Happy Thanksgiving!

This week of Thanksgiving started off with Camden's First Grade Feast on Monday. His meal didn't look like a "feast" to me, but he did enjoy his turkey, pretzels, and bread.



The kids had decorated the tables with drawings, and judging by Camden's place, I think he was listening when they talked about the pilgrims. He drew this picture of the Mayflower full of pilgrims going "ka crash" into Plymouth rock, with Squanto waiting on the shore for them:

He also wrote what he is thankful for, "my dog and God and Jesus" - me too!!



We had a nice day today celebrating Thanksgiving. We have so much to be thankful for!

We spent the afternoon at Nana and Papa's house. After eating way too much of a wonderful meal, Robert and I poured over all the black Friday ads, while Nana and Kenna rested and Papa took the boys outside to play in the leaves. Robert made it outside too, to take some pictures.

Camden working hard before getting to the fun stuff:

The boys had a great time wrestling with Papa in the leaf pile. I'm so grateful that my dad is still healthy and fit enough to play with them like this. (Thanks, Dad, for taking such good care of yourself!)

After finishing the photo shoot, Robert got to enjoy a little time relaxing and reading:

The girls found a some time to work on a craft project:

What a blessing our family is to us!

Catching Up

I realized that it's been two weeks since I last posted, so this is going to be a catch-up post with a hodge-podge of pictures.


Last weekend we went biking at Ray Roberts Lake State Park. They have great paved trails that are perfect for our level of skill. And the weather was gorgeous.

After the bike ride, the boys played at the beach area of the lake. Cullen had fun jumping the "waves".

I can't wait to take the kids to an ocean beach someday so they can see what real waves look like!

 

 

Now I feel I must say a little about Christmas. I'm a firm believer in waiting to celebrate the holiday until after Thanksgiving. While I've accepted the fact that stores will start putting out Christmas merchandise before Halloween is even here and that Christmas music will begin playing in those same stores promptly on November first, I have still held to the "no Christmas stuff until after Thankgiving" policy in my own home. Apparently I haven't instilled this rule into my children. The kids spent the night with Nana and Papa on Friday night and got to take a trip to the dollar store. Camden came to breakfast this morning with his dollar store purchases:

Et tu, son?

On another note, we've continued to work with an apartment church in our area, through a ministry of our "traditional" church. Today we took our apartment church kids to sing in a nursing home. They did great and I was so proud of them!

For the past couple of Sundays we had the kids make Thanksgiving cards and after singing today, they passed their cards out and talked to the residents. Too sweet!

In this season of Thanksgiving, I find that I have so much to be thankful for! I hope you do too!

Halloween!

This year the whole family dressed up for the Halloween celebration. We started the evening at a pizza party at a neighbor's house.

How does a vampire eat watermelon?

...she sinks her teeth into it!

Apparently aliens only like the frosting! (Kind of like a 7 year old I know.)

We trick-or-treated around the neighborhood and once the kids buckets were full, we came home to hand out candy.

Birthday Celebration

Saturday was a wonderful day, spent celebrating my birthday (and also Halloween). My family took great care of me and made me feel very special.

The day started with orange-honey French toast, lovingly prepared by my fabulous husband:



After breakfast I got to take a relaxing bubble bath and then Robert massaged my feet while Kenna and Camden massaged my hands and brushed my hair. I was so relaxed, I almost fell asleep!

We met my parents and Jennifer and Kevin for lunch at one of my favorite restaurants:

After lunch, we came back to our house for presents and cupcakes.

Jennifer made these delicious margarita cupcakes for me:

With all that yummy food, it's a good thing calories don't count on your birthday!!

The rest of the day was spent celebrating Halloween; I'll share about that in a later post.

Thanks to everyone who made my birthday so great!!

Carving Chaos!

We had our annual Pumpkin Carving Party on Friday night. We had a great turnout which made things a little crazy and chaotic, but also a lot of fun!

The boys and I got to work on our pumpkins before everyone else started arriving - Camden wasn't thrilled about getting the guts out:

Pumpkin guts - yum!

Once the pumpkins were gutted, we took them outside to carve and decorate them:

We always use a variety of items to decorate with, such as pipe cleaners and candy. This year I found these eyeball candies that were a big hit:

The finished creations, 17 in all - that's a lot of pumpkins!