Skip to main content

Gratitude Month or I'm Grateful I Survivied another Sussessful Halloween

November is the month for expressing thanks. I am going to try very hard to write something I am thankful for on the blog each day this month. Many posts will be short, I am sure, but I am going for consistency.

To begin with I am grateful for the people who help me to enjoy Halloween. It truly is because of the people that I care about that I even care at all about Halloween. I have been known to be a bit of a bum bug, but when I get to make memories with people I love it makes it enjoyable for me.

I am grateful that the Halloween parade at the school was just for the "A" trackers, which means that there were half as many students in it. My kids love it and I love to see them and a few neighbor kids too.

I am grateful that I got to go to the temple right after the parade. I felt inspired, taught and uplifted.

This year I am grateful that my Mom, David, Jessica, and Malcolm joined us for a festive dinner (positioned plates of food in a holes cut into a pair of Destry's old pants and Spencer's old sweatshirt). Sarah was way too excited to eat much dinner, but I was forcing her to wait until everyone else was finished before she went out begging for candy. My mom came to her rescue and after she finished a few bites of dinner, she set out with Sarah a good half hour before the rest of us made it out the door. My mom told me that when she was 7, the age that Sarah is now, her mom made her eat breakfast and wait for everyone to be ready before she could open any Christmas gifts. My mom could hardly stand it so it gave her empathy for Sarah's plight. What a good grandma! It did mean that I didn't get a picture of her before she went out. It is a good thing I took a Halloween preview of the girls a month ago!

Spencer had fun at a Halloween party hosted by his friend. Because his party didn't start until 7 and the of us were out the door by 5:40 he got to hand out candy and clean up the kitchen. Very grateful for that! Emma had fun trick-or treating with a group of girls after she spent about an hour with us.

I'm grateful that Estelle encouraged me to dress up. I pulled together the same costume I wore last year. I'm fairly certain that my witch costume will become a tradition. I did purchase a new hat this year since the cheap one I bought last year turned out to be cheap and was unusable this year.

I am especially grateful that Taylor was well and in spite of his decision not to go trick-or-treating he ended up going and having a good time. He wanted to invite just one friend over to play a new video game. He asked a few kids, but they all had other plans. He was resigned to working on the Prestwich's basement with Destry until I ran into a couple of his friends who were out collecting candy. They were dressed in black suits and fedoras and were carrying suitcases. "Perfect!" I thought. He would be able to pull something like that together without any problem! I asked them to stop by the Prestwich's house to invite him to join them and he did!

I am grateful that my day ended with some of my kids watching "The Wizard of Oz", a film I have been wanting to show my children. Estelle and Sarah were the only ones home when we started it. Emma joined after about a half hour had passed and the boys never did come. The movie didn't end until 11:15 and we had to wake up the one remaining friend to send her home before putting my girls to bed. After I got them settled, I picked up Spencer at midnight.

Everyone enjoyed their day and all school teachers and moms are grateful that Halloween fell on a Friday this year. I wish that Halloween could be on the last Friday of every October rather than on the 31. That would be ideal.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

The Day He Died

Thirteen years ago today I was at an aquarium in the Gateway Shopping Center in Salt Lake City. I was with my sister-in-law, JuNette; her son Andrew and my three oldest children. Spencer had just turned five the day before, Taylor was three and a half, and Emma was 22 months. The aquarium was new and small, but we enjoyed our time there. After we had been there for some time JuNette handed me her phone and said that Destry had been trying to get a hold of me for quite some time. Destry told me not to worry, but that he and Christine were driving to my childhood home in Springville to check on my dad because no one had heard from him and he hadn't shown up to pick up my mom from the hospital.  My siblings and I had been worried about my mom's welfare because she had had a gastric bypass surgery to help her to loose weight and to improve both her health and her quality of life. The surgery had gone well and she was ready to come home on this day 13 years ago. Oddly, my dad neve

Her Life was Not as Sweet

A couple of years ago at a moment when my mom was expressing her love to her children and grandchildren, she mentioned that her Patriarchal Blessing stated she would live for as long as "life was sweet for her." She told us that while she missed her sweetheart dearly, life was indeed sweet. I thought that was a blessing for her and for us. This past year has been quite difficult for her. Last November she began having pain in her upper back, arms, and shoulders. She visited a pain clinic and received a series of injections providing her with some relief. By Spring her hands and feet were swollen and misshapen and she had difficulty getting her body moving each morning. If she had a morning appointment she would wake up at 4:00 a.m. in order to get her hands moving so she could use them. In the spring her primary care physician suggested she see a rheumatologist.  In the past she has had bad experiences either with rheumatology medications or doctors and I began going to

I Should Have Known, But I Didn't or It's Been a Year

I began this blog one year ago this month.  This is my 31st post.  That puts me at exactly 2.4 posts per month.  Not a world's record, but a personal best.  Up from the zippo I had before.  I started it so that my children would have some record of their family's life.  I haven't been very good at journal keeping in the past.  I have been hit or miss at best.  What I hadn't anticipated was how much I have enjoyed writing and reading this blog.  I have reread my posts, some of them several times.  They have made me laugh, cry and reminisce about my life.  I like to write, so it should not have been such a surprise.  But for some reason or other I didn't realize how much I would benefit from it.  Maybe next year I will average a 3 or even 4 posts each month.  I have ideas and notable life events that I could write about, but we shall see.