Gratitude 3

Today I was driving home from a church activity. I was able to drive Jeremy's car (that is me trying to count that as a blessing?!). One cool thing about it is the sun roof. The car was a little stuffy from sitting in the parking lot, so I opened the sunroof. As I was driving down the road I noticed a weird crinkling sound and amazingly enough it happened every time I passed a tree. It was the sound of the wind through the dried leaves. So today I am thankful for the leaves and the wind. What a fresh sound and feeling not to mention the color variation. Here in sunny California we have two seasons and colors, hot and brown and mildly cold and brown with a month of green. This is the rare time of year where we get some muted reds and oranges mixed in with the brown. Nature is fabulous. And I am thankful that Jeremy's car has a sunroof so I got to experience that blessing today!

Gratitude 2

Today I am thankful for coupons! I was able to go to the store and save over 50% on my purchases. I got some really great deals. Some I would have bought anyway and some I get to pack away. These deals are going to allow our kids to have a cool Christmas even with a tighter budget.

I know it is a superficial blessing but sometimes those are great to and not to be overlooked. A good friend not only introduced me to coupon clipping, she made me want to do it, as well as my local friends who are willing to coupon swap with me! So just sharing my gratitude about coupons I am also grateful for wonderful women who have blessed my life...and not just for coupons!

Gratitude

Psalm 100:1-5
1 Make a joyful noise unto the Lord, all ye lands.
2 Serve the Lord with gladness: come before his presence with
singing.
3 Know ye that the Lord he is God: it is he that hath made us, and not we
ourselves; we are his people, and the sheep of his pasture.
4 Enter into his gates with thanksgiving, and into his courts with praise:
be thankful unto him, and bless his name.
5 For the Lord is good; his mercy is everlasting; and his truth endureth to
all generations.

In our home this year we decided to do a gratitude jar. Each day we pick a paper and it says "I am thankful for...something" then it shares a way to show our gratitude. For example, "I am thankful for my legs. Go for a walk as a family and enjoy the outdoors." It has been fun so far, even though we started a day or two late.

I came across a blog and she had a great idea of posting something she is grateful for everyday. I am going to do the same.

I am grateful to a loving Father in heaven who has blessed my life in countless ways. The biggest thing that I am thankful for at this moment is being able to be a stay at home mom. Being a mom in general is tough, but having to be a mom and a full time employee must be difficult. To divide your time, attention and energy between those you love unconditionally and the job that you enjoy or need must be difficult. I am thankful that I do not need to add that challenge to my list. I get to focus on being a mom (supposed to be housekeeper, chef, chauffeur, entertainer, teacher...good example) I get to try everyday to be better, and more focused on my kids. It is not always a piece of cake, like today when I made Miranda cry because her hair wouldn't stay how she wanted it. I re-did it a new way, which she didn't like then was upset. At these moments I am grateful that I know her well enough to see her frustrations or give her a hug when it is needed over the things that don't really matter on the grand scale, but rock the world of a little 8 year old girl.

Pictures

We typically have taken "photo shoot" type pictures of the kids periodically, but it has been a while. For some reason they keep growing even when I don't have the camera in hand. Here are a few pictures of my clan.

Everyday after school Logan runs home and climbs this tree. (Mom please don't have a heart attack, ha-ha!)

Then of course after 15 tries I got this mediocre group shot. Not bad for no help.

Then I let the kids do a goofy one...

Followed by giving kisses. The only one that it wasn't gross to kiss was Jackson, and apparently he had no idea what was going on!

Speechless

It is birthday week, so that means the surprises never cease! We celebrated with family tonight, Jeremy cooked, since he had to work all day he actually stopped and got mexican food on the way home, and it was GREAT! As always I was spoiled and got everything on my list, mostly books and cake decorating stuff. I also got to go spend a little birthday money today. At dinner Jeremy and his mom were whispering about "has she seen it yet?" Jeremy said dessert was taken care of. I assumed that they had gotten a Dairy Queen ice cream cake, which I do love. I would never have imagined what was for dessert.

In case you are a little confused I am minorly obsessed with the Twilight series. There is the apple from the cover of Twilight, the white flower with red from New Moon, the red ribbon from Eclipse and the chess pieces from Breaking Dawn. Jeremy's co-worker made this cake for me. Can you believe she works at a credit union by day and is like super-hero cake lady by night? She does this for fun!

Truly all my gifts were my favorite but this takes the cake as making it one of the most memorable birthday moments. I feel so lucky to be surrounded by people who think I am worth it, from Jeremy making the celebration of me special, to phone calls, cards and $$$ to spend from those who can't celebrate here with me, to some one willing to watch 6 kids on top of her own so I can go on a date with Jer, being treated to ice cream and girl gab. The gifts and stuff is nice but I am extremely and abundantly grateful for all the fabulous people who surround me. Thank you, each and everyone of you who made this birthday special! And thank you Cindy for making this, I am truly speechless.

