Thanksgiving week!!!

It is my most favorite week of the year! Thanksgiving conjures up the most positive feelings for me. It's all about family and food. And it is a shortened work week and people are in a good mood and we have lots of little traditions. I love it.
This year, I started out Thanksgiving week with breakfast with my Birthday Club girlfriends. I was in charge of organizing our November get together. This year, we were each assigned a month to plan some sort of gathering. Did not need to be anything fancy, just an opportunity to connect. So I organized breakfast at Egg Harbor Café for 8 am on the Saturday before Thanksgiving and it worked out perfectly. We had 8 out of 12 in attendance (Mary K, Mary B, Jean and Christy were not able to come). We had a round table which made for excellent conversation. And we did a fun activity, "I am thankful for...". We each wrote down 2 things, on two slips of paper,  what we were thankful for. The stipulation was that it could not be God, family, health...because we know that for sure we are thankful for those. After we were done with breakfast, we took turns reading all of the responses. Priceless. Here are some of them:
I am thankful for:  "dim lighting...not having to cook this Thanksgiving...Maria day (cleaning lady!)...DVR...that my knee is better...footies...my family is getting bigger but better at the same time...my ironing lady...Blue Mercury sale...cheese...NYDJ...my friends' lake houses...my niece is baptizing her son...completing the workout of a 25 year old guy."
So much to be thankful for!

SO much to blog about, so little time

This has been one of those times when my mind is full of the blog posts I want to write and I just don't have an extra minute! So much going on, most of it very exciting and good (well, except for the our never ending saga with the basement) and my days have just been so full.
Potential Blog Post #1 that I owe you: Last Thursday, Friday and Saturday I attended ASHA, the national convention for speech language pathologists and audiologists. It was at McCormick Place in Chicago and it was exciting and energizing and exhausting. I can.not.wait. to blog about my time with my professor from University of Illinois, my mentor and professional idol, Dr. Barbara Hodson. It was incredible. I love this woman and what she taught me. I use it everyday in my work with my unintelligible preschoolers. And to have the chance to reconnect with her this past weekend was such a joy. I will say that one of the highlights of my past year was when I dropped her off at Midway and she hugged me and she cupped my face in her hands and said to me, "Do you know how much a student like you means to me?" Waaaaaaaa! 

Potential Blog Post #2 : Wayne and Julie's engagement!!! Seriously, I feel so bad that all I put up on this blog was that quick little post. That is how busy my days have been! Such a huge milestone and so very exciting and WOW. My boy is getting married! Sally, Jack and I joined Wayne and Julie for a little celebration on Saturday night following the proposal. Happy times and lots of fun stories.

Potential Blog post #3: dinner Sunday night with Chuck, Teri, Wayne, Julie, Jack...originally planned for a few weeks ago to celebrate Jack's birthday a bit late, but Chuck was sick, so we rescheduled for last Sunday night, It ended up being a bit of engagement celebration. Those generous and thoughtful friends. Amazing night.

Potential Blog Post #4: Good bye dinner for Tamara, my friend who subbed with me last year when my aide was out for her husband's heart transplant. She is moving to Orlando where her husband is managing a LARGE hotel. I am going to miss her so much!

The good news is that after tomorrow, work will settle down for a bit. I work Monday and 1/2 day Tuesday (did 10 parent conferences last Tuesday night so I only have to work til 12:30 this Tuesday) and then it is all about Thanksgiving!!!

Wayne and Julie are engaged!!!

Yesterday Wayne asked Julie to marry him and she said yes! 

It's been a crazy day here with storms and a flooded basement (again!), but I had to share 2 pictures with you. Enjoy! 

We are so happy and thrilled that Julie will be our daughter-in-law! 

