Thanks-giving

I know it isn't really Thanksgiving, but I've decided that if I try to find things to be thankful for each day, maybe I won't be so cranky and impatient!

Today I'm thankful for clean laundry!

We're going on 3 years now of not having our own washer & dryer, and somedays it really gets to me. Especially with all the messes kids bring.

Add to that the messes a baby brings, and the messes that 2 sick kids and 1 sick husband can bring, and one day, you wake up and realize no one has clean anything!

So, you take your clothes to the world's worst machines, that the apartments have provided, only to have them come back with soap spots, yellowed whites, and wet (and double your $$ spent because they were wet the first time!).

On good days, I can fit a trip to my mom's house (5 miles away) into my schedule to use her machines, but that can be a pain in the winter. (Let's face it, making trips to anywhere to do your laundry in a Fairbanks winter, is a pain!) Add to that the stress of taking your 3 kids with you to a not totally kid-friendly place, with giant dogs that freak the kids out (2 mastiffs), and it's not an event I look forward to. 

(I should get contest points for it actually, can we consider that an event? ;-)

(Mom, if you're reading this, sorry :-) I really love coming, just not bringing the kids)

But today, I was folding the laundry, that my husband was sweet enough to stay up 'til 1am washing last night, because we realized "no one had clean anything" (and by 'anything' we mean the important stuff, the kind of stuff you don't want to be without...especially at church...)

and I started to think, "ya know? I'm just grateful for clean laundry.
 Despite all the pain the mundane task brings to my life, I'm so blessed to not have to take it to a stream somewhere! (Can you imagine an Alaskan stream?!)
It could be that bad, but it isn't!

(And clean laundry, no matter how soap-spotted, always smells better than dirty laundry!)

So, long, and drawn out, that's the story of what I'm thankful for today!

In other news, if you're receiving this through the Merkley family email, or the Illguth family email, I think I'm going to stop sending posts to these groups, as I really only want people who want to get these posts, to get them.
I just don't want to send unsolicited stuff to peeps.

But, if you want to stay in touch, BOOKMARK this page, and remember to come back occasionally! Or subscribe to receive emails from the blog automatically(at the top of the blog, you get to choose your receiving method, oooooh, aaahhhh)
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