Giving Thanks the Munchkin Way

Thanksgiving was such a wonderful holiday for us this year. Besides all of the fun with family, friends and food, we had/have so much to be thankful for!

Remember the blog promise I made to teach the kids about Thanksgiving? Well...I can't say that I accomplished it since Jack still refers to the Mayflower as the "May Boat", but we gave it a wholehearted effort. On Wednesday, we threw a Kid's Thanksgiving Feast. A lot of our friends were able to come, and we had the best time!

Here are the children at their peanut sized tables and chairs on our back patio. The weather was a little chilly, but they hung in there. Jen is blitzing it through the Thanksgiving story. Leslie brought a great Thanksgiving book that was on the kid's level. Religious freedoms isn't exactly an understood topic at three, ya know?

Leslie, Eliza, JP and Kim posed in their awesome hats. Several of the party attenders came decked out in their respective pilgrim and Indian clothes. They were so cute! It had been years since I made a girl pilgrim hat. Probably because of all the emotional damage I suffered after being forced to wear a full out pilgrim costume to my Aunt Pat's house for Thanksgiving dinner when I was a child. Pilgrim costumes are only safe in numbers, NOT flying solo, which is what I had to do while holding a 40 pound platter of turkey with cameras flashing all over the place. If I ever lose it, please know it's because of that.

Enough of that....Here are Neely and Shelby listening to the story. It was amazing to see the girls sitting quietly at the table while most of the boys wandered around, chewed on their juice boxes or stared into the sky.

Carson made an adorable Indian headdress and sported it well.

After the hat making and story time, the moms served the kids their feast! We had turkey/cheese roll ups, mac n' cheese, peas, carrots, sweet potato casserole, grapes, pretzels, rolls and cupcakes! I didn't get a picture of the food because I was either trying to convince Jack that it was good, or I was stuffing my own face. Thank you, Moms, for bringing all of the awesome goodies!!! Here's JP enjoying his bread.

Here's Owen, Amy and Lucy. Jack was excited to see Owen at his house. They go to school together and after the party, Jack kept saying "Owen from school was here." Jack and Owen both opted for baseball hats over the headdresses.

Camden enjoyed some mac n' cheese (which was awesome, Jen!) with the gang. As smart as he is, I'm sure he went home and retold the Thanksgiving story to his parents.

Here are some of the busy boys ignoring their food and playing instead.

Do these boxes look familiar? They're the forts that were in our dining room since June. Thankfully this gave me a reason to get them one step closer to the dump. They easily converted into a Mayflower and a teepee. Tomorrow...the dump!

Finn gave the cornucopia cut out a try. Sadly, his head was too small. Which is a first.

Camden was part of the horn-o-plenty, too!

The kids got to make their own cornucopia treats to take home. As always, I prepared too much food, so we've been eating our share of chocolate chips, peanuts, raisins and marshmallows. The woes of over preparing.

So that was our kid style Thanksgiving. It was so much fun for me to look around our home and see all of these amazing friends of ours, none of which I even knew five short years ago. We are so thankful for all of you.


One more thing we're thankful for: make up remover! Jack has witnessed me putting on my make up one time too many. This is mascara art. I'm not sure if I should be proud or ashamed that he knew where it was supposed to go.

Our Firstborn

This blog posting is dedicated to Jack. He's been having a rough go of it lately with obeying, so we're trying to focus a lot of our attention on him. It doesn't take much effort on our part to realize what a funny little guy we are blessed with. While the days are long and full of discipline measures, we're still so thrilled to be Jack's Mommy and Daddy.

Who says boys can't play dress up? Jack enjoys role playing, and his favorite costume is currently his knight costume. We had some friends over last week and he got excited about all of the praise they gave him after he performed song after song. When he got down from the "stage" (the kitchen table) he whispered to me, "I wanna show 'em my knight clothes." He had this devious grin like 'If they liked the singing, they're gonna LOVE this!'


Jack got a haircut last week, thankfully. His bangs were touching the tops of his glasses, and it was about to send me over the edge. We went for a shorter do this time and it turned out well. Jack was excited that he could put gel in his hair to spike it up a bit. He fixed it himself on this particular morning, so it turned out super spiky. He loves his new "funny hair".

We made this Thanksgiving Tree in an effort to hold to the promise to teach the kids about Thanksgiving this year. Thank you to Leslie who I pawned off the idea from. Jack had so much fun picking out the sticks and shoving them into the florist foam. When it came to writing the things he was thankful for, he answered (as any true Sunday Schooler would...) with God "Dod".

After God, came...

