Heavenly Homemakers

Pardon me for being a teeny bit materialistic this week, but I really must take time this Gratituesday to appreciate my dishwasher. 

It’s just that I didn’t realize how much I appreciated my dishwasher until I was so sick for several days. At one point when I had about two minutes worth of energy, I took the opportunity to load a few dishes into the dishwasher. At that moment, I was so grateful to have a dishwasher, I thought I might weep. How wonderfully nice to have a piece of machinery in my kitchen that is happy to be overloaded with as many dirty dishes as I can fit into it…and then with the push of a button it will make my dishes all sparkly and ready to eat on again.

I suppose that I certainly can’t be grateful for my dishwasher without first and foremost being grateful for my father-in-law, who bought it for me. 

For all of our married life I was used to not having a dishwasher. When we moved into this house six years ago, the house came with a dishwasher. Hooray. I didn’t care that it was 436 years old. It was a dishwasher. 

And then about a year after we moved in, the dishwasher stopped working. I was bummed, but not bummed enough to do anything about it. In my mind, a dishwasher is a luxury, not a necessity. We didn’t have the money to replace it, and I knew that I could certainly wash my mountains of dishes by hand.

And so I did. For two more years.

Then Matt’s dad came for a visit. While he was here, we fed him well….and he fixed some odds and ends around the house. It was great. He noticed that I wasn’t using my dishwasher and asked me about it. I told him that it had broken quite a while back and that if he wanted to look at it and see if he could fix it while he was puttering around fixing things that it would be fine with me. If he couldn’t fix it, I was okay with that too.

He looked at it and saw that it wasn’t fixable. The very next night after dinner, he took us all to an appliance store to pick out a new dishwasher. Wow. I was not expecting that. 

So now I have a dishwasher. And it works. Very well. I don’t even have to rinse the dishes much before I load them to be washed. It’s awesome.

My father-in-law’s goal was to make my work load lighter. He knew that it would help me, and that the boys would be able to help load and unload it too, which would make my work load lighter yet. And he was right.

And so, as I was standing in my kitchen loading my dishwasher last week with my tiny bit of strength…I recognized how much I appreciated my dishwasher. 

I do believe I need to call my father-in-law once again and tell him how grateful I am for it. I just bet he’d enjoy hearing how much his gift means to me.
——————————————————————–
I can’t wait to hear about what you’re thankful for this week! Write about it on your blog and come over and link up!
——————————————————————–

[blenza_autolink code]

First of all, if you didn’t know this about me already….my maiden name was Hamm. (This is where you get to elbow each other and grin when you think I’m not looking and say, “Hamm? Her maiden name was Hamm?!”)

(If you think that’s funny…listen to this. My brother married a girl who’s last name was Egging. Yes, brought together in Holy Matrimony…Hamm and Egging.)

Anyway, none of that is important except for the fact that for the reunion we’re getting together with the Hamm side of the family, and the event has been named the “Hamm Bash”. 

And that is what I’m very grateful for this Gratituesday! The Hamm Bash!

It’s a reunion of my dad’s siblings (he’s the youngest of nine) and all of their families. So there are aunts and uncles and cousins and kids and babies all over the place. It’s a blast.

We have a pinata every year for the kids, an auction, we sing together, eat tons of yummy food, catch up on the year and do a lot of laughing. 

I’m so looking forward to it…and also so sad I can hardly stand to think about it. There will be two empty seats this year where my cousins Gary and Kim were supposed to sit. 

Between last year’s Hamm Bash and this one, I’ve become so much closer to my cousins Kim, Jayme, Sally and Laura through blogging. Starting about March, I began looking forward to the Hamm Bash SO MUCH…picturing how we’d all see each other and run to each other and hug and scream and start talking about silly blogging stuff.

And then Gary and Kim were killed…and all the rest of us got to see each other a month early. While we did run to each other…it was a much different kind of reunion than the one I had pictured. 

Because the Hamm Bash is where I met and got to know Kim…the thought of her and Gary not being there hurts so badly my stomach aches. 

So this reunion will be different. Being together with our family will mean so much more. The hugs will be tighter. The songs will be sung with more feeling. The conversation will mean more. 

I have the most wonderful family in the world. Being with them is always so encouraging.

I can’t get there fast enough.
————————————————
Please link up and share what you’re grateful for this Gratituesday!

[blenza_autolink code]