What I Am Thankful For....by Joshua

Joshua taught our Family Home Evening lesson last night on gratitude and shared something he had written at school. With his permission, I wanted to post it on my blog, because any time an 11 year old kid can show gratitude, it is absolutely newsworthy!

I am thankful for my dad and mom, so they can provide for me. Also I am thankful for my dad not being laid off in these hard times. I am thankful for my mom because she cleans the house and makes dinner. I am thankful for a house to sleep in and clothes to wear. I am thankfulr for my family as they encourage me to choose the right.

I am thankful for sports, so I can stay fit and have fun at the same time. I am thankful for school and my many teachers as they try to get me to succeed. I am thankful for the armed forces and police officers, so I can live in a free and safe environment. I am thankful for trees, so that I can breathe clean air. I am thankful for beaches, so that I can play and make sand castles and spend time with my family.

I am thankful for rocks, boulders and mountains, so I can climb them and collect them. I am thankful for the sun, so I can stay warm. I am thankful for mashed potatoes and gravy, so I can enjoy a delicious meal. I am thankful for leaves, so I can do service by raking other people's lawns. I am thankful for snow and how beautiful it looks with no footprints in it. I am thankful for who I am.

---by Joshua

Let me just add, we are oh so thankful for Joshua! He is a great young man! I can always count on him when I need something done. Just this last week he has volunteered to rake our leaves, cut the grass and peel 8 lbs. of potatoes for me! It is important to him to be honest and do the right thing. He is a responsible, motivated kid who will grow up to be an incredible missionary one day! :)

What Matters Most

Thanksgiving week! I am so excited! I will be hosting about 35 people (but that number is ever-changing due to sickness and work schedules), so we will see who I end up with! Cooking for that many people could be daunting in and of itself, but I love having a full house at Thanksgiving. And I think I might choose cooking over travelling all day and sleeping on the floor somewhere to celebrate at someone else's house.....but I'll let you know when its all said and done!

I have had chance this week to reflect on my life and some of the things I am thankful for. Not the kind of "taking stock" that happens when you are pondering gratitude and thanksgiving, but the kind that happens when you are faced with situations that challenge your financial security and threaten to change your life. So while I am thankful for everything, let me share with you my short list....the things that do indeed matter most.....the things that would make me happy if I were to lose everything else.

1. I have a Heavenly Father who loves me infinitely and cares about me enough to give me challenges that will help me grow.

2. I have a family and we are sealed together forever. Nothing can change that but our own choices. No matter what circumstance we live in, I will always have these sweet children and my husband.
3. I have a husband who I love and who loves me. He is my best friend, my strength and my support. He has loved me and looked beyond my weaknesses and I cannot express how grateful I am to share this life with him.
4. I have an extended family who can always be counted on to provide a listening ear, cry with me, pray for me, and build me up. I would be nothing without their added support....even if, for now, it has to be across the miles!
5. I have great friends who listen and care and give good advice and a hug when needed. They lend me their strength when I don't think my own is sufficient.

That's it. That's the short list of things that matter most. And it's not things....
It's people.

Samuel's Birthday

I'm not gonna lie; with two birthdays 6 days apart, it gets a little hectic around here. As a matter of fact, on Samuel's birthday he got downstairs before I had changed the writing on the mirror from Savannah to Samuel! He was still rubbing the sleep out of his eyes when he came in to the kitchen to tell me that I forgot to put his name up! So, dishrag in hand, I headed to the mirror and wiped off the Savannah and wrote in Samuel.....a little smeary, but it satisfied him!

Rather than blow out the candles this year, Samuel wanted to "pinch" them out! He licked his fingers and pinched a few flames.....must have gotten too hot because he finally resorted to blowing! As he was leaving for school, he asked me to make him a swimming cake.....so I resorted to my traditional methods of cake-decorating and went looking for some plastic swimmers at the toy store! No luck there, so Savannah and I went to a cake decorating supply store and all they had were molds of a swimmer. So we bought some blue chocolate (white chocolate dyed blue, that is) and melted it down for the mold. It was my very first attempt, but it turned out just fine! Made for an interesting cake if you ask me, but Samuel loved it, so whatever!

Samuel's favorite present by far was this.....

