30 days of Thanksgiving – Day 12

Today I am thankful for my new townhouse. I enjoy living only 2 miles from work and have some great neighbors. It is so nice to have a place that I can call home and is all my own.

30 days of Thanksgiving - Day 11

Today I am grateful for my sister Marcia. She is an awesome woman and I am so glad to have her as both a sister and a friend.

It has not always been that way - when we were kids I was pretty wussy and she was able to push me around pretty easily.

However, when I started college and she was a senior, she took me under her wing and helped me deal with being homesick. Away from the pressure of our family, we began to get to know each other as adults and developed a great relationship.

We have a lot of interests in common and are able to help each other with our respective families. Now she is helping me build a new family because she is giving me a puppy for Christmas who will be my new companion!

Love you sis!

30 days of Thanksgiving - Day 10

Today I am grateful for my boss, Michele. After years of reading Dilbert and other jobs I have held in the past, I could really relate to how Dilbert and other employees felt about the Pointy-Haired Boss.

Michele has been my boss now for nearly 5 years. Somehow, no matter what position I have been in with my company, she is the person I report to. She has also become my friend and I am grateful for that. I tend to be a loner and focus on my work, but she is working on guiding me about also spending time relating with my co-workers.

Michele is also a great example of leadership and patience. She is also supportive of my plans for advancing my career. So - here's to the Curly Haired Boss.

30 Days of Thanksgiving – Day 9

It seems appropriate that today I am grateful for knowing that I am a child of God. As I sat in my church meetings the feeling came very strongly to me that I need to get back to studying my scriptures more and working on sincere prayers. No matter what, though, it is great to know that I can be forgiven when I make mistakes, that I am loved no matter what I do, and that someone out there cares for me.

30 Days of Thanksgiving - Day 8

Oggi, ho gratitudine per la lingua italiana. Translation: Today, I am grateful for the Italian language.

When I first when to college in 1978, I thought I was going to be an Opera singer. I lived, ate, and breathed music. However, I quickly found out that while I love music, I cannot stand music theory. In order to major in vocal music, I was required to take a basic classes in Italian, German and French. I dropped most of my music classes, but stayed in my Italian class.

From the very first day of class, I fell in love with Italian. It sounded so beautiful and just felt 'right' to me. I think, deep down in my heart, I am a closet Italian. I lived in the Italian House at BYU, was in the Italian Club, minored in Italian. After graduating, I went back to Chicago and worked from 1982-1985 for the Chicago Branch of Banca Commerciale Italiana and would sometimes have to call Italy and also spoke Italian with my boss, Enzo D'Agostino.

For years, the Italian then went into hiding. When I found out that my daughter and future son-in-law were going to be stationed in Italy for 3 years, I started studying Italian again.

This September, I spent 2 1/2 weeks in Italy with my daughter and son-in-law. From the moment I got off the airplane I was surrounded by Italian and loved it. It was fun to hear, to read everywhere and even more fun to be able to communicate to the Italians.

Mi piace di parlare Italiano! (I love speaking Italian!) I bought several of my favorite books in Italian while I was on vacation there and am enjoying rereading them in Italian. Plus - it cracks me up when people see Twilight on my coffee table and pick it up to look at it and do a double take when they see it is not written in English.

Puppies - 11 days old

I went and saw the puppies again last night. They are now 11 days old. I can't wait until they open their eyes! They have about doubled in size already.

Someone has already put a deposit on the boy puppy. There is a girl that is almost the same size and then two tinier ones, I call them Runt 1 and Runt 2. Runt 1 does not have a lot of white hair on her chest. Runt 2 has a lot of white hair on her chest. I have narrowed my choice down to one of the little girls. My sister thinks those are the sweetest ones too.

30 Days of Thanksgiving - Day 7

Today I am thankful for Fridays. Fridays are such nice days. They hold the potential of the entire weekend to come. Work seems easier. People are more relaxed. Even a bad Friday beats most other days of the week. We need to have a few more Fridays each week.