It's Fall and Other Thankful Stuff

At the risk of sounding whiny, I'm still exhausted this week, and the bone aches, especially in my legs, are keeping me from sleeping well. I can't hide that they hurt when I walk, especially after getting out of the car, and it makes me walk like Chester from Gunsmoke until I loosen up a bit. I HAAAAAAATE feeling like this. 

Whining session over. Time for my Ten Things of Thankful.

1. Today is Thursday. And this week, Thursday is my Friday, because there is no school on Friday. 

2. It's fall! It's fall! It's fall! 

THIS IS ONE MUM, PEOPLE!

3. We hosted the jv volleyball team for a pasta night this week, and it forced me to do some long-overdue deep cleaning of the house. I scrubbed and dusted and vacuumed, and the end result is a shiny clean house. Now, if it would only stay that way....

4. After I got the house clean, I got out the fall decorations. I like having the house decorated for fall even more than I do for Christmas. Maybe because my house is largely decorated in fall colors? When the house was all clean and decorated, I sat, all alone, in the family room, enjoying the oranges and browns and reds and yellows in the lamplight and froze a picture of it in my mind. Then, knowing the limitations of said mind, I snapped a couple of pictures on my phone to refer to when it's time to decorate again next year.

5. I made some pretty amazing lasagna for pasta night. I only make it once a year, at the most, because lasagna is such a pain in the ass to make, but this recipe from a friend who used to be a caterer is worth it. I doubled the recipe, so we have some for the freezer and some for our tummies.

6. No bats OR lizards in the building this week at preschool. That I know about, anyway.

7. A visit to Fredrickson Farms Pumpkin Patch rendered me three of the most ginormous chrysanthemums I've ever seen in my life. I had to drive with one in the passenger seat and two in the backseat to fit them in the car. AND THEY WERE ONLY $12 EACH!

8. I kind of forgot that they didn't take credit cards at Fredrickson's, and I, of course, didn't have cash with me, and I quit carrying around my checkbooks years ago. I felt like an idiot, but dear, sweet Farmer Tami let me take the mums home, telling me I could take care of it later. HOW MANY BUSINESSES LET YOU DO THAT? It doesn't hurt that I had her daughter in pre-k several years ago, but still. Live near the Joplin area? THEN GO BUY STUFF FROM FREDRICKSON FARMS!

9. It was "C" week in pre-k, and we did several "C"-related activities. Last year, one of the teachers saw on Pinterest that you could put a bar of Ivory soap in the microwave for a few minutes, and it would billow and grow into a big, fluffy soap cloud, and we tried it, and it was cool. We were pressed for time this week to get everything done we wanted to get done during "C" week (no school on Friday, 'member?) and had to squeeze the Ivory soap cloud experiment in near the very end of the day. I showed the unwrapped bar of soap to the class (nothing up my sleeve), after which my assistant teacher put it in the microwave, asking me how long to leave it in there. I had no idea, not able to remember from last year. She said she would set it for five minutes. At one point, she said it was growing, but she couldn't remember how big it would get before it was done. And then, very shortly after this announcement, she let out a yelp, pulled the paper plate with the soap on it out of the microwave, where it had not only gotten puffy and cloud-like, but also had smoke rolling out of it. With a trail of thick, soapy smelling smoke following her, she ran out of the room, down the stairs and out the doors, carrying the soap with her, and threw it in the dumpster. There are probably several thankfuls here, including, but not limited to, thankful that there were no actual flames billowing out, that the dumpster didn't catch on fire, that the smoke didn't set off the smoke alarms, and that we didn't asphyxiate from the smell of burned soap. I told the kids we'd try it again next week. Stay tuned.

What it's kind of supposed to look like.
Imagine this, but with smoke
billowing out of it.

10. I had the hiccups tonight during my daughter's volleyball game. I rarely get them, and when I do, they make me feel stupid. I was sitting at the game with a friend, and she said when you have the hiccups, it means someone is thinking about you, which is a pretty sweet sentiment. They still made me feel stupid, but wondering who might be thinking about me RIGHT THEN kind of took my mind off the hiccups (and the fact that our volleyball team was getting their clocks cleaned).

She played well, even without a win.

Got some thankfuls you want to share? Link up, below. 

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