Kinda nice when your sister works for a grocery store!

We had a party with friends over the weekend where we had an all out potato gun war!

If you have never played with a potato gun, I highly recommend you try it! The gun shoots little pellets of potato, and here is some of the potato carnage left over after the war. We pulled out the firepit and the boys had a great time roasting hot dogs for lunch.

Two birthdays down, one left to go and then we can say goodbye to November!

YES! We have GRASS!!!

After 13 days of watering, we are finally starting to see lots of green! This week we get to move to every other day watering, so it should cramp my style a little less......did I mention that I was at the church watering for 5 hrs. the first day? CRAZY!!! So glad we were able to get more donations of water hoses and sprinklers to cut the watering time down to 1 1/2 hrs. each day.

Birthday Girl

After waiting all day for dad to get home from work and then mom to get home from a school district meeting, Savannah was SO ready to celebrate her birthday! After begging for three long years, Savannah was thrilled to finally receive an American Girl doll! It was not without drama though.....I ordered her 2 weeks in advance of the birthday and she was delivered by FedEx to our local post office last Friday as part of their parcel post program. The post office was then to deliver it to me. Six days later there was still no package! I was so upset! So the morning of Savannah's birthday I went to the post office and they searched high and low for the package. After about 20 minutes they were able to locate it on the mailman's truck, so they went and got it for me! Who knows how long he had been carrying it around with him.....I am just glad we were able to get her in the nick of time for Savannah's birthday! She was so cute when she opened the present and sat there for about five minutes just like this:

Elizabeth is now a new and very special part of our family! She has accompanied Savannah everywhere! (Although I did have to babysit her while Savannah was at school yesterday!)

When I went up to turn off the lights, I found Savannah had created her own special bedroom for Elizabeth....

The next day after school we celebrated Savannah's birthday with her friends. I needed about 10 more sets of hands to help me out with this one! Thank heavens for Caleb....Chris was gone driving Samuel and his friend to swim practice, and Shelby backed out on me last minute to go to a football game, so I was left with 7 hyper little girls to make homemade pizza's and craft with! I didn't have a free hand to take a picture till it was almost all over! Each girl got to make her own personal pan pizza then we made princess stick puppets. Caleb was such a big help with the crafting station and then the girls recruited him to be the monster chasing the princesses! He is definitely a good big brother!

It was so fun to see how cute and individual they all turned out! The girls absolutely LOVED them!

Happy Birthday Savannah!

Halloween Fun

With Halloween falling on a Sunday this year, we made a family decision not to trick or treat. Our ward was having a trunk or treat, so we counted that as our Halloween festivities! Joshua dressed up as a lacrosse player, but it had gotten so cold that he stole my jacket and covered up his costume.

Caleb was a terrorist/suicide bomber.....whatever gave him that idea???

And Savannah was a go-go girl....or Daphne from Scooby Doo....it just depended on when you asked her.

Samuel is swimming year round and had a meet the night of the trunk or treat. So he went and swam a 500 freestyle and then showed up in time to get candy. And I didn't feel bad at all about him eating it after all that swimming!

On Sunday we had the new missionaries over for a halloween dinner of waffles and ice cream. So, all in all, it was a pretty good holiday, even if it did happen to fall on a Sunday. The kids can't wait for next year now!

C-H-E-E-R!

Football season is over, so our girls moved on to competition. For Savannah's age group, they don't really compete, they just do an exhibition. She was so excited for a chance to perform in front of everyone, which I thought would be the 5-6 teams that we played during the season. Boy, was I wrong!
Apparently cheerleading is HUGE here! This exhibition was for the northern half of our county and there were over 300 girls there! This is for the K-2 age group.....CRAZY!!!

Our girls did very well and I put a fun video up on facebook, so check it out on my profile. It was too big for me to upload into blogger. Wow, Savannah looks a bit zombie-ish in the picture above! :)

Savannah is sad that it is over, but I am so ready to have a break!

GREEN!!!

I don't have pictures yet, but there are teeny tiny bits of green poking up in random places all over the area Caleb planted.....keep on praying, though, because there is definitely a lot more mud than grass! I might actually get a full night's sleep tonight! I wish I knew how to stop worrying so much....