The Major Update

Whew!  November has been a crazazy month!  There is so much to update you on but I have a cold and my brain hurts if I try to form cohesive paragraphs so I'm resorting to bullet points:

• A wonderful and beautiful friend listened to me cry about all our broken appliances and gave me the sweet gift of encouragement.  She also has three boys and remembers the craziness of the early childhood parenting years.  I felt so refreshed and motivated to keep on keeping on after talking to her.  And then later that day she called me to tell me to look on my back porch.  Sitting there was a brand new vacuum cleaner!  It works like a dream and once again we are overwhelmed by the love and blessing that our community is to us.
• The MOPS bazaar was fantastic!  My friend Carrie helped me man my booth and I got tons of compliments on my display and jewelry.  I wish I had pictures to show you.  And a lady from a local boutique said her shop would love to sell my bloom brooches!  I need to figure out my wholesale price and talk to them more about it but it's so exciting and affirming to see people genuinely like my work.  I sold quite a bit of jewelry and came away with almost enough money to buy a Dyson.  But since were already given such a nice vacuum cleaner we decided to use the bazaar money to replace a different mutinous appliance...our computer! (Our other mutinous appliance, the dishwasher, has also been working beautifully--we're convinced that God healed it.)
• We went up to Seattle for Thanksgiving to have dinner with Geary's family, my family, and Geary's sister's husband's family.  It was so cool to have all the in-laws together!  The kids did recitations of poems and scripture and songs.  We had a balloon fight and quilt show and way too much dessert.  It may have been the best Thanksgiving ever.
• And the next day we had a little family birthday party for Miles and Noah.  Miles turned one on Thanksgiving day and we got to see him take a few steps!  Noah will turn eight on Tuesday.  We had silly birthday songs, a few gifts, and more dessert.  It was perfect--simple and easy.  
• After the party my throat started feeling a little funny and a few hours later I woke up from a nap with a runny nose and stuffy head.  We had planned to visit with my parents on Saturday but I was feeling awful so we just headed home so I could rest in my own bed.  This morning my nose is still runny but my throat feels better.  Miles has a runny nose now, too.  Hopefully the rest of the family will be spared!

As you can surely see, we have so much to be thankful for.  And we are.  We are exceedingly thankful for all the blessings we have been given.  And I hope you know that you, dear blog reader, are counted as a blessing to us.  Thank you for following along with us and encouraging us on this journey of life.  Does that sound cheesy?  Well, you can blame the Sudafed :)  (Although, somehow my bullet points turned into pretty  good paragraphs after all!) Happy Sunday!