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I'm headed to Cornell in June to celebrate the 25 years since I've been out in the world. And as my friend Heather Robbins has suggested I come up with my ten-point plan for making it all it could be, and living into my possibility of being trusting, bold, and generous, I did:

1. See a part of campus that I haven't yet.

2. Find an old classmate who is now a professor.

3. Introduce two people who haven't met before.

4. Ask five people the magic wand question.

5. Ask five people the advice they'd give their younger selves.

6. Ask five people who their heroes are.

7. Find a way to introduce five people to their heroes.

8. Ask five people to have a conversation with me about coaching.

9. Encourage five people to follow a dream.

10. Thank everyone for coming.

11. Thank everyone for being who they are.

12. Find at least one reason to acknowledge every person I meet.

So it appears that I can't count. That's okay too.

So it's been a busy week, saving our fish, fixing the lawnmower, meeting with the Accountant and the Architect, getting the buzz out of Sharleen's car stereo system (this one might have been last week), booking a flight to go to reunion (just me unfortunately) giving up on the custom design of my blogs, re-jiggering the settings to go with the stock bootstrap theme, and starting to write them again instead of wasting my time with the structure.

But the special mention today goes to Yakov. He stresses way too much about school. We have told him since day one that his job is to Have Fun and Learn Something, but I don't know how much fun I'd be having either with ten hour school days, and never feeling like I have enough time to do homework, and having this crazy sense that grades matter (they obviously do at some level, but for the most part they are poor indicators of anything other than the ability to regurgitate that which a teacher has force fed his/her students).

So yesterday, he finally figured out that he could fail literature and come out just fine. I think giving himself that permission will actually let him play inside it a little more. And I don't know what he means by failing anyway. He's never failed a class, and as long as he learns something, I don't think he ever will, I don't care what the numbers say.

I'm also tickled with Uri. He came home yesterday, and I offered to play him a game of chess. He didn't want to. His experience is that he always loses. So I suggested we work on the basics. I gave him a king and a rook and left myself a king, and we ran the drill until he could mate me without thinking about it too much. Now we're working on a king and two bishops. It's a much bigger challenge, but we&39;ll have that one down soon too.

For myself, I've gotten a bit more serious about getting through my restaurant list. The timing really sucks though. It seems the best time to be in touch with the people I need to reach is just when we happen to be busiest with dinner and the kids.

But we are moving forward, so that's good. We also had a home introduction to the Landmak Forum last week, and the possiblity I am inventing for myself and my life is the possibility of being trustiong, bold, and generous. It's a good place to be.

If I think about it enough, there's probably no end of things for which I ought to give thanks, and perhaps we all should, as gratitude and the daily acknowledgement of the things for which we are grateful make us happier human beings.

So, I start with being grateful that I am no longer constrained by the notion that I should not start a sentence with a conjunction. It might seem a small thing, but it's a part of flowing with what is there instead of what I think is the right thing to do, the rules, usually as written by someone else.

I am really grateful I have learned to question other people's rules and default beliefs. Thoughts like “That's the way it is and how it's always been” just don't run me any more. I am in many ways bolder than I have ever been, and feel free to challenge others - and sometimes even myself - to play bigger and bolder games in life, which always leaves me feeling better.

I am thankful for, thank and acknowledge my partner and playmate, Sharleen. She always has my back, is infinitely patient, and is all about creating worlds that work. If someone needs to be taken care of, and it's in her ability, she does it. People are better just for having been in her presence. It's pretty neat.

I am thankful for my great kids, curious people who play with, challenge and engage me. They all make unique contributions to their classrooms and worlds. I am thankful for the great family that made these kids possible.

But mostly, I want to thank my parents. They have taught me what faith is and what it means to be committed to friends and family. They have been unwavering in their commitment to and support for my happiness and success. I love you both.

It would not be Thanksgiving if I didn't thank the people who gave us this opportunity to be mindful, PresidentAbraham Lincoln, Sarah Josepha Hale, and William Henry Seward, but theirs was an exhortation to a greater power, and I join them in remembering that:

No human counsel hath devised nor hath any mortal hand worked out these great things. They are the gracious gifts of the Most High God, who, while dealing with us in anger for our sins, hath nevertheless remembered mercy.

We're cleaning up the styling and finally getting around to adding some content in the blogs now that we've got the sub-domain thing figured out on b2evolution, our blog management software.

Even bigger than that, we have fixed the grill. We hadn't realized how much we had been missing it until we got it working again. I'll admit to my neighbor Hanan that it's not the same as charcoal, but the meat is cooked and on the table almost as quickly as when made in a skillet.

We’ve been working in the background for a while. Not much has changed except that David now has a page for his presidential campaign, and he has added a few articles to his blogs, all of which can be linked from above. Also, the bicycle has come out of the shadows, and the tree has been cut down.