I thought that for the first day of 30 Days of Thankfulness, I would write about the person that I am the most thankful for the most of the time.  You guessed it...my hubby!  I just think that my hubby is the bomb...because HE IS!  He is a constant in my life.  I'm thankful for him everyday but today he just seemed to shine.  He had a free lunch for the first time since school started, so he came, picked me up at work and took me to lunch.  After work, he decided that I had worked enough for one day and deserved a night off, so he loaded up the whole family plus the pregnant one and her family and took us all out to dinner.  When we came home he snagged me for some snuggles--now before your minds go too far the wrong way, snuggles are what we do every evening when I get home from work where we sit or lay on the bed and he holds me REAL tight as we giggle, and snuggle and talk about our day, without any children or the dog...well, sometimes the dog is there--just a reconnecting point after being apart all day. It's my most favorite time of the day-everyday!  (Texting is wonderful but snuggles are better!)   He just has a way of communicating his love for me in a way I understand and just as I often marvel at God's love for me when I think of who He is and what I am, I do the same when I consider my husband's love for me, what kind of man he is and what I am.  It must that he and Christ are a lot alike.  Yes, I'm sure that's what it is.  I feel doubly blessed!  

In August, I got to see my sister.  She lives on the west coast, I live on the east coast.  She works into the evening, I work days.  She doesn't have kids.  I have 4, 1 grandchild (and one on the way).  She doesn't dye her hair anymore, I do still.  

I rarely get to see her because it costs a lot of money to travel 3000 miles.  It is also hard to get enough time off work to make the trip worth it.  It's even harder sometimes to find time to chat on the phone since I either have to stay up way late to catch her at home, or she has to get up way early to catch me at home.  Her one evening off is often one that I'm very busy due to the aforementioned 4 children.  It would seem that we are very different from each other...but not really. 

I always try to take something away from special events, a kind of heart snapshot of each event that I want to remember.  Yes, I do have this photo above, but being with her is about more than what you can capture with a camera.  I have lots of friends but only one sister.  Friends are wonderful, but there is just some territory that only a sister can invade.  

Sometimes I just feel abnormal, out of joint, out of place and I start to second guess myself.  Then I spend a few hours with my sister and all the sudden I realize that I'm not all that weird.  She's more like me than anyone I know.  I found out this visit that we both like mint ice cream, we both shave our faces every morning ( yes we belong to a family who has been blessed with lots and lots of hair which is great for our aging heads but bad for other places!), and midlife spread has affected us both the same way.  When we went shopping we were drawn to the same things like scarves, balloons, and choo-choo train cars that play music.  We think and react much the same way to things in life, even though neither of us have friends that might agree or understand.  

And so I came away from our visit knowing that there is at least one other person in this world that is pretty much just like me and it just helps to level me out.  I take comfort in that.  Perhaps that is what God had in mind when he designed sisters.  Perhaps he meant for sisters to be someone in your life that can draw the line between sanity and insanity and then let you know on which side of the line you fall.  Carol Saline put it this way, “Sisters function as safety nets in a chaotic world simply by being there for each other.”  

I love you Mindy!  You mean so much to me!