Decorating for Christmas

The kids have been very anxious to decorate for Christmas, but I’ve been making them wait until after Thanksgiving.  Friday morning we set out to get our Christmas trees (we have one real and one fake this year) and get our house decorated for Christmas.  We don’t do much decorating, but we still really enjoy the few things we do have up. 

The “kids” tree

Cutting down our real tree at my parents house

“Mom’s Tree” – note that even though it is “my” tree, there is still a heavy ornament concentration, which I left that way thanks to Karol’s advice from last year.

  

Some snapshots from when we were cutting down our tree

  

THANKFULNESS

I hope you all had a wonderful Thanksgiving.  We had a busy, but special Thanksgiving plus a few days on either side.  =)  One thing that I found myself circling back to time and again was simply that I have so much to be thankful for.  It’s easy to dwell on the things not going right in your life.  If you are up at night with a kid, or a child is having a particularly challenging few days, or you feel stressed because you are overcommitted or whatever is “not going right” in your life, it is so easy to dwell on those things.  It’s so easy to not look at all that is going right.  It’s so easy to think that we are entitled to having everything go absolutely perfectly all the time.  It struck me that thankfulness is the opposite of feeling entitled.  So, my challenge to myself is to be more thankful every day of the year and to spend less time feeling like I’m entitled to so much more.  Because, truth be told, I already have WAY more than I deserve, it would do me good to remember that more often when I am wishing that my kids wouldn’t embarrass me in public or keep me up at night.  =)

I had this idea for a picture in my mind, but it didn’t turn out quite like I envisioned.  Here are a couple of the reject pictures anyway. 

 

Wednesday night we celebrated Thanksgiving with my family.  It has become our tradition to eat “fondue” that night and we all look forward to it.  Here are a few of the things we put in the oil – lil’ hot dogs, steak pieces, sausage balls, chicken pieces, and breaded cheese cubes. 

Kate has been writing us letters.  It takes a little assistance to read them as she doesn’t quite get that her words need to go in a certain order.  =) 

 

We spent Thanksgiving Day with Mike’s family.  Here is a picture of our family with his sweet Gramm Grandparents.

Hugs

 

A few pics

 

I really didn’t take many pictures this week, I should have as we had a lot going on and now I hate that I didn’t.  But, nothing I can do about it now, except try to take more this week.  Here are a couple of Kate and Lincoln helping Brett make a pizza.

 

We had dinner at Dad and Mom’s with Floyd, Wilma, and Renna – again, I didn’t take enough pictures, but I have this one of Kate and Floyd.

I was trying to catch Creighton looking at books, but he caught me.

Pizza and Ice Cream

One evening we met up with Duane and Alissa and their sweet girls for some pizza, ice cream, and to shop for our Operation Christmas Child Shoe Boxes.  It was really fun, even with 6 kids. 

  

All About Lincoln

Our sweet Lincoln, he gets lost in the shadows sometimes, not intentionally, but simply because he is so CALM and LAID BACK that most of the time his WILD and ENERGETIC siblings get more attention.  I have really enjoyed the opportunity to spend some one on one time with Lincoln while Kate is in school and Creighton is napping.  He is a soft-hearted boy that is eager to please.  He loves to laugh and he loves to make other people laugh.  He also loves all things sports.  He is constantly asking me when he will be old enough to play soccer or baseball or football.  He loves it all.  Whenever he gets to pick the activity it almost always involves some sort of ball.  He’s just a fun kid.  Here are some pictures of him from this week!

Lincoln and his scarecrow project for preschool.  It’s not super creative, but I’m not creative and  I am actually one of those parents who believes in letting the child do the project.  =)  I thought he did a great job on it for only being 3 years old.

 

Silly faces

 

Listening to a story on the radio

Lincoln’s preschool class went on a field trip to a pumpkin farm.  The pumpkins were all gone, but they still enjoyed a COLD hayrack ride and petting the animals.

  

HIS Ranch

Kate has started to be able to read some very basic books.  This night she had quite the audience.

The Primary School celebrated the 50th day of school with a 50’s celebrations.  My incredibly talented friend, Mindy, made this skirt for Kate!

 

Saturday we made a quick trip to the Quincy, IL/Taylor, MO area.  We attended a fundraiser for the ranch that our good friends, Shannon and Susan run.  The kids had a great time riding the horses and playing.  For more info, you can check out their website at www.hisranch.org.

    

After the fundraiser we spent the afternoon and a quick supper with my college roommate, Amber, and her husband, Tim, as well as their children.  Thanks Tim and Am for the wonderful afternoon and delicious supper!!

Cade, Lincoln, Tess, and Kate eating a snack and two lovely butterflies

  

Waiting for the dinner. =)

We had a fireman, Sleeping Beauty, and a lion here for Halloween.  We attended the fall festival at church and we shouldn’t have to buy candy for a year or so. =)