Some things to look forward to...

Sitting here this morning, TV and computer-less, I am enjoying the very casual pace of eating breakfast and just thinking. Without hurrying to check the news of the morning or to see everyone's latest status update on Facebook. If we do get our satellite re-installed (we all do miss it) after the reno, I'm thinking that regularly scheduled breaks like this one would be in order. Last night after dinner, Dan, Maddie, and I worked on Maddie's turkey that was due today. About a week ago, she brought home a turkey cut from white poster board with the instructions that her whole family had to help dress it up. Waiting until the last minute seems to be my specialty (well to be fair we had other evening activities this week), so last night we settled in at the kitchen table and made a very impressive looking turkey if I may say so! We cut feathers of brown, red, yellow, and orange and wrote something we are grateful for on each one. Maddie wanted to use glitter so we made his head, beak, feet, and gobble sparkle with the appropriate colored glitter. I used scrapbooking stickers to spell "give thanks" across it's body and then used some punched out squiggles and bursts to finish a fun look. I can't wait to post a pic and I told Maddie we would have to use it as decoration every year from now on. That we'd always be able to say "remember making that turkey when Maddie was in kindergarten?" She smiled so big when I said that this morning.

Which brings me back to this morning. I'm sitting here enjoying the calm, blogging again from my BlackBerry, and thinking of the things I am looking forward to. Baking Christmas cookies was the thought that set this train into motion. I should have a working stove and oven again by Monday, maybe Tuesday at the latest. I need to get my family to submit their meal ideas and later when I go grocery shopping I can finally buy things again that need to be baked! What a wonderfully simple thing to be excited about! I love it!

Another thing I am looking forward to - tearing down the wall between the living room and the front porch. We are opening it up to give us more space and then walling off the remainder of the porch to serve as my home office. It's all very exciting. Dan's little brother Christian will be coming up this weekend to help us with some of the work we need to do. Probably will have to demo the closet in the front porch to make room for my office cabinets. We're renting an excavator to dig a new water line and also the electric is being moved under ground so that the boxes on the house can be moved from their current location, the very front of the house, around to the side - without having to take down any trees.

Regarding the windows, we decided to have Jason take one into Menard's and see if they'll give us a discount for the defect in the appearance. If so, we might be willing to live with it. If not, as much as we hate the idea of waiting, we'll probably opt for full replacements and hopefully Jason and Keith can side around the window openings or just get as much done as they can while we wait for new ones.

So yeah, we have a lot to look forward to, including the upcoming holiday's and seeing family and friend's. It's going to be great!