Just what the empty nesters needed

It was a good weekend because Jack and I got to spend a little bit of time with a lot of different family members. And it was mostly unexpected which made it even more special.
We had scheduled a sleep over with Abbie and Nina for Friday night. I went straight from work to Arne and Beth's to pick up the girls. We were at our house by 5:30 and then the fun began. Wayne came over to pick up the tickets for the Bears game from Susie; he was just staying for an hour or two, but still, that was great. Then Sally called to say that she and Matt were going to come over for awhile after they had  dinner. It was so awesome!!! Abbie and Nina were so much fun. They are the perfect ages and they are the perfect girls :) We all had a good time together, dancing to What does the Fox Say?" So many sweet moments, including the handwritten notes that Abbie put on our pillows. The girls slept in Sally's old room and made it their own. I cuddled with them until they kicked me out. They were all about sleeping by themselves. I was almost sound asleep in my own bed when I heard a little voice say to me, "Patty, look what I found!" I opened my eyes to see Nina standing there with a shoe. I think it was one of Tommy's shoes from Wayne's room. It definitely made me smile.
Jack and I woke up around 8 am and I went to do a Target run while the girls were still asleep. While I was heading home, I got a text from Lauren. She was in the burbs, finishing up a run and said she was thinking about stopping by to say hi. Yes, please! By the time I got back to the house, the girls were up and asking for pancakes and bacon. So Lauren joined us for breakfast. It was a bit chaotic and messy, but fun. The girls enjoyed reconnecting with Lauren, who they had not seen since the wedding. And Jack and I both treasured the chance to sit and chat with Lauren and catch up on her life. She is one amazing girl. Lauren had a noon appointment at a spa, so took off around 11:30. She just missed Christy who popped in to say hello. While Christy was here, Jenny arrived to pick up the girls. I mentioned aloud that how amazing it was to have seen so many people in the course of 16 hours and I hoped that didn't mean that I was going to die. Christy asked why I wouldn't think if that meant I was so lucky and that I should play the lottery because of that. I know, kinda sad!
Our day was capped off by dinner with Sue at The Reel Club, one of our favorite restaurants. We had great conversations and lots of laughs, especially when Sue tried to use chop sticks to eat sushi. So funny.
Really, this weekend was just what I needed: some direct face to face personal interactions with people I love and care about.
Very grateful for that.

Fall back

We turned the clocks back yesterday and that extra hour is pretty nice. The darkness at 5 is not so nice, but an inevitability that comes with November. I do love this time of year, Halloween, Thanksgiving, Christmas...and I love the fall colors. The landscape is especially beautiful this year. I find myself snapping pictures all the time with my camera phone but I am not really able to capture the beauty of the turning leaves. 

I took this picture tonight as I left work around 5pm. The sky looked so cool. 

I had a fun day at work. Unfortunately my aide Ellyn was out sick but fortunately Tamara (who subbed for Ellyn last year when Ellyn's husband had his heart transplant) was available. Tamara is in the process of moving to Florida, but was willing to carve out a day for us. I loved catching up with her. She is an amazing woman. The kids love her. And I do, too. I am going to miss her! 

Happy Halloween!

I am pleased to report that Halloween 2013 featured a return to tradition. If you look back at my post from last Halloween, it was a bit of a bummer. After all these years of running all over town visiting friends, Jack and I stayed home and did NOTHING fun. Such a downer.
This year, Jack and I trick or treated at Mark and Cath's, which is always a mood booster. And Adam and Kristin were there also. Even better. I was especially anxious to see Cathy. What a stressful October she had. No words could do it justice. Jack, Mark, Cath, Adam, Kristin and I had wonderful conversations about Cathy's dad. It was good to talk about "Jimbo" and his final days and family and dying. That might sound funny to some, but death is as much a part of life as birth is. It is important to talk about it.
It is a privilege to do life with friends like Cathy and Mark.

loved spending Halloween with the 5 of them! Baby W due 2/14

Jack and Kristin talking privacy settings :)

Great Conversations

I participated in some great discussions this weekend.

The first was at an engagement party for our friends Bob and Mary's daughter Sarah and her fiancé, Michael. What a party! Gorgeous home, wonderful food and drink, heated tent, valet parking. But the best part was the conversations. For the last part of the evening. Jack and I chatted with Bob and a few of his kids. We talked with Jenny, who is getting her MBA at Notre Dame and is dating a nice guy named Chris (who happens to work at the same place as my sister-in-law Sue). We also chatted with Margaret who is a senior at Denison, Bobby who is a sophomore at Auburn and Erin, who works for Young Life, a Christian youth group. It was one of those sit around the table and relax conversations. At one point, I had a wonderful religious/faith discussion with Erin and another family friend, Marcie. I did not take my camera. I did not want to overstep my boundaries.

My other great conversation was with my sisters at lunch on Sunday. There is nothing like spending time with them, having the chance to sit and talk and share what is going on in our lives. I get antsy and a bit anxious if I go too long without talking to them. It would have been fine with me if our lunch had lasted all afternoon. On Sunday, it was interesting that about 90% of our conversation was about our jobs and how much we value them. All three of us are so blessed to have jobs that we love.
We try to get a picture of the three of us when we get together. We asked the hostess at the restaurant to do the honors. When we checked the first shot, we were in hysterics. It was SO unflattering of Jenny! We tweaked things a bit and the second shot was much better. I will only share the good one. I am a loyal sister.
 

I love my sisters