I am thankful for:

1. My salvation! I will always and forever be grateful for Jesus’ death on the cross, and His grace and mercy towards me.

2. This little guy (or girl) who we’re calling “Quatro”. I had my first ultrasound yesterday and this baby has  strong heartbeat and looks perfectly formed and healthy! And very active. I’m thankful that God has given me 11 weeks of a great pregnancy so far.

Although we were so shocked to find out that “we” were pregnant again it was so awesome to see that God surprised us with our last child. That our last child came about in this way. A wonderful surprise!

3. Jocelyn Abigail’s birth this year. She has been such a blessing and joy to us. We love her to death and I can’t imagine our family without her.

4. My two big girls, Katelyn and Madelyn. They turned 6 and 4 this year. They are a source of laughter, comedy, joy and challenge to me each day. Challenging as they keep me on my toes with their questions and clever minds.

5. Celebrating 10 years with my wonderful husband this past August. I couldn’t imagine anyone better to spend another 10 years with!

6. Our second year of homeschooling. After Jocelyn came along it definitely threw some obstacles in the well oiled homeschooling machine I had going before. But I still love it and want to continue as long as I can.

7. Our wonderful homeschooling co-op we go to each Friday.

8. My family ( parents, siblings, inlaws , grandparents, aunts, uncles and cousins). I’m so blessed to have such wonderful, godly, good people in my life! (These pictures are from our trip to see my family in this past September, in Texas)

(My wonderful inlaws who live close to us)

9. Electricity and modern amenities. After losing our power for 2 days ( many days less than a lot of people around me!) I am so thankful and spoiled with all the technology and gadgets I have.

10. My health and that of my family. It seems like more and more people around me are getting very sick, cancer or their children are being diagnosed with cancer or other terrible diseases. It’s heart breaking. I’m so thankful that the Lord has allowed us all to be healthy. I don’t know why He allows some great people and children to get sick and others to remain perfectly healthy. I’m just thankful every day for my health and that of my family and loved ones.

” Praise the Lord! Oh, Give thanks to the Lord for He is good! For His Mercy endures forever. Who can utter the might acts of the Lord? Who can declare all His praise? ” Psalm 106:1-2

I wish all of you a most blessed and happy Thanksgiving!

This post is linked to Top Ten Tuesday by Oh Amanda.

I had a wonderful Thanksgiving week. I had the week “off” so to speak. I barely got on the computer. My whole family came from Texas and we had so much fun together. I only get to see them once a year (if that!).

For my Top Ten I’d like to share some of my favorite fun/funny/silly pictures from my family’s visit.. I took several sweet, family shots that would  take several blog posts to show you. If you’re friends with me on Facebook you’ve already gotten to see them! But for the sake of keeping things simple, I’ll show you my favorite fun pictures from last week.

1. This picture was taken at the Boston Museum Of Science. We went on Tuesday of last week and had so much fun together. We ended up buying a yearly membership there. I figure I’ll use it for ” field trips” in  during homeschooling years.

2. I thought this was pretty clever self portrait taking.

3. This picture is of me, my sister and my girls. My sister commented that it’s like seeing her and me as children and her and me as adults!  ( Her and I??) Everyone always comments that my two girls remind them of me and my sister as children. And, as an interesting side note, my sister and I are a month apart in our pregnancies. This is the only time we’ve been pregnant together.

4. The guys! My husband, brother and brother in law. They spent a lot of down time doing this….

5. We went to a Festival Of Trees in our area on everyone’s last day here. Madelyn was so done taking pictures!

6. My dad and the Grinch. Each of the trees was beautifully decorated with a different theme. The Grinch one was cute.

7. My parents and their three granddaughters. The littlest one belongs to my sister. Katelyn was done taking pictures by this time.

8. My husband and the Grinch. They were having a bonding moment.

9. My brother and his new girlfriend “Bertha”. She was cooking up some yummy treats apparently. Then he decided to dump her because she was thinking of “leafing” him. Har har!

10. Stayin’ alive by this funky Christmas tree. Love this picture of my girls!

Aaand a bonus #11 picture of my girls and their cousin Brooklyn. I just thought this one was so cute.

I hope you all had a wonderful Thanksgiving week like I did!

This post is linked to Top Ten Tuesday hosted by Oh Amanda.

