TGIF

See, continuing with the Thankful theme...I'm so grateful it's Friday. Why?

This means that tonight we can have fun as a family without stressing about getting the kids to bed by 8:00, we can actually stretch it to 8:30 without worrying about grumpy kids.

It also means that tomorrow morning Shane can be lazy until the late hour of 6:30 a.m. when he will then have to leave for mandatory church training. I just love "sleeping in" on the weekends. I'm a little more grateful for "normal" Saturday mornings when hours of training the children to turn on the tv and maneuver through 150 channels to find SpongeBob Squarepants finally pays off.

I am also grateful for the additional dishes I will get to do because on the weekends I get to feed 6 people 3 times a day; I also get to prepare snacks for 4 people at least twice because my children seem to forget they've eaten approximately 13 minutes after they just said they were full.

I'm grateful for the mountain of laundry I get to wash, dry, fold and iron because I've put it off all week. I'm also grateful for the drawers full of (hopefully) clean clothes that need to be organized and folded. I one day will be grateful when the clean clothes end up in the clothes and the dirty ones end up in the hamper...

I'm grateful I still have something to look forward to.

I'm grateful that on Saturdays I can convince my children to do chores like cleaning their bathroom, cleaning the toy room and the most difficult one, removing crayon and pen from non-paper surfaces like the door, the wall, the pillow, the bookshelf, the plastic totes and each other.

I am also very grateful for washable markers, somewhat washable crayons, and semi-washable children.

and...

I'm grateful for our wind here in West Texas, because now that some of our leaves are falling from our Sycamore out front I don't feel the desperation of getting my yard raked when it's completely pointless to do so.