An Update(finally!)

So silent. Some of you became accustomed to my regular ramblings. You are probably getting tired of checking to see if I updated my blog. Sorry.

For a long while, I prayed that God would help me be more efficient with time, to not be lazy. He answered my prayers. I exercise most weekdays, regularly volunteer at the girl's school and my house is in better order than before. My days disappear quickly before I have time to write. Not having a camera and having a computer that is on the fritz (it took five minutes to load the page where you write new posts!) also make blogging long and tedious.

Sadly, I have no pictures from Thanksgiving. We drove down to Southern Illinois and spent time with Tom's extended family. We celebrated Thanksgiving with two of Tom's uncles and their families (who I have only met once or twice). It was fascinating observing similarities in these family members I've really never spent time with. Tom and his Uncle Matt are definitely cut from the same cloth. And we laughed over how none of Tom's uncles will drink water (juice or milk or pop). They grew up in a very poor home with six kids and because it provided calories they had a milk machine and drank a lot of milk. Whenever my father-in-law comes in town I buy twice the amount of milk as usual.

Instead of shopping on Friday, we drove further down the long state of Illinois to Mt. Vernon. Tom's Grandma, who I am have met exactly twice in fifteen years of knowing him, lives there. She is a character. She likes to take in strays—dogs and people, not cats. The girls delighted in her very tame dogs (including a pit bull named Bill). Hadley enjoyed meeting Tom's cousin's daughter (is that a second cousin?) who is just 20 days older than her and oddly is named Kassidy (yes that's the correct spelling). The girls spent most of the time and writing and playing school. Grandma, who is 83, has a lively and active mind and a pretty nimble body too. She talks endlessly about God and miracles and winning the lottery (which she expects to do soon).

It was odd spending time with people I didn't really know for Thanksgiving, but I am glad we went. I love the understanding it gave me about my husband and his family and the sense of being part of something bigger that it gave my girls.

Kassy did have too much gluten on the trip and came home with painful gas and a runny nose. I want to get her tested for Celiac disease because I need to be much more diligent in limiting her gluten intake and in issues of cross contamination if she does have Celiac. Trouble is, the easy blood tests for Celiac require a person to be eating gluten (for how long I don't know). I need to do some research.

On a separate note, Hadley was doing a school assignment where she had to write two paragraphs. She needed to explain why one comic strip was realistic and why another was fantasy(yes, this is second grade). The fantasy comic was a Calvin and Hobbes where Hobbes is beating up Calvin, but in the opening frame the mother is scowling as she picks up the trail of belongings Calvin dropped when he came home from school. Hadley's first idea about why this strip was a fantasy was that no one mom would just pick up after their kid like that! Lesson learned well!

I have Kassy's school pictures from JCPenny and will post about her soon.