Happy Thanksgiving!!!

Gratitude is born in hearts that take time to count up past mercies.
Charles E. Jefferson

I hope you all had a wonderful day full of memories and memory-making that left you stuffed with gratitude! ;)

Friday Fill-in #99

Photo credit: Reagan Photography (edited by Tom)


1. The last band I saw live was Horizons.


2. What I look forward to most on Thanksgiving is the overflowing gratitude.


3. My Christmas/holiday shopping is started, but nowhere near finished.


4. Thoughts of FOOD fill my head! ('Tis not the season to begin a diet!)


5. I wish I could wear sweatpants and look sexy in them.


6. Bagpipes and the bassoon are two of the instruments my youngest son wants to learn to play.


7. And as for the weekend, tonight I'm looking forward to my son's band practice ending! Tomorrow my plans include celebrating my youngest son's ninth birthday and Sunday, I want to finish the earflap hat I'm crocheting!

Friday Fill-in #98

1. Please feel free to move about the cabin.

2. When I hug my kids, I can't help sniffing their heads occasionally.

3. My favorite thing to cook is whatever is easiest.

4. Lately, "Daria" is something I can't get enough of.

5. That's the thing I love most about my life.

6. When I'm in the store and I hear people being mean and threatening their little kids, it always makes me think to myself, what the heck?

7. And as for the weekend, tonight I'm looking forward to chicken pot pie. Tomorrow my plans include taking my son to the pottery studio, and Sunday I want to plant something edible (which I never got to last weekend)!

For Me & My Freaky Friends

Do not fear to be eccentric in opinion, for every opinion now accepted was once eccentric.
Bertrand Russell

The Corn Maze

Believe it or not, wandering around lost in a cornfield can be quite fun! It was a beautiful day last Saturday when we went to Long and Scott Farms to experience their corn mazes. The theme of this year's mazes is agriculture, so the larger maze resembled a tractor and the smaller maze was made to look like the John Deere symbol. We probably walked for at least three hours total, but I'm pretty sure it could be done in less time. It was a really fun activity for a fall day and a pretty good substitute for the pumpking patches I loved to visit up north each fall. I think we may be making this an annual tradition.

My "corny" kids.

reading the secret maze map

a cheery colored tractor and a hay bale tractor

Friday Fill-in #97

1. My blueprint for success includes lots of flexibility.

2. My daughter's Butterfingers was the last candy I ate.

3. The best facial moisturizer I've ever used is from Aveeno, don't know the name off-hand, but it's for sensitive skin.

4. A walk in the sun can be good therapy.

5. I'd like to tell you about how I became the Prince of Bel-Air. ;P

6. I think compassion is my strongest characteristic.

7. And as for the weekend, tonight I'm looking forward to finishing up some newborn hats for The Caps to Cap-Haitien Project. Tomorrow my plans include going to a corn maze with my kids and some friends, and on Sunday I want to do some planting while watching some of the air show that will be viewable from our house!

Thank You Lucy Burns...

...and thank you Alice Paul, and thank you to all the women who so courageously stood up for women and their right to vote. Thank you for enduring the hardship, humiliation, and even brutality, all to secure the right to vote.

The first three generations of women voters in my family ( my grandmother, my mother, and me)

Thank you to my grandmother, Florence (Grant) Ingerson, for telling me that women weren't allowed to vote when you were a child. I could hardly believe it was that way in your lifetime! Thank you for impressing upon me how much the "privilege" of voting meant to you. As I cast my vote in this presidential election, I was filled with gratitude to you and to all the women who came before me that made it possible for me to do so.

I am grateful and joy-filled that I live in a country where my voice counts. I have seen and heard so much dread and fear expressed during this election season. People on all sides are predicting terrible things for the future of our country, if their party doesn't win. I refuse to give in to that type of fear. As long as we continue to use our voices and our vote to participate in our government, we can ensure our country takes the direction we want. As long as we remember that our government really is us, not them, we will thrive.

(I do not like discussing politics, at all! So, lucky for you, this is all you will hear from me about it.)

Hands and Feet, Weekly Word Challenge (#59)

Hands, and

Feet.

I decided to take this challenge after seeing it on Janet's blog. It is hosted each week by Tink. I'm not sure if I'm supposed to take new pictures each week, or if it's okay to use photos I already have that fit. I happened to have these two pix (that I love) already, so there you go!