Thankful...

I know Thanksgiving has come and gone, but I didn't get a chance to do a post about what I am thankful for, so I am going to do it now.

I have literally a million things to be grateful for in my life right now, but writing them all down would be kind of pointless. Because really the main thing I am thankful for is the chance to make happy memories with my family and friends. At the end of this life, if I am living in a hospital bed and I can't remember my own name or anyone else that I ever knew, at least I'll leave behind happy memories for my loved ones. All I really want in life is for my family and friends to know how much I love them, how happy and blessed I am to have them all in my life. Sometimes it's easy to wonder what we're working so hard for, why we're striving to make more money, buy a bigger house, have nicer things. We live in a materialistic world and sometimes the true goal is easy to lose sight of. Meaningful memories make for a meaningful life.

If I haven't told you lately, I am thankful for you.

“Memories are the treasures that we keep locked deep within the storehouse of our souls, to keep our hearts warm when we are lonely.”

I am thankful that I have a warm heart, and family and friends to keep it that way.

Home again!

Well, we survived our trip:) We left last Friday, spent 14 hours in the car, and arrived in Ohio. We left for Michigan on Tuesday afternoon and stayed until yesterday, when we headed back. Overall, it was a good trip. Ava had some issues with teething and just being cranky and clingy, but Aiden was wonderful. We really couldn't have asked him to be better--he even did great in the car. At around the 12 hour mark on the trip up he said, "I just can't take this any more!" and Chuck and I had to laugh. I was done too! 14 hours is a loooong time to be in a car, especially strapped into a carseat. Ava just kept asking to go home, poor girl.

I didn't take nearly as many pictures as I should have. I didn't take any pictures of the kids with their Grandpa Chuck, Aunt Deb and Uncle Bill, Grandad, Uncle Matt or Uncle Dave, and I only have one picture of Aiden with his Granny and two pictures of the kids with Aunt Lizzie. I really should have taken more pics, it makes me sad to think that we won't see them all for at least a few months!

I wish I had more to tell, but really it was just a nice trip. Thank you to everyone for letting us stay with you! Thanks Deb for watching the kids while we went househunting. We were able to weed out a lot of bad houses from our list, and we're still searching for the perfect home while we're waiting for our house to sell. Thank you Liz and Dave for having us over to dinner in your amazing new house, I love it so much!

Enjoy the pictures!

Mixed up Cherry Blossoms

We are back! I am going to do a separate post about the trip, but I wanted to post these photos of some mixed up Cherry Blossom trees that we saw. We stopped at a rest stop in northern GA yesterday, and apparently the warm weather there has confused the Cherry Blossoms. They were just barely clinging to their leaves, but were nearly in full bloom. So beautiful and strange! I couldn't resist snapping away and sharing the pics.

Weekend pics

We had a fun weekend. Saturday we spent a few hours at The Rock Ranch, and the weather was perfect! Saturday night, we had 5 of Aiden's friends over to play while their parents went out on dates--it's an idea my friend came up with called Babysitters Club. It has really worked out wonderfully these past few months and Chuck and I have had two nights out that have been great. All the kids did awesome on Saturday! Sunday we did chores around the house and someone even came to check out the house (fingers crossed!). Here is a slideshow of pics from the weekend:

Time-out for litterbugs

I thought this was a cute story and I wanted to share it. The other day we were driving and Aiden saw a plastic bag on the side of the highway that someone had thrown out the window. He was upset and told me, "Mommy, someone littered! We need to go and find that person and put them in timeout. Don't they know that littering is bad for the environment? Anyone that litters needs to go in timeout, or else our whole world will be covered in trash!"
I almost cried when he said that--such a simple thing for a 3 yr old to say, but something with so much meaning at the heart. And the fact that he knows how to correctly use the word "environment" had me pretty amazed too! Lol.

Craft corner

Just a few pics of some drawings the kids have been up to this week. Ava LOVES to color with crayons and has been "drawing" things and telling me what they are. Her favorite things to draw are "ah-ahs" (monkeys) and babies:) Aiden has been practicing his tracing skills and is just now starting to "free draw" characters and creatures. He likes to draw monsters and ghosts the best. (if you click on the pictures I put text on them to explain what the kids drew).

This is a turkey hand craft we did--Aiden really wanted to cover the turkey in feathers!

Aiden in the hot tub

I meant to post this video last week, but am finally getting around to it. He really loved "swimming" in the hot tub!

Smarty pants

I had a rough day with the kids today (ok, mainly Ava, lol) but I wanted to share this nice comment from Aiden's 3K teacher. He had a rough start to the school year, so it is great to see that he is really coming around and doing well in school. When I picked him up today his teacher told me, "You know, I am sure you already know this, but Aiden is really smart! He is always the first to answer when we talk about letters or numbers, and he knows every kids' name in all the 3K classes. He even remembered that Ben is in Australia, and he's been there for 6 weeks! We can tell you work with him a lot at home, he's really smart!" Ben is his friend who is visiting his relatives and Aiden reminds me almost daily that Ben went to Australia, where kangaroos live, lol.

We've always thought that Aiden is pretty bright, but it is nice to hear it from his teacher too! :) We're proud of you, little man!

Ava counting

I took this video today at the pond, feeding the ducks. You can't hear her very well, but she counts the statue's fingers (4 of them, his thumb is hard to see, lol) and then I ask if she can count in Spanish and she says, "no, dos, tre, taco" which I think is pretty good pronunciation for a 22 month old! She can count to 8 in Spanish unprompted, and surprisingly she doesn't skip 4 and 7 like she does in English, lol. She is completely in love with St. Francis, as you can see from the pics following the video!

Halloween pictures

Liz let me know that you can't save pictures from Smilebox, so here are the hard copies of the Halloween pics, including a few that didn't make the Smilebox. Happy Monday!

Happy Halloween!

Wow, it is November 1st already! Congrats in advance to my sister, Liz, and her husband, Dave, who officially become homeowners tomorrow when they close on their 1st house together! I am so excited for you guys!

Scrapblog started charging to use their site, so I made a Smilebox of my favorite Halloween pics of the year. This is a tough age to get "good" usable pictures (they move too darn fast for me, lol), but I did manage a few cute ones. Our Halloween almost got rained out--we stayed home the entire day instead of doing all of the fun things we had planned:( But then at the last minute, the rain stopped at 6:30pm and we ended up going to Trunk or Treat at a nearby church (this is an alternative to Trick or Treating, where the kids get candy out of people's car trunks. Fun for them and easy to accomplish with young kids). Then we came home and Trick or Treated in our neighborhood. Ava was particularly funny to watch, she was yelling all down the street, "Door! Door! Knock knock! Trick treat! (which sounded a lot like "Titty!! Titty!!" lol), yum, candy! Candy, yummy!!! THANK YOU!" Chuck and I were both surprised at how fast she caught on to the whole idea. Aiden had a really nice time and told me it was his "best Halloween ever" which since it is only his second Halloween that he's actually dressed up for isn't saying much, but still, lol. It made this Mama feel pretty good:)

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