Happy Thanksgiving!!

We've had a great month, and we have so much to be thankful for! I'll start off with our Anniversary.  Tim and I celebrated 24 years of marriage - where does the time go??  We are so thankful we are not only together after all this time, but really together!  He arranged a bed and breakfast for us in Lakeland where I went to college at FSC, and we had fun not only reminiscing about the last 23 anniversaries, but also a little about my college days.  We took a walk around my campus, which was recently rated in the top 10 (I believe) most beautiful campuses in the country, so that was really nice.  Then that night we went out to a quaint restaurant voted #1 in Lakeland by tripadvisor.  The couple running the place were from Romania and Turkey, and they made you feel like family.  It was a really great way to celebrate together!  Here are a couple of pictures from our time there:

The next little saga I have to share because it was such a God thing.  I had asked our landlord if we could have a new kitchen sink and faucet (our sink was chipped in many places, and our faucet was two-toned where they had replaced the sprayer  with one in ivory where the rest of the faucet was white, plus the top of the faucet was broken off).  Well, it was a no-go from the landlord's point of view.  But then, a couple of weeks ago, I received an email from our landlord saying she would probably need to replace our mailbox because it had become an HOA violation.  I told her I had actually tried to wash and scrub it a couple of months ago, not because it was an HOA vailoation - I wasn't even aware of that - but because it needed it, but I couldn't seem to get it clean.  I suggested we have Tim try it and I would let her know.  Well, he got out there  and 2 hours and 2 brillow pads later, the thing looked brand new!  I emailed her a picture and told her she didn't have to buy that mailbox afterall, but again asked her for a sink and faucet.  She shot back, "Get me some prices".  So I went on Home Depot and Lowes websites and woe - had not idea sinks were that expensive.  So I went on Craigslist, and low and behold, a sink with a faucet and sprayer was just put on Craigslist that morning not 2 miles from our house for only $100.  The landlord approved, so we went to go pick it up.  The guy selling it had this awesome testimony of how God had healed his wife of breast cancer (when the doctors did a final sonogram before removing it not only was the cancer completely gone but the titanium marker they had placed in there was gone as well!), and healed him of bitterness he had held against a colleague.  We had our own little worship service right there in his driveway!  So we brought the sink home, Tim installed it and it looks fantastic!  Look at the old sink (which this picture doesn't show how really nasty it was) and the new one.  (The old one we stuck out on the curb with the curb alert on Craigslist and it was gone in an hour!)

Then, last Friday we celebrated the triplets' 15th birthday!  It actually started Thursday night.  Nicole told her girlfriends she did not want any gifts this year, and anything they would have spent on her she asked them to use it to buy gifts for the Crisis Pregnancy Center (her bible study leader has been involved there for years and gave her the idea), and then she asked her friends to volunteer with her Thursday night for a couple of hours there to help organize things and do whatever needed to be done.  Her friends enthusiastically supported her desire, and we had a great time together hanging out in the Center's shed organizing donated clothes and other items.  Then Friday was an all-family day together.  We did our traditional birthday breakfast at Denny's we've done the past few years since they give you the Grand Slam free on your birthday, and then came home and put together cards and gifts since we all kind of waited until the last minute to do that.  Then we went and played putt-putt, and came home to a chicken parmesan dish the kids had requested Tim make.  Then it was time for cupcakes and presents.  The triplets were very generous with each other, giving each other gifts in a way they really hadn't before - it was great to see them loving each other like that.  Then Saturday Nathan had a few guys over that Tim took to the park to play football and run around like crazy men. :-)  They got home around 5ish and Nicole's girlfriends came over.  We had a pizza/dessert/games party extravaganza!  We had a lot of fun playing tons of games (check out the donut-on-a-string eating contest between Nathan and Noah below), and Nicole's girlfriends still brought her gifts even though she told them not to, so I thought that was so sweet.  Here are some pictures from some of the events:

It was a great birthday celebration!  Nathan will be getting his permit as soon as he finishes a drivers ed class.  I told the triplets we would be doing permits one at a time.  Nicole can get hers in about 3 months and then Noah 3 months after that.  They were all cool with that, so I'm thankful for that!

This past Monday morning Tim took Nathan & Nicholas to the Perrella's to help them fix their dock.  Well, they left our house pretty early so as not to wake the rest of us up, so they went to McDonald's for breakfast (after stopping by the Perrella's to find out they weren't ready to start yet).  They went ahead and went into the restaurant to eat, and Nathan made a fatal mistake with his retainer that he had forgotten to take out before they left the house.  He put it on the tray!  Argh.  Monday night he went to go put his retainer in and realized what had happened to it.  Tim and I were thinking about going dumpster diving the next morning, but a call to Nathan's orthodontist, Dr. Hess, revealed that he offered him a one-time grace for a 2 page written paper on how he lost it and a bag of non-perishable food items for a local food bank.  Wow - gotta LOVE Dr. Hess!  Those retainers  usually cost hundreds of dollars!  We stopped by on the way down to Port Charlotte on Wednesday for them to do an impression on his teeth and picked up the retainer (they had it on a hangar outside their office) last night on the way back home!  Amazing! 

And finally - Thanksgiving!  So much to be thankful for! As I said above, we drove down to Port Charlotte on Wednesday, spent the night, and then came back home last night.  We brought the turkey and all the trimmings, and Tim and I made a really nice meal, if I do say so myself!  :-) 

The weather was absolutely GORGEOUS, so we spent time sitting out on their pool deck overlooking the canal - so refreshing!  Then my mom got a wild hair - literally!  She brought out her hat box of wigs - like a dozen of them!  And we all had so much fun trying them on and cracking up!   Don't laugh too hard at the following pictures:

What a riot!  Tim was going for the stern rocker look - I think he accomplished his goal!  :-)  Actually, he said it looks like a cave man in a bad mood!  Too funny.  Today - we are putting up Christmas lights - woohoo!  Hope everyone is having a great weekend with friends and family!  Blessings to all!