Thanks

I'm the last one awake, which is normally the case, but probably won't be for much longer, considering Kaylee is also a night owl--and 29 years younger than I am.  :)  One symptom of me getting older may be that caffeine didn't used to keep me up.  Tonight I had a coffee drink and am still awake at 3 a.m.  Now, either caffeine is starting to affect me more, or...more likely, come to think of it, the fact is that I don't hardly drink any soft drinks any more and thus probably have lost my tolerance for it.  Either way, it's 3 a.m. and I'm pretty wide awake here!  At least I got to finish a new James Patterson novel.

It's been enjoyable having everybody here. We don't get to see the Cherry family a whole lot, and we don't get to see my Mom & Ernie a whole lot, so it's been neat.   Kaylee went with her girl cousins to Target/the mall and Starbucks last night. They left at 11 p.m. and got home just after 1 a.m.  It's still a little hard to believe the oldest cousins are 24 and 22, that by the time my Mom was 24, she was widowed and had a 5 year old daughter, that by the time I was 24, I had been a pilot for a few years and was newly married.  And now they're that age, and Kaylee is less than 10 years behind them, and that's just...something.  I'm grateful she has all of them in her life too.

Tonight Mom, Ernie, Steve, Kaylee and I went to Marion to look at their walkway of lights.  It's a bit of a drive out there, and the address I got from their website took us downtown and no lights around.  So I went to their Facebook page, which had a different address.  That one worked, except it took us to the END of the display, not the beginning.  Steve wandered around for a little while, but eventually he hunted down where the thing started, and by then, in a much bright Christmas Spirit struggling to stay that way, we finally made it.   We all decided it was fine, but we had seen better displays.  :o  But...I can sit on the couch any time, but I'd never seen the display I'd heard about each year, and you never know until you go check it out.  So I didn't mind going at all.  It's not like we didn't enjoy the company we were with, and there was nothing on TV anyway, so hey.  ;)

There was one display from the Marion Fly-In, an old bi-plane and a car.  They did a nice job with that one.  They also had a Corvette that looked pretty good, and it's a clever idea to do the 12 Days of Christmas like that too.  They had a walkway and a gift shop, but it was 20 some degrees outside, so walking was NOT on anybody's agenda for today.  Well, there were a few hardy folks walking, but nobody in our car was that nuts.  I mean interested.

I usually feel pretty darned thankful for things, and I don't think people should wait for one day a year to remember what they are thankful for any more than they should wait for one 'heart' day a year to tell their significant others that they love and appreciate them.  I know that life isn't perfect, that there are always things that could be better, but we have a safe home, a happy and loving family, friends who care about us and we for them, I have a job I still really enjoy doing (except when it's sub-freezing ;)), and we have...enough.  The thing that would bother me if I let myself dwell on it is that life is always changing, and what is bad won't stay bad, but what is good can't always stay either.  We're always given different challenges, and I've seen enough of them to be a little afraid of that, of the other shoe dropping, afraid it will be a big one.  But something else I've come to feel peace about is that whatever comes about in life, I think there's a purpose, even if I don't know what it is right away.  What seems bad can have good rise from it...if you let it. I wouldn't be where and who I am today without several things that I wouldn't have chosen for myself.  You also can't live life paralyzed by the "what could be"s.  So I am thankful for what we have been blessed with.

Since that is too serious to end on, today was Black Friday, and while I didn't shop (heaven forbid), I did take one quick flight.  This was an aerial photography flight, where a young pilot I taught several years ago but who hadn't flown in over a year came back, and brought his company photographer and friend along in the back seat to take photos of his company's property, equipment, fields, etc.  This photographer was the same one who had gone with us in the RG out to Ohio and Pennsylvania to shoot photos of coal power plants.  He'd thrown up 7 or 8 times that day.  Mostly dry-heaving after awhile until we stopped for lunch and he decided eating Arby's was a good plan (it wasn't).  Well, as soon as I saw him, I made sure I had multiple sic sacs on board, and off we went.  He did okay for awhile, and then he started getting quiet and pale.  I turned the heat off, and opened my air vents, which of course are taped off because it's below freezing out there these days.  We had to open the window to take the photos, so he got a good dose of cold air a few times there.  He asked to be dropped off in the air, and then got quieter.  We made it back to Kokomo in time, and he survived, and I declared any Black Friday in which nobody vomits on me to be a successful one!

On that note, it's a quarter to four, and it's a good thing I can (hopefully) sleep in tomorrow!