I, too, am thankful for PB&J! This also made the tree:


Hope everyone is doing well!

AHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!

Some call it a Sugar High, or a Trans-Fat Trance, others a Glucose Gaze. Whatever you call it, our family had a huge dose of it last night. We high tailed it to Gigi and Poppy Johnny's house for some treatin' fun. Without much planning, our small group kids consisted mostly of marine-themed costumes. Jack was a fisherman, Finn was a shark, Gracen was The Little Mermaid and Pavin was a fish. Camden went rogue on us and was an organic banana. It was the cutest costume ever, but as my photo fortune would have it, all of my pictures of Camden were taken in the dark and didn't turn out. But just imagine a super cute little guy dressed up like a banana. So cute! We had a blast with everyone! Thanks, Gigi and PJ for having us over!



Before the sugar coma set in, our boys stood still for just this moment so we could capture their costumes for Halloween 2008. This shark costume has survived many tumbles, melted candy smears, pointing fingers and laughs. It will go down in our books as one of our all time favorite kid purchases. Jack went for the real life style over fairy tale. "I be a fisherman!" is what rang through the streets of Spanish Wells.


Jack, Gracen and Finn do some pre-treatin' relaxation and stretching exercises. They wanted to beg for candy with their game faces on. I think all the preparation worked. Practice makes better!



Pavin reluctantly joined the aquatic themed crew in his fish costume. This pushed his usual laid back style to the limits, but, as always, Pavin persevered and stayed cool as a cucumber in his stroller, not making a peep!



The people who took Halloween to ridiculous measure last year decided not to be outdone again! Jack and Gracen clung tight to their insanely nice Halloween toys that these folks gave them (and the other hundreds of children who came by). Unfortunately, Jack's toy makes noise this year. Next year I expect nothing less than a silent toy that makes Jack eat his vegetables.


Hampton Lake hosted yet another fun family event last Saturday. A Pumpkin Fest! They brought in hundreds of pumpkins used for carving, painting, and even pumpkin rollin'! Jack and Finn had the best time running around the pumpkins in the field. Unfortunately, it rained all day on Friday which made for a very wet pumpkin patch. Within two minutes of hitting the fields running, Finn found the muddiest of all mud puddles. Here he is before the mud slinging began.



To top of his dirtiness, Finley added some paint for good measure. A little acrylic paint never hurt anybody right? I was so upset at first because of all the mud, but John calmed me down and told me just to let him play. I was thinking that our great photo ops were ruined. WRONG!!!!



Finley is turning out to be the weird kid. Without any prompting he stuck this cone on his head. Maybe he was ashamed of how dirty his parents let him get. Maybe he thought it would be awesome and make everyone laugh. Either way, he looked like a little road construction gnome toddling around the parking lot.



The Pumpkin Fest was a benefit for the local Fire Department, so Jack was in preschooler paradise when he spent the afternoon climbing all over the fire trucks. There were several occasions where I saw him randomly give strangers the thumbs up sign.



After the crowds dwindled and our patience was running thin, we let Finn ditch his dirty duds in the back of the car. Thankfully we had packed an extra shirt and a boat load of baby wipes.



So, Fall continues to surprise us with lots of fun activities! We're past Halloween and cruisin' onto Thanksgiving now. I was so sad today to push the cart through Walmart to the tune of "Silver Bells". Seriously? Already? Did we slip into such a deep sugar coma that we missed Thanksgiving? The discount Halloween section was larger than the wimpy rack of Thanksgiving goods, and the entire outdoor section was already filled with Christmas trees! It was so unnerving, but so reflective of how we treat thanksgiving, the holiday and the practice of it. We have so much to be thankful for! To all three of you who read this, I'm pledging this year to highlight Thanksgiving as much as we do other holidays in an effort to teach my boys (at least the older one) the importance of it. I know times are so hard for so many people right now. Illnesses, financial struggles, government instabilities, war...the list could continue. I don't know why these things happen. But for every 'bad' thing, I can think of at least 5 great things, too. And I don't know why those things happen either. I surely didn't earn them. So, the way I see it, I cannot repay God for the gifts He's given me. But I can thank Him. So, here's to Thanksgiving! Join me, will you?

Psalm 95:1-6

"O come, let us sing unto the LORD: let us make a joyful noise to the rock of our salvation.
Let us come before his presence with thanksgiving, and make a joyful noise unto him with psalms.
For the LORD is a great God, and a great King above all gods.
In his hand are the deep places of the earth: the strength of the hills is his also.
The sea is his, and he made it: and his hands formed the dry land.
O come, let us worship and bow down: let us kneel before the LORD our maker."