31 Things I’m Thankful for in July

More thankful than a little boy with a bag of popcorn and a balloon sword to hit his mother with repeatedly from the backseat!

1. An awesome trip to Michigan to visit friends!
2. Antibiotics – I have strep throat and am thankful for medicine.
3. This baby’s improved health. He’s gotten to spend long periods of time at home with his parents and sweet sisters.
4. Cooking club. Such a fun group of gals who love to cook and love marketing (about 65% of us work in marketing)
5. Adoptions
6. Brief respite from the heat!
7. Trips to CherryBerry with the family
8. Lucan’s first Iowa Cubs baseball game – all three innings of it (my kind of baseball game!)
9. Hummus. Lucan loves hummus. How weird is that?
10. Farm fresh blueberries
11. Clean trip to the dentist – not so much for Lance who popped an old cavity out two days before his visit. Lance is averaging 1.5 emergency dental visits per year. Maybe I’m thankful for dental insurance instead? :)
12. My anniversary iPad from hubby. I was flabbergasted by my husband’s generosity.
13. Making budget this month so getting to spend the blow money on whatever I want!
14. Garden vegetables: one zucchini and several cucumbers. We also have lots of baby green beans, a few peppers, a couple eggplants and green tomatoes, so fingers crossed.
15. This book – Calling Me Home
16. Giant inflatable bounce houses. Not so thankful for the tantrum that ensued after having to leave the inflatables.
17. Free family fun – parades and family fun fests at churches.
18. The continued search for a new head pastor.
19. A great husband who takes Lu on long bike rides or short trike rides around the block
20. Gummy vitamins. One might call it bribery, but let’s not point fingers here.
21. Potty training? Totally not on my radar, but apparently it’s on Lucan’s!
22. Play dates with friends at the park
23. Reconnecting with college friends that live way too close to be seeing them as infrequently as we do
24. Doug & Melissa markers are water soluble as Lance has caught Lucan coloring our tan couch not once, but twice in two weeks (why isn’t daddy babysitter more vigilant?)
25.  Clean water. The other day a water main had to be replaced and so they turned off our water from 8-5 pm. Of course it was one of the days I was home sick. Bad timing.
26. 3 for $1 roses at Hy-Vee. Because sometimes there’s no occasion like a sale to buy yourself half a dozen roses.
27. 4-H. I can bake a mean pie and I can sew. All thanks to 8 years in 4-H! I should preface to say that 90% of my time in 4-H I hated the organization. But the life skills I walked away with (and the husband) are undeniable.
28. A husband who has an innate ability to find hidden ingredients in my pantry and fridge.
29. A daycare who takes Lucan on fun outings: Adventureland, the Blank Park Zoo, the Science Center of Iowa, the library, Chuck E Cheese, Jester Park and Pump It Up! I won’t lie, I’m totally jealous of his field trips. But I think I’m more jealous that I wasn’t the person to take him on these trips. I’ll get over it.
30. The movie Despicable Me. I laughed, but not as much as Lance. He has the sense of humor of an eight-year-old.
31. Free Chik-Fi-lay and dressing like cows – we have no shame :)