November Memories

I love these fall months. These are months full of excitement looking forward to the holidays, times of special activities, parties, and planning out gifts.

 Taylor had her fall class party! I helped host the party and did the craft. We precut all the little pieces and put together turkey or owl handprint paintings, they were really cute! The party was crazy and went by fast, I feel so blessed to get to be part of it all!

There was a Veteran's Day Ceremony where I got to help out at, the kids honored our beloved family veterans by singing them songs and treating them to cookies and special treats. I love this event! There was the PTO movie night featuring FINDING DORY too!

               

The 2016 Beginning of Christmas!

On Thanksgiving night, after all the turkey-coma has worn off, we get out the ornaments and decorate the kids Christmas tree in the family room. We give the kids a special ornament for the year to begin the decorating. We try to make the ornament special, as a representation of their year. Taylor is so into squishy mushy stress ball type things, that I chose a cute squishy panda for her ornament this year. It was shaped similar to a white snow ball and had the animal theme...perfectly matching this gal we have! Billy had the task of picking Blake's ornament. He went with a car that hej could customize into an ornament (because we are soooo good at that..lol!), however choosing exactly which car to choose proved to be quite the feat. Blake has been racing on Forza, really getting interested in learning all these cool sports cars. He is constantly seeing a car out in public and telling us about them, it's foreign to me, but Billy spots them too, so it was all up to him this year! He secretly pumped Blake for info about which car he actually liked best. Blake said one thing one day, Billy ordered a car to customize, then Blake changed his mind and Billy had to change the order...this threw things off..lol! He ended up with a 2015 red Dodge Charger!

   
                           
On Thanksgiving night we always read the Elf on the Shelf book, inviting Buddy back for the season! The next morning, he was back, and with his return, came wondrous exciting times ahead! Taylor woke up EVERY SINGLE morning, to go seek him out. She would come back into the bedroom to tell us where she found him and what he was doing and to report his correspondence. They have a little tiny notebook that they write back and forth in. I can't even begin to describe how happy it makes my heart to witness this magic. These are the moments that make being a parent magic in itself. I'm so grateful to God for these times with the kids.

Thankful Thanksgiving

It's Thanksgiving again, such a wonderful holiday to take time to think about and be thankful for all the many blessings in our lives. I look at these children and am thankful for all...thankful for the laughs, thankful for the arguments, thankful for the goofiness, thankful just to be watching them grow up into wondrous individuals.  I'm thankful that Blake, while almost a teenager, still loves me and shows me all the time, he comes for hugs and tells me he loves me...that is all my heart can take some days. I'm so blessed with such a wonderful son! Taylor is growing up fast too...I see her little thoughts racing through her mind, words of wisdom come out of her little mouth that sound like she has lived longer on this Earth than only 8 quick years. She is inquisitive, rarely letting a mess-up go unnoticed. She has a memory like an elephant, which is wonderful, except when she is remembering that I promised her a piece of candy and it's after 8pm! I thankful to have my sister back, we talk almost daily and i never take her for granted. I'm thankful for Billy. Thankful for our newfound "togetherness", thankful for our petty little arguments, thankful they are only petty arguments. Thankful for the love we all share! Thankful for too much to mention on this blog...so along to our actual Thanksgiving day...

Only Aunt Sissy, Uncle Danny, and Aunt Susi came for dinner. The kids had been looking forward to them coming and to a family dinner together. I'm thankful that they still look forward to and enjoy this. Anyways, we had turkey, mashed potatoes, gravy, sweet potato casserole, green bean casserole, and fresh dinner rolls. The usual pumpkin pie, gooey butter cake, chocolate pie, and chocolate bundt cake...way more than we needed! It was yummy and great to get to visit with family (YES, including Sophie!). Aunt Sissy ended up playing upstairs with Tay...they played house, Aunt Sissy was a mean Mom, and Tay was a wild teenager...lol. Uncle Danny and Billy watched John Wayne shows and Blake got extra time on the pc. It was a nice Thanksgiving and last but not least at all...thankful to God that we are blessed with so much.

2016 Election

During much of this election process between Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump, I have done all that I could to avoid it. I tried not to turn on the news, I tried not to get into political debates, I have even had to tune Billy out at times because he wants to inform me...sometimes I just don't want to know. We have been praying about the candidates for quite some time and eventually came to the conclusion that we would support Trump. I started to pay closer attention to the election as the weeks grew nearer. It was a good thing and a bad thing, because as you gain knowledge, you also get sucked in to the negativity that comes along with it. It was a vicious cycle because I wanted to be able to make an informed decision, and more and more scandal was being aired in the media, it definitely took a toll. The more important I knew our decision had become, the more it hurt my heart to see all the hate around our nation, it literally started driving me to tears. This was the year that both of my children learned more than I wanted them to know...during a debate Roe vs. Wade came up and they asked what that was...I began to redirect and tell them they didn't need to know but I knew they could find out on their own so I told them what an abortion was. I hated it, I wanted to water it down, but I couldn't, how do you "water down" or make mild of a baby being killed?! So they know, they know not to discuss it with their friends, they learned from me...not the internet, not their friends. It was a sad night I will never forget. Anyways, Billy and I stayed up most of the night on election night, watching and praying as the nation continued to light up "red" state by state. No one could believe how an outsider could march in, have media and basically everyone against him, and still be winning, vote by vote. People from all over the world were kneeling in prayer for our nation. Again, I was brought to tears, humbled at how many care for our nation, when even us Americans take it for granted. It was after 2am when the results came in that Trump won! I was thankful to God, for giving our country a chance to come back, I was saddened for the other half of our country that would be feeling their loss. This was nothing short of a miracle. God Bless America!