What I am thankful for today.....

My new MP3 player that Steve bought for me! I finished the dishes in half the time! There is a button on it where you can record messages to yourself, like reminders. Steve kept pointing it out to me and I didn't know why, finally he came over and just pressed the button. (I can be a little thick) He had secretly recorded a message to me on it! Aaaahhhh!   He downloaded some of Piper's sermons and was listening to them already.

Etienne has this thing where if he has been playing in his room for a while and I suddenly walk in he screams (laughing)  "Da' giant, da' giant is back!!!!! Ahhhhh!!!" this all came about after reading Jack and the beanstalk.  But I am only 5 ft people! It makes me want to run over and grab him and do something Giant like..grab him upside down by his ankles..something to confirm my "giant ness". I am grateful for the excitement he brings to our home.

So I talked last night at the college dorm and I survived.  So nervous, all these young girls looking up at me, sitting on the floor, couches, chairs right around me. For a moment I wanted to be anywhere but there, with all these tired, expectant girls looking at me. And then in the back of the crowd I see a familiar face. My sister! She had quietly come to surprise me, support me. She is a rock like that.  See the thing about her being there, is that she had already heard this message when I was first preparing it and needing to go over the notes with someone, and she went to hear me deliver it to the ladies at my church last month. But there she was, miss faithful herself listening to it once again. Smiling at me. I am grateful for her..just being her.

Jeff...I started a while back making him a rabbit for each season, a terrible sewing job on all of them, b/c I created my own pattern. So he has Spring Summer Fall, but no winter. A year passed and still no winter Rabbit.

For a school project we had to get fruit and dye some material, so after we washed all the berries off his material I asked him "what do you want to do with this?" and he promptly responded "my winter rabbit". He is almost six and drawing now so I asked him to make the pattern this time. So I did make the Rabbit, I let him pick out the buttons for the eyes, material for legs and so on. Before it was finished he was already in love with it, begging me "is it done yet is it done yet?" But each morning it still was not finished.

The night I finally finished it I snuck up to his room and slipped it under his arm. Jeff has named him "Rabbee".

So today I walk in the room and see my chair piled high with toys, mail, junk, and Rabbee proudly sitting at the top. It looked like a gypsy wagon.

"what are you doing Jeff?"

"The world doesn't know about Rabbee yet, so I am driving him around and showing him to everyone"

And that is just what he did for most of his free time today.  He pulls out some junk mail and uses it for a map "come on Rabbee we gotta' find where Africa is...wait let me get the binoculars I think I see it!"

I am grateful for his imagination.

Chloe loves to sit on my lap and look at pictures of food, she pinches the air and bring the pretend food to her mouth over and over. She must know she is not getting anything from the picture, but she still continues. (I do feed her)

Oh, and I am grateful for this.....

Jeff gave it to me.

But I should clarify, he wrote it for his brother who is at a very suspicious age, and when Jeff stuck it on him, Eti' furrowed his eyebrows and threw it on the ground. So Jeff rolling with it, went next to his sister who had just witnessed Eti's behavior and mimicked him. There it lay on the floor. Jeff walks over and holds it, looking around for someone. "ooooohhhh oooooohhh pick me, pick me!!" I thought. And he did! Even though he did not write it out for me, I will keep it always. One of his first letters. It took a long time, hard concentration, biting tongue, death grip on the pencil.