A Festive Thanksgiving

I don't think that I planned too much about celebrating Thanksgiving this year.  We did do the thankful leaves I posted about almost every day, but I have been focused on so many other things that I didn't do anything else.  I got out some Thanksgiving books at the beginning of the season, but didn't manage to read any to the kids.  But somehow lots of things fell into place and we ended up celebrating more than most years.

Last night I happened to ask Joshua what he had learned about Thanksgiving at school and by the end of supper,  Joshua and Gray had filled us in on all they knew (more than me!) and Matt had read us a short history of Thanksgiving from an online article.  (Anyone ever told you "Happy Franksgiving!?")

Then this morning, we started our day by decorating turkey cupcakes.

I saw this game online the other day and whipped it up in about 10 minutes.  It's called Naked Turkey Hunt, but it's not so scandalous as it sounds....basically an Easter egg hunt to give the turkey back his feathers.  Kids loved it and we even read a few of those Thanksgiving books while we waited on the hider.

We took a walk before lunch and then while Julia took her nap, the boys and I made this "fruit gobbler" as an appetizer for our Thanksgiving dinner.

Later, we went to Matt's parents' and had enough food for an army for dinner.  We also heard more about the history of Thanksgiving from Pa.  Then the kids played, crafted, and we had a family game of Headbanz.  Lots of fun.

So at the day's end, we are full and tired, hopefully thankful, and I think we celebrated well.

Hmm..what to say

Well I like to keep this blog updated but I'm a little at a loss of what to update you on!  And I haven't taken a single picture since our Fort Mill trip.  So I guess what you'll get is a little of this and that from our last week and a half.

-Just like this time every year, I am looking to the month of December.  It is exciting.  I love this time of year.  But I am always mystified at how stressed everyone gets and I'm super guarded that we not be that way.  So I plan and talk myself down from some of those plans.  I try to have all the Christmas shopping done (this year I have only one gift left, plus a few snacks for the stockings).  We are going super simple this year with the kids-- books, games, sticker books, and a few stocking stuffers.

Just like every year, I want their excitement about the season to be about Jesus, about the blessings we already have in him and each other, about sharing our excitement with others...not about what toy we get that we will absolutely adore for 3 days and then forget about.  But I am idealistic about this and they are little and I'm not sure I have even been truly excited about Jesus' birth above all other aspects of Christmas until the last few years.

So I'm trying to be realistic, but still teach them as much as I can that good ol' Veggietales truth-- a thankful heart is a happy heart!  They are still enjoying our thankfulness leaves at the dinner table and I'm thinking of making Christmas ones too.  We so need to cultivate the habit of thankfulness around here, myself included!!

-Something new in the works this Christmas season are plans to serve others more.  If you type in "random acts of kindness Christmas" in google, you will get about a bazillion idea of how you can bless other people, some seemingly "deserving" folks and some just because love is for everyone.

At church, our Christmas party this year is focused on giving, because Christ has been given to us and because he says when we help others, we are helping him.  So this year, we're going to get out of our comfort zone a bit and try to spread little blessings to people Jesus really loves.  I'm excited to add these activities to our advent calendar this year.  I'm a little nervous at what the kids will say when in the past, pretty much all our activities were fun things for our family to do to celebrate, but I hope if they are disappointed, their attitudes will not ruin the joy of giving and also that it will end up being fun for them anyway.

At least they are honest and I don't delude myself that they are feeling something I want them to feel when they really aren't.  Examples:  Joshua was getting happy about taking little gifts to children in the hospital, then suggested that he get "two toys" as well in this whole process.  Hmmm.  And then Gray told me yesterday that Thanksgiving would be a lot more fun if you got presents.  Well, buddy, the whole point of Thanksgiving is to be thankful for what you have, not think about what you want to get!  So anyway, somehow, some day I pray that what I teach them is applied to their hearts and soaks in.

-I'm super excited that we are getting folks at church (plus my parents and Matt's parents, who wanted to help...thanks y'all!) to sponsor our Kids' Night Out families in order to help them have things like a tree or a present for their kids or food this Christmas.

We are in the process of signing up folks from church and I'm excited for our church friends to not only help the KNO families, but to get to interact with them as they deliver their gifts or take the moms shopping.   These are kids and parents that we are growing to love and I want everyone else to see what neat people they are too!

-The kids have been pretty much the same these days.  Gray is super excited about his class pizza party today--their reward for the Read-a-thon from last month.  I was in his class yesterday and he seems to have a good time with the kids and enjoy his days.  The work he brings home is....interesting.  Most of it looks like he has no idea what he's doing!  But I am super thankful that the reading is really clicking and he's starting to be able to read just about anything now and on his own initiative too!

