Soup

I picked up a chest cold over 4th of July weekend.  I'm not sure I've ever had a chest cold before.  I'd be fine if I never had one again.  This thing has kicked my butt.  Today I finally conceded defeat.  I started taking the antibiotics the doctor prescribed last week "just in case".  And I've been "resting" in bed all afternoon.  Unfortunately I'm not the best at resting.  So I'm not sure how useful this has been.  But I've watched a lot of Justified.  And at this point there's no way I dare leave my room because who knows what the kids have done downstairs, in my absence.  Seriously though, I was grateful that I had one last jar of the homemade soup that my brother gave me for my birthday!  He makes a mean cabbage soup!  Yum.  It especially hits the spot when you're not feeling good!

Starbucks Gift Card

This past Fall, three of our kids started orthodontics.  This is probably good practice for putting them through college!  They have come to realize that it was an error in judgment to have been looking forward to this (which they all were).  But all the same, they're having a pretty good experience. They love the people who work there.  They enjoy selecting different color bands for their braces.  Perhaps most of all, they love getting rewards on their own personal "credit cards".  A month or two after we got started, an envelope came for Annika in the mail.  It was a great surprise to discover that Annika had used her very first points to buy me this Starbucks gift card...and she did it all by herself.  As much as she drives me crazy at times, she also blows me away with her ingenuity, with her resourcefulness and with her generosity (amongst other things). She's a pretty remarkable kid!