Thankfulness

I've been thinking a lot about thankfulness lately, for obvious reasons, and have realized that I have so much to be grateful for. So, in the spirit of Thanksgiving, I have decided to make a list of some of the things I am most thankful for in my life. In no particular order.


1.) God's grace
2.) Beautiful, crisp fall days
3.) My husband's sense of humor
4.) Fun shopping outings with friends. Named Brenda. :)
5.) Lazy Sunday's
6.) My health
7.) Good books
8.) Movies that inspire a sense of wonder
9.) A loving family
10.) The ability to travel
11.) My sweet, snorting, lovable dog
12.) Wonderful friends
13.) New babies
14.) My grandfather being at home
15.) Turkey and dressing
16.) Loose fitting pants :)
17.) My home
18.) IMDB
19.) Netflix - especially because of the WGA strike, which is something I am most definitely NOT thankful for.
20.) My church family
21.) Laughter
22.) coffee with hazelnut creamer
23.) hopefulness
24.) My faith
25.) A 3 day work week!!

May I always remember these things and others that I am thankful for, not just at Thanksgiving, but all year long.

Happy Thanksgiving!

Jen: Bargain Shopper Extraordinaire

I am not always the most frugal person - I tend to buy things when I see them and like them and not wait until they go on sale. So sue me. But I have gotten better about using coupons at the grocery store. Point for Jen. However, today I scored what I believe to be a major bargaining coup. My office was having an office furniture sale today, getting rid of extra chairs, shelves, filing cabinets, etc. We've needed a new chair for our computer desk for a while, due to a somewhat destructive bulldog. So, I was able to score this sweet, ergonomically awesome chair for $15. Regular price? $889! I actually got something we really needed and saved 874 bucks in the process. SCORE. Sadly, it was only an office chair. If only the coffee table I want would go on sale....

Happy Halloween from the Burns!

Because Tyler and I are huge dorks, we decided to dress up in absolutely ridiculous costumes for Halloween. We were a hit at the costume party we went to and with the kids on Halloween night. However, at the costume party, we pretty much just had to stay in a room by ourselves and let partygoers come to us. I was too fat and Tyler was too tall. It was pretty awesome. So I figured why not share our dorkiness via my blog? Hope you all had as much fun as we did!

Ireland!

My husband and I just got back from a trip to Ireland with his parents - I highly recommend it. It was a beautiful, relaxing, wonderful trip! I also highly recommend taking 2 weeks off work if you can - it's awesome.

We flew into Dublin and then just made a circle around the country - staying in Galway, Dingle, Killarney and then back to Dublin. My favorite part was Dingle town, with the Connemara region north of Galway coming in at a close second. The coast in Dingle was absolutely gorgeous and the mountains and valleys in the Connemara region were breathtaking.

The food was not as bad as I'd heard/feared it would be. It's all just very heavy. I ate a lot of vegetable soup over there and their Irish brown soda bread is so delicious. I need to find a recipe for it to see if I can even come close to making it at home. But yes, you get kinda tired of fish and chips after a while and we did eat Subway one night we were there. That was the best darn Spicy Italian I've ever had I think. Oh, and the Guinness. Oh the Guinness. It's so delicious over there. Tyler was in heaven - ha!

The driving was also quite an experience - or I guess I should say being a passenger was. I didn't actually drive, but I almost had several heart attacks on the narrow roads with oncoming traffic zooming past on one side and a hard, unforgiving rock wall on the other! It really was insane to see semi trucks, flying down the road at about 120 km per hour, driver talking on his cellphone. And this wasn't an interstate. It was about the size of a one way street over here and it was in the middle of the country. And being on the opposite side of the road didn't help either - but I must give props to Tyler and his dad for being champs about the driving. Well done, Burns men!

So anyway, we had an amazing time and wish we could have stayed longer!