Fave Five Friday - Finally!

It's Friday - finally!  It's been a busy week which means that the week has flown by.  It seems that the closer it gets to my trip overseas, the faster the days are going.  With Thanksgiving just weeks away, I'm getting a little panicked about getting all my Christmas presents made or purchased before I head off on my trip.  My goal of leaving with a rudimentary knowledge of the Indonesian language has flown out the window.  I think I'll be able to manage the standard greetings and that's probably all I can hope for at this point.  I also like to make Christmas gifts for each of the nurses on my mom's wing at the nursing home.  That's 27 people to make gifts for.  Needless to say, I've been finding myself waking up early in the morning with my mind racing as I try to figure out how I'll accomplish all of this within the time allotted.  But let's put that aside and go to our Fave Friday list for this week, shall we? 

 1.  I've been dogsitting this week and it has been very apparent to me that, like children, God gives us the dogs that he knows we can handle.  Don't get me wrong.  Our Fresca is about as neurotic as they come.  She's anti-social, over-protective, suspicious, and can get loud in a heartbeat.  Hey, that sounds like me...a perfect match for my temperament.  I can spend hours working away on the computer or sitting in a chair reading.  I'm independent - extremely so, as long as I know there is someone in the general vicinity that I can count on IF I need them.  Fresca is perfectly happy as long as she is in the same room as me.  She just plops herself down on the floor by my side and snoozes away.  She doesn't need to be walked because she exercises herself running from window to window in our rooms when cars, mailmen, or dog walkers go by the house.  She's efficient.  She comes to get me when she has to go outside and then she does her business in less than 3 minutes and is ready to come back in.  Then there's Schatze, the dog we are babysitting.  Schatze is a "clinger."  I don't think I've ever met such a needy dog.  She's used to being on her owners' laps a lot.  And she whines - oh, my....does she whine.  She takes FOREVER to go to the bathroom.  She came here with two big containers filled with treats that I'm to give her.  Goodness, she's half the size of my dog who only gets two small treats a day and this little dog apparently gobbles them down like there is no tomorrow.  No wonder she's a picky eater!  It's a good thing that she's cute because that is her saving grace.  One more week to go with the little darlin'.

2.  We're one week closer to Election Day.  I don't know about you, but I'm getting mighty tired of the election ads and the campaign telephone calls.  I'd just like for it to be over and done with.  Maybe the answer is to limit the amount of time that candidates have to campaign.  It seems like they start several years before the actual election.  Ugh!  It's like seeing Christmas decorations up in July.  When the actual event happens, it feels anti-climactic.

3.  I had a lucky break on my Christmas knitting.  I've been enjoying knitting fingerless mitts, as I mentioned in an earlier post this week.  Anyway I fired off an email to my daughter several days ago to ask her what color of fingerless mitts she would want "IF" she should happen to get some for Christmas.  I just heard back from her and the answer was "light gray."  Well, what do you know?  It just so happens that I had found an unused skein of a nice gray left over from a sweater I had knitted this year and I'd started a set of gloves for myself.  However, I wasn't liking how they were turning out.  When I heard from Laura, I ripped out my knitting and am now redoing a pair from a different design for my daughter.

4.  Our son posted some more pictures of our granddaughter and she's becoming quite the reader.  Jason and Laura haven't had very good internet access where they currently are living so the emails and pictures have been few and far between.  However, this week we received some new pictures and even a short video.  Mika continues to grow by leaps and bounds.  She's now crawling easily and continues to be quite captivated by books.

5.  Speaking of books, I'm making great progress on my "ABC" book for Mika.  I'm using the Creative Memories Storybook Creator software and designing a special ABC book just for Mika that I plan to have printed and bound before I leave.  Each entry will feature someone or something that particularly pertains to her family on both sides.  I thought that this would be a great way for her to learn her "ABC's" while also getting to know her extended family while she is living so far away from us all.

If you'd like to write about your own Friday's Fave Five, visit Susanne's blog at Living to Tell the Story.  She hosts us each Friday and it's a great way to reflect back over your past week or to focus on the week to come.