Thanksgiving

I love Thanksgiving. Cooking the copious amount of food is a joy that I look forward to each year. The boys enjoy spending their morning playing Turkey Ball equally as much. 

Once our feast was over, we drove to the theater to watch the Peanut Movie. It was a nice and relaxing family day.

Called to Serve

Our mail gets delivered late in the afternoon; usually between two and five o'clock. Normally, this isn't an issue. However, when you're waiting for something really important, like a mission call, than it's torture.

My motherly instincts were in full mode today, for I knew that James' call would be in the mail this afternoon. I even made his favorite cake, knowing that we would be celebrating. 

I was right. It came.

James has been called to serve as a missionary of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in the Iowa Des Moines Mission. He will enter the MTC on January 13, 2016.

We are all so excited for James. Spending two years of your life serving and thinking of others will make him a better person. This experience, if done correctly, will smooth out our gem of a child even more. He is going to make a wonderful missionary.

What a lucky day this Friday the 13th ended up being...

Two Year Old

I am grateful for two-year old smiles.

It's nice having Loni's birthday on a holiday because the boys were all home from school.

We spent the morning playing at Vasona Park.

Loni LOVES to swing.

This was the best picture I could get of them. Loni and Dave-o did not like the idea of posing.

Justin and Linnea came over for dinner and cake.

Cake time.

And the day was over, 

just

like

that.

I love you Lonetta Claira.

Yarn Obsession

I am grateful for yarn. I have somewhat of an obsession with it. A shoe store offers little temptation, however, put me in front of aisles of yarn and I am mesmerized. The colors and patterns draw me in. Last Christmas season, Macy's decorated their store with yarn Christmas trees. Genius! Perhaps I'll try something like that this year.

Anyways, I've been busy crocheting character hats for the youth to sell at their auction coming up in a week. I've completed a fox, a raccoon, and a dog. Then Kirsten asked me to make her a slouch hat (something I haven't tried yet). It was a breeze to whip up. So easy that I made another one.

Black Out

Today, I am grateful for power outages. We've had a couple of them in the last month (one of them this afternoon) and in both instances it brought us closer together as a family or as a neighborhood. The first black out was at nine in the evening a couple of weeks ago. During the outage, the older kids, David, and I sat around our candle lit living room making up scary scenarios of our situation. The next morning, Dave-o was disappointed that he was asleep during the whole power outage, so we reenacted the previous evening that night for him. 

This afternoon, the power went out again. With nothing to do inside, we all wandered around the front yard. It seems everyone else had the same idea. Isn't it interesting that when there is a phenomenon like a black out or an earthquake, people tend to go outside to seek comfort or closeness with others? I had a great time catching up with my neighbors. We were all a bit sad when the power came back on.

Scavengers

I am thankful for the squirrels who have cleaned up our pumpkin carving mess in the back yard. The patio used to be cluttered with seeds. They are even scavenging the remnants from the garbage bag. I had no idea they loved pumpkin seeds so much. 

Raincoat

While I am very grateful for the heavy rainfall we were blessed with today, Dave-o was the most grateful. He was thrilled to be able to wear his Batman raincoat and boots.

A Primary Calling

It's fun being in Primary where I get to be with my 6 year old and my 18 year old. James loves his calling as a CTR 5 Primary teacher and assistant Bear leader for cub scouts. And the kids love him back.

I am thankful to belong to a church where the members serve the Lord and each other without pay.

One week has gone by since James turned in his mission papers. We are all anxiously waiting. Hopefully it will come before Loni's second birthday.

Guesses on where he'll go?

Most of the people in our home guess Canada.

There's been a couple of Germany guesses.

One for Fuji.

Another for Japan.

And James is guessing he'll be sent to the moon.

So there you have it.