November Thoughts, Grateful

Oh November, just the mention of the month and my mind registers on one word…. grateful.  It’s a beautiful concept and of course, I am thankful for the good in my life, but the weird thing is I am more grateful for all the hard lessons and dissatisfaction of situations that forced me out of my comfort zone and to have to take action.

It was from those difficult times that I learned either from others or found in myself what it meant to be true to your own self, to forgive, to have faith, and to know from those oh-so-hard life lessons to look for the silver linings and to know that they will  emerge and you will come out stronger. To always stay hopeful and not settle for ordinary, but to go for what is the best for you. For it was those changes,  some forced, some voluntarily made by me that brought me to the here and now.  I found a wonderful man who has truly shown me the meaning of “help-mate”. He is my rock.  The special bond that I share with both of my daughters as after we had our worlds shaken up,  we support each other as we have re-created our new worlds.  And that the new world for each of us is a much better version that what we had before.  Having a close-knit large tribe of crazy family, they are my kind of people.  Having true kinds of friends, which you unfortunately find out what kind they are when you have a major life event.  The true friends are the ones who are  there for you and you for them.   My little piece of heaven that I get to call home which come next year, Rod will share along side me.  And having a job that I love – but truly it’s about being surrounded by the stellar people I work alongside some who have become good friends. 

With that I wanted to share pictures from last month that I consider the good people in my life, who are my blessings.    So if you are a glutton for punishment, I uploaded just a few.  I had planned on writing more about the apple press party... but life got crazy so I've lumped all of October events into  one short blog post.   All my best, Gayle

Kaitlyn & Soren's wedding.  I adore my new son-in-law and the added bonus of those three adorable kiddos.   The pictures are below of the wedding and apple press event - 

The wedding was set just before Dusk, purely magical

Daughter Jen and niece, Sarah, and all the grand-angels

My handsome guy and me

 Earlier in the month we did a couple of trial runs on our hydraulic apple press.  This year the applies weren't abundant but we had plenty to make gallons of apple juice.

Friends cutting up the apples to feed into the grinder

Rod and his daughter Chelsea picking apples

Rod pouring the "end result" So yummy

Expert help with Miss M running the hydraulic jack

We got a short but sweet visit in with Chelsea and boyfriend, Dylan.  So before everyone left, we got a quick picture, and then sent them home with apple juice. Plus we had so much that we froze some for the holidays.  =)

Zach, Rod, me, Chelsea and Dylan

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