Happiness Week 47

Our week was completely consumed by Thanksgiving preparation, the event itself and recovery. I don't feel like trying to come up with something original and wise to say on the subject of thanks so instead I have two quotes to share. You decide which, if either, to take to heart.

“Anyone who imagines that bliss is normal is going to waste a lot of time running around shouting that he has been robbed. The fact is that most putts don’t drop, most beef is tough, most children grow up to be just like people, most successful marriages require a high degree of mutual toleration, and most jobs are more often dull than otherwise. Life is just like an old time rail journey ... delays, sidetracks, smoke, dust, cinders, and jolts, interspersed only occasionally by beautiful vistas and thrilling bursts of speed. The trick is to thank the Lord for letting you have the ride.”   - Jenkin Lloyd Jones

or

“Be thankful for what you have; you'll end up having more. If you concentrate on what you don't have, you will never, ever have enough” - Oprah Winfrey

Daily Happiness Photos - Week 47

11/19 Rainy Fall Days

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I love the sound of the rain. If it's quiet at home and I have nowhere to go then that is a wonderful day to me.

 

11/20 Color Matching & Identification

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Ainsley finally seems to be getting it. Or so it seemed today. With any luck she'll be able to do it again the next time. I'm a bit tired of the one step forward, two steps back, one side step and one step diagonally dance.

11/21 Brussel Sprout Stalks

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This crazy vegetable is delicious. And traditional holiday fare for my husband's family. Good Old' Trader Joe's is the only store I know of that sells them on the stalk. But I know from experience, they sell out. So I bought early "just in case".  Sure enough they did and I was so happy to have my back-up brussels. They got more in at the last second and I rushed down to buy them so we got double the brussels this Thanksgiving.

11/22 Being A Well Prepared Host

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Hosting is stressful and a lot of work. This year Steve and I managed to work together and get everything done ahead of time. I think it was a first. And we've hosted many times. We had all the food prepped and on the stove, turkey in the oven. Even the table was set before my family arrived.

 

11/23 Mother Daughter Scrapbooking

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We had some down time in the days following Thanksgiving so I set aside some one-on-one time to spend with each of the kids. Evie's been making digital scrapbook pages using Storybook Creator(3.0 not 4.0). We worked on getting them print worthy and added 4 new pages to her album today.

11/24 A Tidy Desktop

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You already know I like things to be neat and tidy. I do a lot on the computer and so do my kids. We have a lot of icons all normally organized in rows by type (frequently used programs, Internet sites, photo editing softwares and files, scrapbooking programs and files, Ainsley's AAC programing, documents of different types, and kids games and websites) and they would get randomly rearranged when Adrian changed screen resolutions to play one of his games. Then I couldn't find my programs and files and I'd spend a bunch of time putting all the icons back in place, just to have them scattered about again. I'd asked my IT guy (Steve) to try to fix it but it still kept happening. It's a fault of Windows. For a moment I considered upgrading to Windows 8 but after some research I found a utility called WinTidy that you can buy for $8 that will remember your icon locations and put them all back with the click of the mouse. It was money well spent considering the aggravation it was causing. I added a slideshow gadget so I can enjoy my photos every day(don't know why I didn't do that sooner) on the desktop as well as a calendar. Now my computer desktop is looking quite nice and I'm ready to get back to work on my photo frame project if I can squeeze it in before Christmas.

11/25 Oral Motor Progress

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After hours and hours of working on trying to produce the "oh" sound over many years, I think we've finally made a little progress. Thanks to all the jaw strengthening and oral motor exercises I've been doing with Ainsley she is able to close her lips around the tubes and a few times when I removed the "O" tube from her lips she was able to make the "oh" sound for a split second. I'm putting all this effort in so she can have an understandable "no" (instead of "nu").  Being able to have a clear yes and no would open her world up immensely (Yes is harder and will be my next goal after no.). I'm sure the second she "gets it" I will wonder why I worked so hard to check this one off my very long Ainsley to-do list because I'll be hearing it all day long.

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To view a slideshow of the entire Happiness Photo Project click here. Confused about what this is or why I'm doing it? Click here for an explanation of what it's all about.