Thankful Thursday

It was a gorgeous day today. Gorgeous. Like 80 degrees and it's the first day of April... no foolin.. :) I took this as a cue to have my first day of hanging some wash on the clothesline. First one must wipe down the clothesline because um somehow it gets quite muddy and yucky since the last season. Then I notice how saggy it is. This is always a problem getting enough tension in the line. Is there some trick to this? My line has pulleys on each end so sometimes I will clip the clothes over both lines to help it not to sag as much. Today I had too much laundry for even that to work. So as I am hanging my clothes it gets lower and lower...until now my white t-shirt is suddenly tangled in this big stick laying on the ground. Tangled enough that I now have a muddy white shirt that needs to be re-washed. Happy about that... um no. However while untangling my shirt I realize the stick has a nice fork in it and its tall. This made me think of my Mamaw. She used to hang her clothes there and then she had this pole/stick to prop up the line to keep stuff higher off the ground. Since living here and using a clothesline I have always missed that stick and wondered what she did with it cause it's missing. I broke a few stray branches off my new clothesline propping stick and viola! It worked awesome and propped up the line nice and tall.

Well this brought back sooooo many memories. I remember hanging clothes with Mamaw and that I always wanted to prop up the line like that when I was a kid. It made me miss her too and laugh when I realized perhaps I have officially become my Mamaw. I live in her house, I cook with some of her kitchen stuff, I sit at her dinning room table, I sit on her glider, I'm short like she was and on occasion I am told I look like her. That part perplexes me because I see it too, however I look just like my Mom so its interesting to somehow be able to see both parts. So today I am feeling thankful for good childhood memories and memories of my Mamaw. I love the family history of living in this place. I love the kind of deja vu feeling today repeating the same thing she used to do and I loved her! She had her prickly side and could be very hard to love at times, but I have so many awesome memories of her and I just loved her so much that I was always able to let the bad and difficult go and keep the good and love her anyway.

Other things I have been thankful for this week are:

• the awesome marriage conference in Illinois
• 4 days alone with my husband
• stopping at the Vera Bradley outlet in Aurora IL
• getting to eat at some old favorite restaurants
• seeing our first home and all the good memories we have from that time
• the gorgeous spring weather
• capri pants and sandals
• painted toes and toe rings
• roses from Darrel
• NOT gaining any weight while away for the weekend
• choosing to walk up 7 flights of stairs at the hotel
• improvement and progress in the pushup challenge
• an awesome date night while at the conference
• an amazing love letter from my husband
• 2 Easter Basket gifts!
• a piece of chocolate tower truffle cake that is waiting for me in the fridge for Sunday
• the Godiva bunny and eggs Darrel got for me at Woodfield Mall
• An awesome day at Woodfield mall
• lots of books to read

Ok... I am loving making these thankful lists every week. Plus are you getting the idea I am missing chocolate? You wouldn't believe the stash I have around me yet I have resisted... Darrel did get me a Godiva chocolate bunny and eggs at the mall. He has also been leaving me dove chocolate eggs the past few weeks and I have that little pink m&m tin of m&m's. I have the chocolate roses from my Dad. One Easter basket had 2 ghirardelli bars and the other had a chocolate bunny.. .and... the topper... a piece of chocolate tower truffle cake from Cheesecake Factory. There was one 2.8 miles from our hotel in IL. That dessert is my all time fav... I soooooo wanted some but did not want to break the commitment I made to fast from chocolate till Easter. So we bought a piece and brought it home hoping it will keep in the fridge till Sunday. So far so good... See the closest Cheesecake Factory to where we live is 2+ hours away so its a rare treat... Now... all I have to do is exercise some self control and not eat all of that at once. In this time I've been working on weight loss I have not given up sweets. I still have a little something every day just smaller amounts. As I've said before my problem is not about the "what" I eat, it's about the "how much" I eat. I was just thinking.... I started this fast right after Valentines Day.... I had a whole bag of Dove promises that I had not finished... I have those set aside too... Ha! I don't have a chocolate thing... no... not at all... ya think?

Here are a few more details about our trip! On our first day, after lunch at the Italian Beef place, we drove around Morris a bit because this is where Darrel grew up. This is the house he lived in from age 4 or so until we got married. His parents sold it and moved a few years after we got married. I love how it still looks so much the same. On our first date I drove over to this house in my little VW Rabbit, to first practice a flute/piano song with his sister. I played the flute. Then his mom invited me to dinner. I think we had fish sandwiches. I don't even like fish.. but I think I ate it. Darrel had talked to me the Sunday night before this day and asked me if we could do something after I practiced with Dee. He forgot to tell his Mom this... till after she invited me... See... his family and probably mine for that matter... and actually probably us for that matter.... didn't realize we were dating... we were all confused. Ha!! The whole time I am talking to his Mom and sister and practicing my eyes are roaming around wondering where Darrel was. It turned out he was in the back yard working on refinishing an antique drafting table.. my current scrap table. So after dinner we drove into the big town of Morris and saw a movie, The Natural. I can tell you exactly what I wore too if you'd like to know............














After we saw Darrel's house, we stopped at the Bakery in town and had ourselves a cookie. YUM. Next we headed to Minooka IL to see our first home. We lived in this mobile home for the first 15 years of our marriage. It looks very much the same too but the deck and ramp area are new. We planted those bushes in front of it. It looks like whomever owns it now is taking good care of it. I loved this place. It may have been a mobile home and yes, we wished for a house, but you know what? It was home. It was our home and we were happy here. We went thru some hard stuff... depression... infertility... serious financial troubles all while living here. We made it thru and this always felt like our place, a safe place and it is special to me.















Next we headed to Shorewood. This is where I grew up. I was 4 years old when we moved here. My brother was a baby and we were moving here from Joliet. It used to have a big beautiful willow tree in the front yard. My Dad saved it and it makes me so sad someone cut it down! Those double windows on the right used to be the garage door which of course means that was the garage. My parents converted that to a bedroom, enlarged the kitchen and added a family room and garage which turned it into this L shape. I lived here till I was 20 which was when I moved out to marry Darrel. Because we lived here... we went to church here....















A friend from down the street invited me here for Vacation Bible School. After that my whole family started attending. I was like 7 or 8?? I grew up in this church and this folks is where I met my husband. The year we started dating he was at the church helping build the addition which is the part to the right. I could see him on the roof working from our neighborhood which was just across the highway. I asked Jesus in my heart at this church. I made good lifelong friends here. Very thankful for this place too!

Will continue with details from our trip next post. I need to get in bed so I am all energetic for Carry the Cross tomorrow. Pray for me! I so want to make the whole distance again and am praying my knee and heel that give me trouble will be OK as well. Hopefully I can share some details about that on Saturday if time permits. I hope you have a blessed Resurrection Sunday weekend!