Some days I get to watch him on the playground from the car line and he and some other boys pretty much tackle each other and wrestle the whole time.  Makes me nervous, but he's having fun.  I just pray every day that he's not as crazy and silly and spacey and cranky for his teacher as he has been for me!!  Love that funny guy.

-I was in Joshua's class yesterday too and I continue to be so thankful for his teacher this year, who is great.  There's a boy in his class from Israel who spoke no English at the beginning of the school year.  Can you guess?  This is Joshua's buddy.  So funny that the international folks continue to be his favs.  He is still stuck on his friend Eddie and last night asked if he could marry him.  I remember wanting to marry my best friend in 1st grade too:)

We talked about how he's not old enough to understand the kind of love that's not just for a friend, but for a wife and I asked him if he looks at Eddie and thinks, "Oh he's so pretty, I just want to hold his hand and take him on a date."  He then told me maybe he would marry Catherine, who is a precious hispanic girl in his class:)

Which then made him think of his old girl Litzy, from kindergarten.  The one who once held the title of his best friend, though she could not speak English.  She isn't there this year and we have no idea what happened to her.  Joshua misses her and was reminiscing about chasing her on the playground:)  I told him if she was the one God planned for him to marry, he would find her again one day.  He was very happy about that.  Love his sweet heart.

-Julia is just in princess heaven these days.  I don't think there's any way the girly will ever come out of her.  She told me the other day:  "Mom, I need my toenails painted!"  What a miss priss.  She is precious though.  Tells me all day how much she loves me.  Loves to help me around the house.  Gets so giddy about playing in my jewelry.  Love her.

She made me laugh so much in Dollar General the other day.  We were looking at stockings and she saw a princess one.  She said, "Mommy, look at the princess socks!  I want that for my birthday!  But I will need a different size!"  She obviously has no memory of what stockings are:)

-And then there's Matt.  Busy guy!  Big plans.  Sometime in the last month we made a plan for keeping the gym as a side business, but moving on to a career that fits him, our location, and our financial needs.  He's going to use his GI bill to go back to school over the next couple of years and pursue a career in nursing (hopefully something trauma related).

He has always been interested in the human body and has lots of experience with stressful situations and helping people with their health, so this seems like a great fit.  He has studied hard for the dreaded GRE, which he took last night and thankfully seems to have done really well (they get official scores in a few weeks).

So he'll have a break this month and then start with several classes next month, while continuing to run the gym as usual.  Whew!  Thankful to have this smart, dependable, hardworking man as the head of our family.  Love him.  Thankful God is showing us the way as we change directions.

So, what to say.  Guess I said a lot!  Now you are updated on us and can go about your day:)  Have a good one!

Fort Mill Getaway

The kids and I missed our scheduled October trip to Fort Mill while I was sick, so we headed down this past weekend.  We got to see the Moores and get in plenty of family time.  The kids were a bit cranky...I'm recalling a trip to the park in which Gray cried about 5 times and Julia spent almost the entire visit sitting in wood chips in tears.  Fun times.

And there was a bit of sibling and cousin rivalry.  Sawyer looovvvved the boys and wanted to do everything they did ("Joshua, wheh are you?  Wait foh me!")  He also had a bit of fun with his over sensitive girl cousin ("You ah Baby Maddox!"  "No I'm not!!!" and so on)  They did this argument routine where he called her a different name and she burst into dramatic tears and he very cutely said, "I sorry foh calling you names Julia!" and gave her a hug while she stared him down and did not accept his apology:)

Anyway, nothing too eventful on this trip, but always nice to be with family and have a change of pace.  Thanks for putting up with us, everyone down in FM!

Visiting the Leightons, hanging out in the back yard

My kids all take a turn holding Baby Maddox

Just 3 kids enjoying the swings

Visit from Grandmama

GrandGene always up for photo shoot with a grandkid

Oh this makes me laugh.  Good aunt Jeannie promised to carve a princess into a pumpkin.  We got a huge kick out of Ariel's droopy left eye, but she really did turn out well overall.

Sawyer's fashion statement:  Batman shirt (must be tucked into underwear) and Mimi's heels.

Tea parties were a hit this trip with the little princess and the boys too.  Could it have been the snacks?

And just for kicks, one more shot of Sawyer:)

Happy Halloween!

We are finishing up our Halloween night.  The boys are picking out a piece of candy to eat from their haul.  Today I enjoyed going to Joshua's class for his Halloween party.  I am the room mom so I had to organize the party, but his teacher is not into having crazy parties with lots of activities and sugar, so it was simple, but fun.  I like getting to know the kids and his class is pretty small and well-behaved, so it's pleasant to be there.

