Today, I am grateful for my mother-in-law Tina.  Her generous care of, and for, us eases a little bit the sadness of being so far away from my own family.  And she has become a good friend of mine!

Today I am grateful that the squirrel that I hit on the highway this morning shook himself off and ran off the highway before another car hit him.  A small thing, I know, but I have recently been convicted of the Lord's love for all of his creation and it made me really sad for about a half second until I looked back and saw that he was alive!  I hope he's eating acorns and living a good life tonight!

I am grateful for my job, which, while not perfect and often full of frustration, give me many moments of enjoyment and is helping us secure our financial future. 

And today, I'm grateful for the fun moments that a game of "Bunny, Bunny, Bunny, Bunny, Whoop, Bunny, Whoop, Bunny, Bunny, Bunny, Bunny" gave my students and I today at the end of the day.  I've been happy all night because of it. 

P.S. If you don't know that game, ask me to teach it to you sometime.  It's a great way to keep a big group of kids occupied for a few minutes! :)

My friends and family:

For the month of November, I am going to try to post something every day that I'm grateful for.  Today, I don't really have time to explain why I want to do this.  It's coming out of our covenant group Bible study, where we just discussed the importance of practicing the discipline of gratitude.  Hopefully soon I'll be able to flesh it out more than that.  But, in the attempt to get going and not let that stop me,  here's my first post!

Daily Gratitude #1
Today, I am grateful for the safe arrival of my family - Mom, Chris, Katie, Addie, and Alex - to Alaska, having survived the long drive up the Alcan in the winter.  Welcome home!

P.S. Would you like to join me?  Blog it!  Facebook it!  Twitter it (even though I don't read Twitter)!  E-mail me!  Pray it!  Anyway you want, please join me.

Last night, my friend Julie and I saw the play, "The Importance of Being Earnest" by Oscar Wilde at Centerstage.  It was fabulous.  The movie is really great too and I'd highly recommend it if you haven't seen it!

And in other news, I made this cake, Mexican Monkey Cake on Tuesday night for a school function on Wednesday.  It was easy and delicious and still tasted great today when we finished off the last of it.  The only change I made was to chop up chocolate bars (milk, dark, and unsweetened baking bars) to get the chocolate because I thought I didn't have any chocolate chips.  I did find some later but I think that in the end, the cake was much improved by the addition of real chocolate - particularly dark!  In case you're wondering - it's "Monkey" for the bananas and "Mexican" for the cinnamon/chocolate combo.  Come up with an excuse to make it soon!