Please, Three more clicks.

It's nearly midnight, but I feel like a little kid asking to stay up just a few minutes longer.

I'm just situating things from the past week as a new week rolls around the corner. But boy, am I excited for this upcoming week.

Thanksgiving!!!

This is always the biggest holiday. All the brothers will be home. The house will be a hustle and bustle with people everywhere. Things will be baking and dogs will be begging. Oh, so much joy.

On Thanksgiving Day we will go to Nappanee and participate in the I'm Thankful Four and remember all those we have loved.

Then we'll hurry home and fight over showers until everyone is ready and the food is piping hot and we hustle out the door to the Comino house.

Here we will join with our aunts, uncles, cousins and relations of varying proximity until all the rooms are filled and consume mass quantities of everything delicious imaginable. The rest of the day will be spent in spurts of slumber and conversation until it is time for coffee and dessert. (And Pinata, hopefully!)

Oh, what a good day. Even better is when we wake up the next day - all the brothers will still be here! Nothing beats that.

I am so thankful for Thanksgiving.

Ain't that the Truth!

All Cold and Fuzzy Inside.

It was a cold and rainy night. Pitch dark.

I sit under my wool blanket near to the heater.

Maybe I will read.

I need more Puruvian green cotton. Maybe Rachel will want to go to Goshen with me tomorrow to get some. If I'm lucky.

Listening to music gifted by Lexi and giddy that she will be back state-side any moment.

Knitting.

I've been knitting again. Back at the mad hattery. The only bummer is running out of yarn. Boo. Hope they still have my kind at the yarn store. It's Purvian cotton - in yummy green.

On air!

Today, I bid in my first real life auction. I've never even bought something on e-bay, let alone in a real life auction with the auctioneer rambling on 500 beats per minute.

This auction has a story. It starts with an ad received for an auction to be held for the school system and an interview. I was interviewing with the principal and he mentioned how the school used to own quite a few looms but had been in storage for decades and were now to be purged in the pending sale. After conformation through my sources, I knew they would be at the sale.

Today was the day.

I could hardly sleep last night. And I woke up super early this morning. Sleeping is one of my fortes so not be able to do so is quite strange.

When we finally finished the days work, it was off to the auction. My boss, the younger, briefing me on all the tips and rules of the trade when going to battle at the auction block.

We approached to sorry rows of rejected materials. Ripped out sinks, rusty weight equipment, counter tops, overly padded office chairs, things that feel quite familiar and were possibly part of my elementary education.

And I saw it. I knew it was love. One beautiful dark wood four harness floor loom. Just perfect. I drooled. My heart started to pound a little.

We got the number. 124.

To our shock the auctioneer declared that loom row would be first. Good golly. I was told to be right up front - maintain eye contact with the auctioneer.

Some frame looms came up. Sold to us. Okay, that was just the warm-up. Next the big one.

Golly.

It was a blurr. Only one other bidder. SOLD! $45.00

And then we picked up a table top loom for the fun.

I thought my heart would pump out of my chest.

With the help of a kind man, who so graciously volunteered his truck when he saw that the loom was going to be quite a pickle to get into the Boss's jeep, all the looms came home with us. Plus, I got to chat with him a bit. His daughter and I were schoolmates and I quite remember how he and his wife shared their experience of adopting said classmate from Korea.

Now there is a pile of looms just waiting for me to put them all together and wipe away the layer of dust.

What a good day!

Oh, What A Sunny Sunday.

A weekend back, dear Kendall was in town to visit. She stayed for three nights. It was quite wonderful. On Sunday, we took the day to drive up to visit at Cranbrook. The grounds were completely wonderful. It would have been quite lovely to camp on the small island on the edge of the pond - but we were not prepared. But neither of us are "campers" so we continued on our walk. We drove home with only the aid of the atlas as the sun was setting over the hills, farms, and small towns of Michigan. What a great day.

Sense of Place.

In high school I had an alarm clock that would wake me up to a CD. For the longest time the CD I had in it was the All-American Rejects. Every morning the first thing I heard was "please just don't play with me, my paper heart will bleed."

This evening my music shuffle hit that song as I'm sitting here in my little living room above the garage. And, I remember all those mornings...

I would wake up and get dressed to this music. It is connected to a sense of place. A sense of place that I have had a rocky relationship with for the past four years. I grasped it for about three days in France (then we left). It was a fleeting moment with my wonderful friends senior year. Now I am sitting on my couch with Stella by my side. This is my place.

The other day, boss the elder asked when I would be leaving - the first of the year? he inquired. I looked at him and stated I had no such plans. He doesn't see what this place would have to offer me.

Sense of place is a constantly shifting idea. It changes as we change. Right now, my sense of place is completed when I'm sitting in the living room with my family - my youngest brother resting on me and has just fallen asleep, Lewis cracking a joke and Dad laughing uproariously. That is my place. It's the car rides home from Nappanee with the high school two and the impromptu dance parties in the living room before their guests arrive.

I feel it in the fields. They are so different everyday. It is as if these back-roads and I were destined to be together for a very long time.