Post-Thanksgiving Thoughts

I don't know if you noticed this or not, but last week I added two tabs at the top of the page for "A Little Gratitude" and "A LOT of Gratitude." Starting with the first Sunday in November, our church had several sermons on gratitude. You might have guessed this already, but I've had trouble with gratitude this year. These lists have been good reminders for me as well as a good exercise in focusing on the things I have to be grateful for rather than focusing on self-pity. If you get a minute and you haven't taken a look at those tabs, feel free to do so. I'd love to hear a few of your "little gratitude-s" and your "lot of gratitude-s."

One of my "little gratitude-s" has become a "lot of gratitude" over the last couple days. Wednesday night at eight or nine, M discovered a dripping sound in our bathroom and realized that we had a leak in the wall. Water was starting to leak through the ceiling in our basement bathroom as well as under the shower unit in our bathroom. My gratitude grew when my father-in-law came over, opened up the wall so we could access the leak and jerry-rigged the pipes to buy us a few more days until we could have it repaired. Yesterday, after more than a week and a half of waiting for the plumber, we finally have all of our plumbing working! The gratitude just kept growing!

While the plumber was working, we put up our Christmas tree. I think if we weren't having people at our house over the next few weeks we probably wouldn't put up our tree this year, but I'm glad we did. Putting the tree up is one of those things I was looking forward to doing pregnant this year, so it wasn't my favorite thing to do, but it went better than I expected. No tears!! It looks great, but more than that we ended up with a lot of entertainment out of the process!

Step one was easy, put the tree together. Step two: fluff out the branches. This was fine until I started working on the lower branches. Our kitten, Lilly, decided she wanted to help, and here's where things got complicated. Lilly quickly figured out that she could climb up the tree. The next thing we knew we had this:

She really seemed to like it in there. Step three: add lights and decorate the tree. No problem. She found other ways to entertain herself for the most part. M's family stopped by to drop off a spotlight for our outside decorations and they stayed for coffee. While we were visiting, Lilly decided to try again. Unfortunately, her second try at snuggling in the tree proved hazardous for our tree stand. The tree started to lean and then wouldn't stay up at all. Thanks (again) to my father-in-law (seriously, the man has MacGyver-like abilities!) and a piece of red yarn the tree never completely fell, but for a couple hours it really looked like we'd hanged our Christmas tree.

It is now standing straight and tall and kitty-proof. Lilly can climb around to her heart's content and all she does is shake the tree. My father-in-law created a very sturdy stand for us which raises our tree's height by quite a bit. Take a look:

One final picture for your entertainment:

(Tail courtesy of Tiger Lilly)