Later at home, we got everyone dressed in their costumes and took pictures while waiting on Matt to come home.  Then we walked down the street to a Halloween party.  Friends from the gym host neighborhood families for dinner before trick-or-treating every year and they asked us to come.  Their house was really decorated and the kids enjoyed seeing all the fun pumpkins.  We ate and then trick-or-treated at about 3 houses, but Julia was already spacing out so she and I headed home and I put her to bed.  We got one family of trick-or-treaters while they were gone and then soon after, Matt and the boys returned.  It was cold and the boys were just not "motivated", as Matt put it.

And then the candy they picked to eat was from our own bowl...so maybe we should have just stayed home!  Anyway, it's fun to do something different and hopefully all the sweets and staying up late won't make for too grumpy a day tomorrow...I'm speaking for myself too!

Here are pictures I took...sorry so many.  I just loved a lot of them!

Leaves!

After church Sunday, Matt decided to blow off/rake up some leaves and the kids had a blast jumping in them and having leaf fights.  Gray missed out jumping in a particularly big pile and came in for lunch in tears.  So Matt kindly raked him up another pile later and he was a happy boy!  

Matt called me outside to see him buried in the leaves, which he thought so fun.

He emerges (still in his Sunday suit...and crocs, no socks...sadly he had removed his tie, which he clipped on to his tan, holed, thermal shirt.  Stylin as always!)

 Handsome.  While we're on the subject of this guy, I had a conference with his teacher yesterday.  I just knew she was going to gently let me know that Gray was giving her a fit in class with his antics.  But she didn't!  She said he really rarely gets spoken to and has only had to "take a break" once or twice, which Gray has told me about.  She said he and his friends do tackle each other outside, but they are boys and she lets them be rough.  She said he's very cute, sweet, funny.  He is very involved with and interested in his classmates.  He's above where he needs to be academically.  He is doing great at carpet time now, especially since being moved between 2 girls:)  The only surprise was that the speech pathologist wants to work with him on his "s" sound.  Something about the way he says them is not usually self-correcting.  Anyway, I was pleasantly surprised, especially since he's even been in a little bit of hot water at church lately.  Hopefully he'll settle down all around and learn to really respect and care about his teachers at school and church.

And speaking of leaves, I am going to try a little activity in November with the kids.  While it's nice at Thanksgiving to think about what we're thankful for, it's just one day.  I was really impacted by the 1000 Gifts book (about the life-changing power of being thankful)  and have been meaning to try to incorporate more thankfulness in our family, so I tried to think of how we could do that the whole month of November.  Gray helped me make these leaves and I used some ideas from the blog of the girl that wrote 1000 Gifts to write on them different things we can share that we're thankful for.  They say things like "a gift that's small" or "a gift that's ordinary".

So the idea is that we'll put the leaves in a bowl and draw out one at dinner time, then go around and share something we're thankful for in that category.  Hopefully it will get us in the "attitude of gratitude" and help us see all the ways God shows his love for us every day in the things we enjoy.

The trick for me will be enjoying the activity and not making it some "program" where I feel like a failure if we forget to do it sometimes or if one night no one has anything to say.  Have to remember that I can plan to provide teaching and encouragement all I want, but I'm going to mess up sometimes and also it's only God that can really bring good from it anyway.  So hopefully it's simple and interesting and fruitful!

Recovery

I am finally starting to feel normal again.  I'm not sure I've ever been so sick before!  This week I have slowly tried to add in activities other than laying on the couch and so far, so good.

On Mama's last day here, she drove me and Julia to Gray's class for his "project celebration".  Every quarter, the students have a different project they focus on and then they invite the parents to come see their work at the end.  This time was "All about me", so we saw lots of family photos, self portraits, etc. and Gray was very happy to have us (and Nanny & Pa) to show around his class.

See Gray's family tree?  It's at the top left of the photo.  Not sure what's up with the smile:)

Later in the week, Julia and I made a quick trip to the grocery store...the first time for me in almost 2 weeks!  And I went to Gray's class for lunch duty.

Yesterday, we carved pumpkins, which made it really feel like Fall.  I haven't quite felt in season after spending most of the month on the couch.

Gray points out the pumpkin face he likes from our festive towel.

 The boys take turns digging out the seeds with spoons.

 Julia enjoyed making "breakfast" for us by stirring seeds.

 Matt was the only one willing to get dirty.

 Joshua designed the big pumpkin face (see the drawing on the table) and Matt executed it as best he could.

 Gray went on his very first field trip to a pumpkin patch on Wednesday.  I was sad to miss, but he had fun anyway.  I carved his pumpkin from the trip.

 Gray took this picture of his pumpkin.

 Here's the finished big pumpkin.  He looks so angry that he's sweating...really Matt had just rinsed him off in the sink.

 Julia decorated her little pumpkin with a black marker.