I wanted to share a little bit about what we did in our homeschooling lessons today and post the pictures of our crafts. Today is also the last day of school for us for over a week since my whole family is coming next week. So, you most likely won’t hear from me for a few days.

My girls are headed off to their Nana and Papa’s this afternoon for a sleep over. They are doing me this huge favor so I can have about 24 hours of cleaning and prepping my house time for my family’s arrival Sunday night.  This afternoon and tomorrow are going to be work, work, work!

We’re inundating my inlaws’ house with my family for Thanksgiving since that’s where we always do it. It will be a lot of fun. Tight, but fun!

So…onto what we’ve done for Thanksgiving crafts and lessons in our homeschool time.

We did two weeks of Thanksgiving crafts on our craft days. I thought they came out really cute.

These are the crafts:

Thanksgiving Turkeys

The girls listed things they’re thankful for. I had a cardboard template of a turkey I traced that we got from Trunk Or Treat. We added fake feathers for fun.

Here’s Katelyn’s finished turkey:

Cornucopias Of Thanksgiving

I printed the cornucopias and food (that were apparently hand drawn) from All Kids Network.com. They have a Thanksgiving Crafts section.

I printed ” Give thanks to the Lord, for He is good” at the top.

Here’s Madelyn’s finished cornucopia:

Today we read a really cute book I got from the library. It was one of two left in the Thanksgiving books section. And it was a Christian based book! In a way it’s sad that the book that mentions God and his provisions was one the of the only ones left but also great for me since that’s the kind of book I want to read to my children.

This is the book we read:

It’s called “Thanksgiving-A Harvest Celebration” by Julie Stiegmeyer.

Happy Thanksgiving from Katelyn and Madelyn!

Since we’re nearing Thanksgiving (and I won’t be blogging next week with my family being here) I thought I would share some little things I’m thankful for. Of course I’m thankful for my family, salvation home etc. That goes without saying!

1. My baby’s little kicks.

2. Delicious Kona coffee first thing in the morning.

3. Homeschooling.

4. Netflix.

5. Being a part of a great choir.

6. My family coming for Thanksgiving!

7. Being debt free. ( Thank you Dave Ramsey!)

8. Paying cash for Christmas gifts this year.

9. My girls’ sense of silly humor.

10. Snuggling with  my husband on the couch in the evenings to watch favorite shows.

This post is linked to Top Ten Tuesday hosted by Oh Amanda.

I’ll share some of our story with pictures.

*Note*- You won’t see that many pictures of Madelyn because she seems to be allergic to the camera. Every time I tried to take her picture she would duck, turn her head, run off or get really grumpy!

The girls and papa enjoying the delicious feast

My brother in law, Bob and Mike bonding over heaping platefuls

Us minus,well, me.

Katelyn adding some decorations to Mike and Bob’s shared birthday cake (Both November babies)

Katelyn and Madelyn also get a turn blowing out the candles

Watching “Planet 51″ with nana and papa on Thanksgiving day.

It was Madelyn’s first time and Katelyn’s second  to the movie theater. Katelyn doesn’t look to happy here because she was more than ready to leave and didn’t want to stay a minute longer for a picture.  Movies are still a tad too long for her ability to sit still at this point. Madelyn did way better than I thought she would! She was quiet and sat in our laps for most of the movie. I was impressed!

This is Zoe and Chloe. Zoe is the yellow one and Chloe is the white one

I’ve wanted some pet birds for ages (no, really! AGES!) and Mike finally decided to surprise me by planning on taking me to the pet store to pick some birds out. This was a huge gesture on his part because he hates birds. He thinks they’re noisy and messy(which they can be) and has sworn we would never own any.We went on Black Friday to get them. I chose parakeets.  I tried to convince Mike to also let me get two finches but he wouldn’t have it. Maybe next year….?

Katelyn and Madelyn love them and think Zoe and Chloe are theirs. I’m letting them think that for the next few years.  These are going to be the most spoiled  birds!!

