It's time....

to write about something! Things here are getting so busy, and I'm sure it is going to get busier as the holidays approach.

Since we are a week away from Thanksgiving, I thought I'd share a very peculiar thing that I am thankful for this year....my toilet! I know, it's a weird thing to be thankful for, but really....it is necessary, umm... no pun intended.

My boys appreciate this more now than they did a few weeks ago. The place where my Dad hunts has no running water and no facilities inside the lodge. They use an OUTHOUSE! The boys thought it was cool, but not me. My dad told me that inside, on the floor, were the biggest spiders he'd ever seen. Thankfully, they were dead. (Oh, there's another weird thing to be thankful for- dead spiders!) He said someone must have sprayed the thing down before they got there, but he said he knew I would've had a heart attack if I saw them, even dead. He was right, I would! Dad and Caleb even took Micah's picture sitting in the outhouse! He wasn't amused, but his sisters were. Em' is threatening to put it out for everyone to see on his wedding day. I assured him that if I am alive, I will not allow any such thing. He was relieved, umm...no pun intended again. But, back to my thankful toilet story....

When we purchased our home, five years ago, we knew that one of the three bathrooms had a rotten floor. So, naturally, we had the floor replaced and the leak fixed. I remember Dh and I having the conversation about falling through and how humiliating that would be. Only the "fixed" part never really happened. For the past five, yes F-I-V-E years, we have been struggling with that stinking toilet. We've replaced the valve that runs to the toilet, we've replaced the insides of the toilet and still it was running! I totally gave up on it being fixed and have been going along, just living with it. Then a couple weeks ago, I found a "spot" on the ceiling of our playroom. I put my hand up there to see what it was and my finger went right through! This was NOT good. Dh came home early from work, because I was freaking out. We found out that the toilet, in our bathroom, was leaking! And evidently had been for a long, LONG time. Need less to say, Dh said the toilet in our room was off limits as well. Great...now we only have one left. I was Ok with that, I grew up in a house with only one bathroom, it is possible to survive. True, it is harder with seven people, but I am not one to complain...at least not too bad and I did NOT complain....yet. A few days went by and I started hearing a hissing sound come from the only toilet we had working. I have never wanted to pray over a toilet, but boy did I want to. Dh came home and said that he didn't know what on earth was wrong with it, but he wanted it turned off as well! Great, great...what now? Well, two of the toilets you could turn the water on, let it fill up and then flush, but kids don't do that, they just go in and go. I was really upset now, as if I don't have enough to do. Now, I get to walk around and every time I pass a toilet, I get to turn it on, wait for it to fill-up, contemplating my life while waiting and flush it, and not forget to turn the water off again! I did this for a couple weeks. I bet you are wondering where my thankfulness comes in at this point...

Last weekend, my father-in-law, the best man there ever was, called Dh and said he was sending a man over on Saturday morning to fix our toilets! Hurray! I don't think I've ever wanted to hug and kiss him, but I did on Friday night when Dh told me what was happening! I now have three working toilets in my house and they all work on their own!

This thanksgiving be thankful for something, even if it is peculiar!