What a sweet day!

We started the day off in a typical lazy Saturday fashion. Jeremy, along with many others, went to help a lady in our ward (church family) first thing this morning. He brought Logan along, it was the first time that Logan was able to go and be able to be helpful more than a challenge. Both had a good time.

By the after noon we were ready to start earning our Halloween goodies. We headed off to the pumpkin patch to take those oh so loved pumpkin pictures. Our first destination was to see how the kids measure up this year.

We roamed around the pumpkin patch taking pictures in all the wood cut outs. Then we took a few pictures with my pumpkins surrounded by real pumpkins.

Our next stop was to Papa Murphy's were we got Jack O'Lantern Pizzas and the kids got free cookie dough because they were in costume. Our last stop was at Toys R Us where the kids got a small goody bag for showing up in costume. We finally headed home where Aunt Tamra, Uncle James and Hunter, as well as Grandma Bev and Uncle Chris, were meeting us for dinner and trick-or-treating later that night. Hunter looked adorable in his cute Luigi outfit.
Then we hit the pavement with our buckets in hand. Lauren enjoyed leading the pack. She quickly caught on that this night was about her favorite food CANDY! She was such a trooper and walked almost the whole way carrying her bucket. Towards the end she allowed us to carry it. When she reached complete exhaustion she would no longer listen to reason. She wouldn't let us carry her bucket anymore. I think she feared she would not longer see it again if she fell asleep without holding on to her bucket.


After the kids got home, we let them pick out 5 favorite candies that were especially theirs then the rest went into the community pot. This is what was left. Not to mention the four huge bags of candy we didn't hand out. We only had a hand full of trick or treaters once we got home, each got a huge handful of candy, but it wasn't enough to put a dent in what I purchased.
We finished the night by watching The Great Pumpkin Charlie Brown. It was a great day and I was exhausted. Of course not too exhausted to collect my candy tax! YUMM!

Apple Hill

We have a good friend who had the tradition of going to Apple Hill in the fall. It is a huge area where there are a bunch of smaller apple farms. Besides apples they grow Christmas trees, pumpkins, berries and many other things. We decided it was a great tradition and we now go as well. We like to visit High Hill Ranch. It has plenty of vendors as well as a pond. Our favorite thing there is Fudge Factory Farm. In case you were unaware our family has a major sweet tooth! We also visited Kids, Inc. While this one seems like it would be super kid friendly, it is actually named because the kids run it. It does have some perks like a few animals and a real corn maze, but it's not like a big amusement park or anything. All in all it was a great day. We had lots of fun and we left with our bellies full of Apple Cider milkshakes, which sound a little weird but are delicious, especially the Caramel Apple Cider Shake. Logan couldn't wait to dig into his caramel apple. For the first time we actually bought some apples so I can venture out and try making my own caramel apples. Last but not least we bought a Caramel Apple Crunch Pie (Are you sensing a theme? We love caramel and apples together!).

Here are a couple of my favorite photos of the day.

While this isn't a particularly good picture we also enjoyed a picnic lunch overlooking the fishing pond. I think people enjoyed staring at us since there were 9 children, and four adults.

Some of us were exhausetd by the end of the day, only to head home for Trunk or Treating!

A new blog...

I started a second blog...well I have multiple ones that I haven't done anything with...it is a blog to post the crafts I have done. I am by no means an expert or even mediocre, but I am enjoying it and haveing a great time!

So if you are interested check it out!

http://alwaysmakingstuff.blogspot.com/

Things to remember

As you are growing up you always remember certain things. A few of the things I will always remember is watching The Sound of Music. When that movie was on tv annually it seems like we would always watch it as a family that consisted of my mom and two sisters. Another is when my mom would wake us up in the morning she would always say "Girlie Whirlies, it's time to get up" in a sing-songy kind of way.

Today I had one of those moments I hope will survive the plethera of memories of childhood. Whenever I open the blinds I always sing, mighty poorly I might add, "There is Sunshine in my Soul Today." Although I always sing "let the sunshine in my soul today..." It always reminds me that I need to have the light of Christ shine through me. From a previous post you can tell sometimes I need more reminders through out the day. It is so fitting because of the sun shining into our home. It gets kind of dark and gloomy, but as soon as the blinds are opened the house seems brighter and full of energy, I love it.

Today I was pouring cereal and asked if Hannah could open the blinds for me and she asks with all the innocence four years of experience can allow "so we can let the sunshine in our souls today?" I loved it, I never thought the girls heard me when I would sing it, but I know they do. I hope as they grow up they will remember this and even sing it to themselves as a reminder.

P.S. Jeremy: I am sure you have know this for years, but I now realize tha I totally butcher this song with my rendition, luckily the message is the same! ; )