Thankfulness: November 1st

November starts the month of gratefulness!  While we are called to live a life of gratitude in all twelve months of the year, November  centers on it & I am always grateful.  Day One of Thankfulness starts now!

November 1^st: I am grateful for our beautiful new home & God’s provision of it!  Today we hosted our first “party”.  A tea party for two sweet littles and being able to welcome our friends into our home was one of the biggest blessings.

November Mrs. Goals

Sitting on my couch with my favorite Scentsy bar burning in the warmer, dinner cooking away in the Crockpot, Pandora playing the blues, R&B and jazz of the greats and still in disbelief that it is November!  I switched out my school calendar before I left school on Friday and commented to my intern that it seemed as though we had just placed October up!  This month was full of football, friends, crazy weather & good friends.

October showed me full force what an incredible football family we have in the other coaches and their wives/children!  I love text messages from the other wives jokingly putting a spin our this lonely stretch of October.  Coach Husband had bye-week, which we spent with in Dallas at the Arboretum for their Fall Extravaganza!  It was so nice to spend time with my parents and celebrate my mom’s birthday with her.

Obviously October was crazy and I did not accomplish everything on my goals-sheet but overall I am pretty impressed with myself.

October Goals

train for the Zoo Stampede 5K

start the process to become a Habitat for Humanity volunteer

Signed up & ready to begin! 

begin planning the Emily/Bre winter vacation

make my own laundry detergent

read 2 new books

What was I thinking?  Since when do I have time to read during the school year??

fall decorations out

host a tea party for two precious littles in my life

Technically this tea party is happening on November 1^st but I’m marking it off the list!

begin Christmas shopping lists

I’ve never started planning/shopping this early, but it has been stress free so far because I have a solid plan.  Already have five gifts purchased and en route to our home!

finish family room projects

This has GOT to get done.  I am nowhere near finished on our family room & that needs to change ASAP.

November Goals

run the Zoo Stampede 5K

read 3 books (Thanksgiving Break I see you!)

continue Christmas shopping

clean make-up brushes

finish family room projects

organize my teacher table materials

Operation Christmas Child box

Rainy Sunday Productivity

Hurricane Patricia brought an insane amount of rain to Central Texas this weekend & it made for the perfect napping, reading, lazy bum weather.  I lived in yoga pants & long sleeved t-shirts, did {relatively} nothing all day yesterday and decided to be productive after church this afternoon.

It has been on my goal list a handful of months to make my own laundry detergent and so when Coach Husband loudly declared this morning that we were out of Tide, I decided today was the day.  Thanks to a sweet Master Reading Teacher friend I had a recipe o file and got busy. 

Ingredients

Arm & Hammer Baking Soda

20 Mule Team Borax

Purex Crystals

Arm & Hammer Laundry Super Washing Powder

Oxi Clean Stain Fighter

Fels-Naptha Bar Soap (3 of these!)

Five Gallon Bucket for mixing

Airtight container for storage

Grate the bars of soap using a cheese grater.  This was much easier than I originally expected & permeated the kitchen with a clean smell which made my heart happy. 

Dump all the ingredients in a five gallon bucket and mix well with your hands. 

Pour the mixture into your air tight container & voilà!

All in all the ingredients cost us about $20.00 or essentially one bottle of Tide liquid detergent.  However, the container looks as though it could last us 8 months to a year running around seven loads of laundry a week.  {Yes, there are only two of us and it takes seven loads of laundry….I’m a little OCD when it comes to sorting}.

It took a total of 15 minutes to make and as I pulled our first load of laundry out of the washing machine this afternoon I am pleasantly surprised with the cleanliness and fresh smell!

P.S. This weekend was Homecoming and for the first time in eight years I was not in attendance at the game.  Kickoff was at 11 a.m. and CH had meetings until noon.  It was the weirdest feeling for both of us, but I was still able to hug my sweet Alpha Chi Family Line minus a few generations.  I guess when Bre comes in December for the final game of the season we will have to make up full force for all the haunts we missed this weekend. 

You Jump, I Jump Jack

I had a goal this month to begin planning a reunion trip with Bre, but the Lord stepped in and orchestrated His own!  Unexpectedly this past week Bre & I were able to squeal, hug, eat Blue Bell, a copious amount of food and drink Dr Pepper together for seven hours.  It was exactly what my heart needed and I am so grateful for the fabulous guys in our lives that made it possible.

Saturday morning I was sitting in a professional development conference (yes, teachers work weekends) when Bre sent me a text message that she would be in Texas by 10:00 that night.  Work was sending her to Houston and we started scrambling for a plan of how we could meet up.  In a crazy whirlwind of cheap flights for the Bre, a steal of a hotel across from the ballpark and a really wonderful husband of mine we worked out a plan.  Coach Husband & I drove the three hours to H-Town on Sunday morning.  I didn’t wait for the car to be in park before I was rushing the hotel lobby to hug my best friend!  We then went on a crazy adventure to find lunch, I experienced my first Uber ride and we ate a really random pizza place.  From there we went to the baseball game & cheered on the boys.  Ate way too much food, laughed together, took copious amounts of pictures and headed back to their hotel for a final few minutes of togetherness before we left.

CH drove us home late Sunday evening while I cried pretty much the entire way.  We had a blast being together again & the countdown is on until Bre comes to Waco!

EIGHT WEEKS!