We've interrupted this regularly scheduled life & blog....to have the flu.  Yep.  that's right.  pretty sure that's why for the past 3 days I have ached all day & all night from my eyelids all the way down to my toenails.  Which also explains also why blogging has been much lower on the priority list than say, blowing my nose or better yet....sleep!

Before i get into what i wanted to share tonight, i wanted to give an update on our Noticing November jar.  We've done it every day.  Without fail.  Sometimes twice a day.  Because the funny thing about gratitude is that the more time you spend intentionally looking for things you can be grateful for, the more things you actually notice.  Our jar is filling up fast & it's going great; except for the part where they act like they're casting some top secret ballot every time they sit down to write out a card.  They're all like:

"hey!!  don't peek at my card.  NOBODY PEEK AT MY CARD!"  

"Moooom!!  Nate's trying to read my caaaaaard!" 

(& my personal favorite was from Ella)  "mommy?  how do you spell bwain?  like, 'i'm thankful for my bwain.'  But i'm NOT writing that boys!!" 

Apparently they've embraced the "no reading them till New Year's Eve" mandate.  It's just whatever.

In other news, the past few days have made me VERY grateful for some incredible people in my life.  Yesterday, one friend (who has her own houseful of kids that she homeschools and NUMEROUS responsibilities in our squadron) took my kids for almost 2 hours.  She baked cookies with the girls, let her son & my boys load up on minecraft, & ordered me to nap.  In silence.  It was everything to me.  Another friend went to the store to get me lemon for my tea today & a box of cereal to make tomorrow a little easier.  Another friend offered to make me soup.  And my phone literally buzzed all morning while friends, both military and civilian, both in Alaska & other states, texted me checking in to see if i needed anything & letting me know that they were praying for me.  

Then there is the matter of these marvelous human beings i call our children.  I woke up to our oldest, Jimmy, sitting at the foot of my bed telling me to go back to sleep while he took "the kids" downstairs to feed them breakfast.  About an hour later, i stepped out of the shower, to find Nate & Sophie planting this surprise in my room:

This almost melted me into a puddle of mommy mush.  Don't get me wrong, the card & the stickers & the "perfect penmanship" that they used to sign their names inside were great.  But the bag of candy & what it represented was what did it to me.  They proudly announced that they wanted to give me a get well present, but they didn't have anything to give....except Halloween candy.  So they all chose my favorites out of their stash & loaded up a ziploc bag & affectionately signed it, "The Carrabbia kids."  That may not look like much to you.  But to me it meant the world because they gave generously from what they had. This is the kind of generosity that we strive to put in their hearts.  The kind that says "i may not have much to give, but what i do have i give with a smile on my face & love in my heart."

So while I may not feel physically well, in my heart i feel better than i have in days.  I get to live everyday of my life with 4 little people that are turning into 4 amazing big people with even bigger hearts.  i can't think of a better reason than that to be grateful today.