Days of Thanksgiving Day #9

I am grateful

For the Beauty of the Earth

(especially Georgia)

Love, love, love this season here! And yes these pictures are all pictures I took in my own neighborhood (well around our town at least). Imagine what a real photographer could show you. But I get to see the real thing in all it's glory everyday. I don't mind running errands right now. I do have a hard time focusing on the road though with so many bright and beautiful colors catching my eye. I'm begging the trees to preserve some of these beautiful leaves to show my brother when he comes for Thanksgiving. But if not, maybe I can trick his kids into raking up some leaves for me :o)

The colors and variety are just amazing!

I'm also grateful for the beauty of the other seasons. These flowers were on a tree in my yard this summer.

In the spring, everything is so beautiful after it rains. The grass is so green and everything just looks so fresh and bright. I use to love turning onto our street after the rain (in our old neighborhood) and seeing this. Whenever I miss my family or anything Vegas related I look at pics like this to convince myself that I love this beautiful area!

Jamie is grateful for "a wife who is easy on the eyes"

Emma is grateful for church

Weston is grateful for balls

Andrew is grateful for Jesus

(Emma was upset to hear the baby one-up her. She had been so pleased with her excellent answer and was kicking herself for not coming up with this one first. It's all about coming up with the most impressive answer- for Emma anyway. As you can see that is not the case for the rest of us)

Thankfulness- Day 7

Today I'm thankful for:

A GREAT dad for my kids

Every day Emma asks me, "Is tomorrow the day that Daddy stays home." She LOVES time with her dad. Mom takes care of her, but Dad, he's fun. I realized this week marks Jamie's one year in Georgia. He moved out here a year ago this week. The kids and I stayed back in Vegas until February. Boy did we miss Daddy! And we certainly learned the importance of having a father in the home. And as my cousin so wisely points out, good dads aren't just important for kids but for moms!

Today we decided to start tackling the leaves. We're on about an acre and have many large trees. They're beautiful and a great source of shade but it's a whole lot of raking. So the kids came out to help. Later Emma requested Daddy do "brake tricks," so Jamie took the kids out and started inventing all these games with the rake. He spun it around , made a teeter-totter (as shown above), chased the kids around the yard with it, tossed acorns with it, and on and on. They love Daddy time!

He made a huge pile of leaves for the kids to play in. Do you think they liked it?

Then Jamie started tossing the kids into the leaf pile and everyone (even the neighbor kids) had several turns. I hope his arms still work tomorrow. They were having such a good time they decided Mommy needed to have a turn. Jamie says this is a must post, so here it is.

Count Your Blessings

When I was taking my teaching classes a teacher advised us to "steal everything;" meaning to photocopy every worksheet, write down every good idea, and otherwise duplicate everything you see. A great way to teach and crosses over beautifully to motherhood and homemaking. And so I go about collecting ideas from those wiser than I, or at the very least using their ideas as a springboard to my own creations. But every now and then I receive the inspiration that comes with the call of motherhood to create an idea that is unique to me and my family needs. So, really I guess I never come up with an idea of my very own, but sometimes the ideas are original. Today I had one of those exciting thoughts. I've been thinking passively about traditions and what we could do in our home, especially now that we are away from family and can't just be guests for the holidays. I've also been feeling overwhelmed with gratitude as I've reflected on the blessings I've been so freely given and how very fortunate I am! And thirdly, we've been attempting to help our kids out of their prayer rut, lengthening their prayers and expanding their prayer language. We keep telling Emma to try to say something different each day. So, today as I realized we are now into November I thought: "wouldn't it be great to think of a new blessing each day of November until Thanksgiving?" Sort of a Days of Thanksgiving, similar to the 12 days of Christmas. I thought each member of my family can write a different blessing on a paper every night at dinner and we'll make a chain we'll keep on our table for Thanksgiving dinner. Or maybe I'll get a leaf garland and write the blessings on the leaves, but I kind of like the chain idea for my lil people. Feel free to join the ThankfulFest! Any ideas on what we should call this?
So today we're grateful for:
Jamie- snuggly kids to nap with

Emma- Mac n' cheese

Weston- Weston didn't stop stuffing his face long enough to answer so we decided he was thankful for FOOD

Gina- Our neighborhood with our good neighbors and beautiful fall colors.

When we were telling people we were moving to Georgia everyone told me how beautiful it was! I came to visit Jamie in December when everything was dead. The trees were bare, the grass was yellow and crispy. Oh yeah, real breathtaking! Now's the time of year when the weather's perfect and the trees are beautiful and all the Georgians say "we told you so!"