This year we decided to go Black Friday shopping for the first time. Katelyn and Madelyn would sleep over at Nana and Papa’s house and we would head out to Toys R Us for their midnight opening. I was kind of dreading the trip but also kind of excited for it.  I’m not a night owl so this was to be a huge event for  me. We got to Toys R Us at midnight to find a huge line of people, wrapped around the building, waiting to get into Toys R Us. They were only letting twenty people in at a time. Mike estimated that there were about 2,000 people in front of us and 2,000 people behind us! I tried to get a picture of the line of people but a) it was too dark and b) I didn’t want to freak people out by taking pictures of them. We waited in line for almost three hours before it was our turn to go in. So, yes, that would mean we went into Toys R Us at 2:50 am. Waiting in that line that night is kind of a hazy blur for me right now. I swear I fell asleep standing up. It was awful!! Mike actually thought it was kind of fun. He said we were making memories. I sure will never forget that memory!! Their were groups of women in front of us laughing and having a grand ‘ol time. All I wanted was to tell them to ” shut up!!”. They thought they were soooo funny…. Many of the people in line were starting their day. They had a whole shopping agenda planned for the rest of the day. I was planning on shopping for our girls and then going home to sleep.

Thankfully Mike had solitaire on his phone and I played that until both my arms hurt. It was freezing by the time we got inside the store so I couldn’t feel my feet and I was shivering uncontrollably.  A catering truck pulled up in front of our line around 2:30 am. A bunch of people converged on them and were buying hot dogs, coffee, snacks and drinks! Everyone cheered when the truck pulled up! I have never seen anything like it! By then we were almost there so Mike and I stayed in line , although I really wanted a hot dog!! I got my second wind as we walked into the store. We  got the shopping for our girls done with and left the store by 4:00 am. Since the mall is right next to Toys R Us we saw that it was coming to life so we headed over there to see if we could pick up a couple of things for my inlaws. By then I was like “whatever!!” when Mike asked if I’d be willing to check out the mall. We had breakfast in the food court and then walked around the mall for a bit as the stores were all opening. It was actually the perfect time to be there on Black Friday. It was quiet and peaceful. People were already starting to form some small lines at certain stores. JC Penney’s had some great deals and we were some of the first shoppers there. Unfortunately, we were only looking for one thing there and not some of the other nicely priced things. By the time were were done at the mall and got home it was 6:00 am. We were exhausted. We fell into bed and slept until noon. Then went shopping some more! Which, is when we got my parakeets. That was certainly and experience I’ll never forget. I think we will definitely try it again next year but we’ll head out around 4:00 am instead of midnight. And I’ll have a better list of what I want and more knowledge of what’s on sale etc.  We are officially done with our Christmas shopping, which has never happened this early before. I may have a couple of stocking stuffers to pick up but that’s it. That in and of itself made Black Friday shopping worth it. It will definitely help in keeping the month of December a little more calm this year.

Did anyone else do some Black Friday shopping?

I hope you all had a wonderful Thanksgiving!

]]> http://www.simplymelsblog.com/thanksgiving-recap/feed/ 2 http://www.simplymelsblog.com/i-am-thankful/ http://www.simplymelsblog.com/i-am-thankful/#comments Wed, 25 Nov 2009 12:48:57 +0000 SimplyMel http://www.simplymelsblog.com/?p=807 What kind of blogger would I be if I didn’t have a “Thanksgiving” post? What kind of Christian would I be if I didn’t tell others what God has done in my life?

So here are the things/people I am thankful for this Thanksgiving:

1. My salvation. Thank you Lord for saving my soul and that one day I’ll be in Heaven with you.

2. The fact that I was blessed to have been born in America, to a Christian family who raised me in a Christian home so I could know the Lord. Looking at a World Vision catalog recently I was just struck by how God allowed me to be born is such different conditions than that of those children in impoverished countries. I certainly didn’t deserve it.

3. My wonderful, loving, hard working, humorous, godly, great father of a husband.

4. My two, smart, adorable, funny, healthy little girls

5. My awesome parents, sister Steph, brother Bryan, brother in law Waylon and  adorable niece Brooklyn

6. My awesome inlaws and brother in law

7. My loving grandparents and extended family

8. Facebook so I can keep in touch with everyone!

9. Blogging- an outlet I have in the past year discovered that I love

10. My friends

11. God’s wisdom and direction in finding a new church home

12. Mike’s good job and that God has continued to provide this job for Mike and meet all our needs

13. Our home

14. Good health for my family

15. Our troops who put their life on the line daily to keep us and our freedom safe

Tomorrow will be spent at my in laws’ house, where we’ll stuff our selves silly, play games with the girls (I’m sure a princess game is on the list), play Texas Hold ‘Em and plan our Black Friday shopping. I’m bringing the side dishes while my mother in law makes everything else!

Happy Thanksgiving to all my family, loved ones, friends and anyone else who is reading this post!