I'm a fortunate girl

Yesterday I celebrated my birthday, I turned 38.
I had a very nice day. My DH, the kids and my parents in law came at my bed in the morning, singing, with a cup of tea and a lot of presents.
Later on more family and friends came over to visit, the kids (10 of them) were playing up stairs and the adults were sitting together, talking, eating, drinking... Nothing special, just an avarage, nice birthday in our family.

This morning I was chatting with Anita (who came by yesterday too) and she said to me that I had NO idea how lucky I am for having such a nice family.... She talked about noticing the kids all feeling at home, rushing up and down the stairs... everyone keeping each others kids in cheack... someone grabbing the vacuumcleaner and cleaning up chips on my stairs and not even asking... everyone doing what they feel comfortable with...
She talked about my sisters little boy who made me a lovely drawing and she said my mom is adorable...

And she is soooo right. People said it before and of course I know that I'm lucky to have a great family. But that's so normal to me that I sometimes forget how special that is, that I forget to treasure it enough...

Thinking of it now, I realize how fortunate I am!!!
So thank you Anita for reminding me!

So much about my birthday, what else have I been doing the last week...

I tried to do some "Sinterklaas"-shopping but it was sooo busy in all the shops that it wasn't any fun. I gave up after I bought some things I really needed and will have another try this week. Not that I imagine it to be better then last week...

I had 2 crops on wednesday, 1 in the morning and 1 in the evening. Both times I had a nice, enthousiastic group of people coming over. They were all more advanced scrapbookers who can do with very little help, wich gave me the change to do some scrapping of my own.
So I worked on the LO's I have to do for my Scrap-Club DT using the december kit featuring the beautiful Senic Route Winter paper.

The first one became a real winter LO. I had to dig out an old picture of my DS that was taken 7 years ago.


Since we're lucky if we have 1 or 2 days of snow at all in this country I don't have that much snow pictures.






The second one is about the arrival of Sinterklaas.
My DD full of expectation waiting for Santa to arrive.








On thursday and friday I did scrapbook demonstrations for a craftshop at a big hobbyconfention in a city about 70 minutes driving from here. It was open until 10.00 p.m. so you could say I was a little tired when I got home, but I love doing these things. I meet so many people who don't have a clue what scrapbooking is. It's nice to make them enthousiastic for this greatest hobby of all!

Something else I did this week is submitting! I submitted to the PK face time call and to the ST minibook call. I also gave CK a new try for the fresh faces ànd I entered the Junkitz International Contest. And then the waiting and the stress starts... Even though I know the deadline is not earlier then the end of november or even somewhere in december I can't wait untill then and check my e-mail 3 times a day. Silly right? I know there won't be any e-mails before the deadline but it doesn't hurt to look... Ah well, time is flying these busy days so before I know it I will know *LOL*

And talking about time flying, november has only 2 more days to go...
and then the month of celebrations starts!
I wish everyone a great and wonderfull last month of the year!!!