A Month of Thanks

We are thankful for the Thanksgiving Holiday which gives us cause to really think about the things we are grateful for. Our families, our friends, our faith, and our blessings. Here are some moments we were thankful for this month:

Siblings to crawl into boxes with.

Getting to dress up as a Native American Indian (and it was always said exactly like that which made us smile, and made sense as there are many East Indian children in her preschool class) and go to a feast with "real Pilgrims."

Getting to wear "party paint"

Children whose predicaments provide us much entertainment and laughter, even if it isn't really funny to them.

School feasts and dressing up like a pilgrim

A creative little lady who put hours of work into preparing this feast for when our NZ friends arrived.

Having visitors to our native shores and sitting down with them for their first Thanksgiving.

Mashed Potatoes and Gravy.

(Mmmm I loves me some mashed potatoes and gravy--happiest person at the table.)

A visit from our awesome friends the Turners. Whose visit also reminded us that we are thankful for the opportunity and blessing that we have had to travel to many places and meet many great people and see many great things.

Dallin's Birthday Party

So what kind of crappy parents make their kid wait almost a month after his real birthday to have his party? Us. Although it really wasn't completely our fault. Throw in several strains of the flu, Halloween, a ruptured ear drum and several weeks later you finally can have the party. It was even scheduled for a week earlier, on a day with perfect weather for a Sports Birthday Party, but that ear unfortunately led to pushing it back another week. Which landed us a rainy day. Oh well, at least he had a party and said that he had a "super fun time" so that makes the wait worthwhile.

So on to the Sports Birthday Party....Dallin invited some friends from school and church. As they arrived they each decorated a shirt that was their team jersey for the games. Red Team vs. Blue Team.



Since it was raining we modified all the games to indoor levels. Golf into formula cans, soccer balls into storage bins, baseball bean bag throw, etc. You get the picture. Then we broke for "half time" which was a stadium food lunch. Hot dogs, nachos, popcorn, pretzels, lemonade, and because I just couldn't bring myself to not include some food with nutritional value, I threw on some carrots and dip.

After half time we continued on with the games. At the end we had an awards ceremony for everyone who completed all the games on their score card. Everyone got a medal. YAY!!!



And our MVP got the game ball signed by all his friends!!

Then everyone had football and baseball cupcakes which I wish we'd taken a picture of because I worked really hard on those....It's all about me you know. All in all everyone seemed to have a good time and Dallin had a great day so that's that.

And then we returned to being sick.... Strep throat anyone????