Thankful Thursday

A joyful heart is good medicine. {Proverbs 17.22}

Laughter! I am thankful for laughter!

I'm not generally a big laugh-er. You know how some people laugh all the time? At everything. I'm not one of them! Unless you know me pretty well you probably haven't seen me laugh a lot and might think I don't do it much. Don't be fooled! When I'm with my family and close friends I can really get going. I'm sure Kirb and I laugh way more than most people I know. We say we "share a brain" so we often think the same things are funny and can get laughing so hard that we have a hard time stopping, even if we want to. It's great. I love to laugh. When I laugh, I laugh hard {and occasionally I might even snort! . . . and if I can't calm myself down soon enough I might even wet my pants just a little -- remember I have given birth to 5 pretty good size babies. That does a number on the bladder!}. Laughter is so wonderful!

Last night after the kids went to bed we watched "Madea goes to Jail". You can watch a trailer here, but it doesn't do it justice! At all! Honestly, I think Tyler Perry might be the most talented, hilarious man ever. We were laughing so hard that most of the time no noise was coming out, we were just shaking in our seats trying to catch our breath before starting up again with the laughing. If you haven't seen a Tyler Perry movie, please, please don't wait much longer! They are all good and extremely funny with amazingly wonderful themes and messages . . . oh, and they have some absolutely hilarious Christian humor. This one had a whole very funny clip about WWJD that we laughed so hard at. Tyler Perry's movies can be a little crass, so don't say I didn't warn you. But they are amazing and sincere and so, so worthwhile. We've seen Why did I get Married?, Meet the Browns, Madea's Family Reunion, The Family that Preys and Daddy's Little Girls too. They were all excellent! I don't even know which one to tell you to start with. Really you can't go wrong.


Also today I'm extra thankful for my family! They are so wonderful! Last night we had our just-the-7-of-us birthday celebration {it's my birthday in a few days}. Kirb made a great dinner. All my favorites. Super yummy. Kirb took the 3 biggest kids to Target and they all picked out a present for me with their own money. So thoughtful and sweet. It touched my heart! Then we went for a nice walk. It was a beautiful night. My very favorite weather! {the only bummer of the evening was that I got stung by a bee on my foot during our walk. Man, that hurt!!} On the way home we walked by the house of some of our friends and they were out in the yard so we had a nice visit with them. Then we had a campfire in the backyard, ate marshmallows {some roasted and some "raw"} and read a little from "Lost and Found", the family read aloud that we are reading right now . . . also VERY funny! I love Andrew Clements. The kids can hardly stand it when I stop and shut the book each time. It always leaves you hanging and just makes you want to read it all the way through at each sitting . . . but since we can't do that they'll just have to be patient until the next time. {We're almost done. I'll be sad when it's over, it's been so good}. There are always lots of sighs and "but mom" and "keep reading, please!" to be heard when I shut the book. When it was too dark to read anymore we came in and got the 4 big kids ready for bed {Anna went down the minute I could get her diaper changed and teeth brushed following our walk}. It was much later than they usually go to bed {10ish, I think}, but we'd had a great night together as a family. {Hopefully I'll be able to remember that today when my over-tired kids direct their crabbiness at me . . . or each other!}. Then after they were all settled we settled in for some laughter.

How could I not be thankful?