giving lots of thanks

Thanksgiving was with my side of the family this year. We spent it at my moms house with cousins, aunts, uncles, nieces, a grandpa, and lots of food of course. unfortunately, my cousin and her family got sick so they couldn't come....we were all SO sad. :( but here's some pics of some of the rest of us!

norman and i have so much to be thankful for this year, it's almost overwhelming. have you ever had times in your life where everything...and i mean everything just seems to work out almost perfectly? like i couldn't have planned it any better myself? yeah....me neither.....until recently. i don't know what we did to be so blessed but whatever it is we'd better keep it up.

first....we are so beyond blessed with a healthy little baby boy growing rapidly inside of me every day. i keep having moments where it hits me and i'm like holy crap....i'm having a baby. in like 3 months......wow.

second....norman has done soooo good in school this semester so far. always a blessing when you're going into a major that has math with no numbers ...and stuff like that...

third....when norman and i got pregnant we honestly didn't have a clue how we were going to make it work monetarily. but we didn't care. we knew we were supposed to have a baby and we knew that because we knew that....all would work out. it's been pretty stressful at times trying to figure out budgets to make things work...and we still really didn't have much figured out as to how we were going to make it work. but, the day before thanksgiving we got the best news!

back in september norman saw a paid internship opening at a structural engineering company here in town. so he applied...he wasn't super qualified because he wasn't very far in school and such...but they called him in for an interview anyway. the interview couldn't have gone better and we thought for sure we were going to get it. it was the perfect job....they work around your school...they keep you on as an intern until you graduate and then hire you for their company. they then pay for your masters degree if that is a route you would like to take {which norman does}. norman wants to go to the u of i for his masters in engineering management and they have a campus here in town where he could get that masters degree and work for this company at the same time. it seemed like a dream job.

they told him they would let him know within a week....well a week went by and we didn't hear anything. so we contacted them and they told us they hadn't made a decision yet. this same thing continued for 2 more months. every week norman would send them an email asking about the job and they would respond with the same answer. we began to lose hope....until the day before thanksgiving. norman got a call..and it was them. they wanted him to start on monday! we could not believe it! 

we just felt so so blessed and extra thankful on thanksgiving. and being surrounded by fabulous family is a nice reminder of how blessed we are, too. it has just been a really great year...we are looking forward to the next one with lots of changes for norman and i.

happy thanksgiving!