling so fall like. *swoon*


Slice and Serve--the crumb topping cracked like creme brulee but the pie held together in perfect slabs of happiness



The apples were the ones we picked earlier this week from the tree in the backyard. They turned into pie as wonderfully as I could have hoped for. I'm so excited for next years crop.

Amazon.com

Tonight, as silly as it might seem, I am grateful for Amazon.com.

Yes, Internet shopping.

I am a recent convert. I really like brick and mortar shopping. I like interacting with people...I am in love with small family run toy stores and shop at those places when I can. I love touching objects and getting new ideas from looking at the selections. And there is something to be said about getting a feel for the quality of an item before you purchase it. So Internet shopping was not really my thing.

It started with Half.com. CD's. Movies. Text books. Easy things. Then I discovered Amazon. It was a flirtation at first. The I had Maia and shopping became a touch more...complex. And when I had two tiny infants for the Christmas season last year Amazon became a life saver.

This year, I am really trying to get a jump on my Christmas game. I have more folks to shop for (yay babies!!) and less time to get stuff together because we are spending Christmas with our out of state family, which means we need to ship presents. That double stroller takes up a whole bunch of trunk space!

Enter Amazon. I actually have a paper list running and tomorrow I think I might start an actual Amazon list. I "accidentally" signed up for Amazon Prime (the yearly subscription that gets you free two-day shipping). I hope to have shopping done by Thanksgiving...barring those few last minute items that always come up. But with two-day shipping I'll probably just Amazon those as well. The plus is no cranky kids in stores, no wandering around the mall and no subterfuge trying to disuade those same small children from believing those presents are for them. And no, you can't play with that toy for your "cousin".

So thank you Amazon.com for making what is a stressful time (shopping) a plesent time (unless you don't have what I need!!). I think I might go see what you have to offer right about now.

Getting Out

Today I left the house. As we do almost every day. And for this I am grateful. As much as I love my home (and I do love home, I am a homebody in my heart of hearts) I love it more when we're coming back to it and not staying there all day--day after day.

Quiet

I am grateful for the quiet time I have after the girls have gone to bed. We keep a nice night-time schedule for this very reason. I love my girls...I love them even more after I've been able to spend some time with just my thoughts. And sometimes television.

Tonight is quiet. Naps have been spotty this week and the post bedtime silence is the only I've been able to savor. So now I am going to sign off and do a little actual book reading.

Enjoy your quiet time as well.

Friends

Today is a big does of gratitude. One I feel I fail at mentioning in the moment and am figuring out ways I can express better. I am so very grateful for my friends.

The girls and I have been branching out and just about every week we have an adventure with our "pre-school friends". This is a group of women I'm fairly new to although I feel very welcomed by. They include my amazing childhood friend and her children who I am also very grateful for reconnecting with...but I digress. Most of our group have at least two children (so Stella and Elsie get some peer time too) but they all are always willing to lend me a hand with my (sometimes) special challenges.

There was the time when my double stroller wouldn't fit through the bike path gates and everyone just grabbed a baby while I pulled it through. And the times swimming when someone would hold a dripping child while I wrangled two more out of the pool. Or lunches where food is passed around. Or at the Children's Museum where I got to spend a quiet half hour playing with Stella and Elsie while Maia got to play with her friends elsewhere. Or today where Maia was watched by another mom while I held Stella and Elise on the carousel...and when Stella and Elsie were watched in the stroller while I took Maia for another ride...and again where Maia was watched on the ride while I stayed with Stella and Elise (yes, there were three carousel rides today)

I love the fact that I have so many friends willing to lend me hand. It makes going out and doing a possibility in my life. And if we weren't able to go out and play we'd all be driven stir crazy in no time flat.

Thank you, to all my friends. I love your companionship, your children, your views on life, your conversation, your ideas and your sometimes spare hands. Thank you for making all of our days that much brighter.

Apples

I was avoiding kitchen duty, again, when the perfect excuse caught my eye. Apples. In our back yard we have a Pink Lady apple tree. It's a small thing but for the past two years it's produced a couple pounds of apples. Unfortunately last year most of those went to the squirrels. So when I saw those little branches laden with dusty red orbs, I knew I should just go out and harvest. Plus, way better than scrubbing pots. So out went Miss Maia and I with a basket to see what we could save. I ended up composting about half the crop for one reason or another...some were bug eaten, some bird pecked, some just withered on the branch. But right now beside me I have 3-4 pounds of good looking apples and I have heard tell of a cold front moving in this weekend, so it's going to be apple pie time.

I am so excited. For pie, first and for most. But also I'm excited at the prospect of making something from my little garden and giving Maia her first real "farm to table" experience. Living the urban life we do, and with a mom (to clarify, that would be me) who is the least competent backyard farmer ever, we haven't had many opportunities to share food that we've tended, picked, cooked and then eaten. It's an experience that I feel is really important and one I would like to encourage. I love nothing better than to eat really fresh food, and what could be fresher than our own apples? Totally organic and the distance from "grove" to table is mere steps.

Who knows? This could be the pie that gets me all geared up to put in a garden come late winter. So today I am grateful for those apples and the chance to share a teaching moment with Maia. Come the weekend, I think I'm going to be grateful for pie.

Sunshine

Despite being bone-dead tired right now (like I usually am at the end of the day) I do love the hour roll back of Fall. I wish we didn't switch out of standard Time and into Daylight Savings in the first place. But that's a whole 'nother kettle of fish.

I love having the sun up and shining in the morning. I feel so good to start off my day with a dose of light. Today I was up and showered and had the girls up and breakfasted and we even manged to get out the door and to preschool early. Woah. I got my grocery shopping done and even got to have a surprise lunch with John. Yay! All in all a very lovely day.

So today I celebrate that sunlight in the morning. I'm going to embrace getting up and out because that, more than anything else, sets my day up for success. I hope you are enjoying your sunshine as well.

November First--A Month of Thansgiving

Today marks the beginning of NaBloPoMo, or National Blog Posting Month. An exercise to get into the habit of blogging, a habit I have never really formed. I was never good at journaling in general...

In any case, I am going to give NaBloPoMo another shot. I tried it two years ago and almost made it. This year I am giving myself a theme and an easy way to accomplish my goal. I am going to find an instance everyday I am thankful for and write it down. This way I am going to have a month filled with gratitude, perfect for the Thanksgiving holiday coming up, and I hope to give my own head a positive push as we all head into the busy and often stressful greater holiday season (read: Christmas).

Today I am excited that I have reached my weight loss goal. I officially weighed in at 144.6 pounds yesterday at my meeting, a loss of over 55 pounds from when I started in January. It took me 39 recorded weeks--there might have been a week I missed while on vacation--to get here. Not bad at all. I'm excited to be in the maintenence phase and I am going to stay here for the duration. I feel great and I get such a thrill picking up a pair jeans and thinking, wait, these are way to small for me! And then realizing that those jeans are indeed mine.

Now, I just need to keep out of Maia's Halloween bucket!