22 Days Of Thanksgiving: Day Twenty-Two

HAPPY THANKSGIVING!!!

What am I thankful for? I honestly have so much to be thankful for, so I thought I'd just ramble them all off! (and am including the rest of my family as well)

Jenna is thankful for:
(I will answer for her)

• Bottles, blankies and her nice warm crib (she's napping)

Juliana is thankful for:

• Her princess clock
• Her Barbie Swan Lake movie
• Dance class
• Grandma & Grandpa
• Thanksgiving
• Tinkerbell
• Disneyland
• Balloons

Jacob is thankful for:

• All of us to go at our home with Thanksgiving
• For my friends
• God
• We have a good time with this Thanksgiving day
  And that's it
• Camping
• All all ALL of this world and these planets and stars in my room and planets in my room too
  I think that's it
• Our cats and our babies and families
• We gotta bring Aunt Karen's giraffe to Aunt Karen's house
• My camera and the three telephones
• My teacher and my teacher friends and everybody in my world
  And that's enough.

Matt is thankful for:

• My wife and kids
• My church family
• My friends
• My work
• Our van (amen to that!)
• That my wife can stay home with our kids
• For the grand parents
• For God's grace
• How smart Jacob, Juliana and Jenna are

Denise is thankful for:

• Matt! He is an awesome husband and dad! We may not always see eye to eye or have the same methods to our madness, but we love each other and work past those things. He helps with house work, helps with the kids, is our financial provider (and loves his job!), is great with his neices and nephews, is a great son, son-in-law, brings more laughter into our home, is very caring, loves me and loves God!
• Jenna finally doing SO much better! She is almost like a normal baby :-) She's so much happier and fun and the kids love her to pieces! She sleeps through the night, and is finally getting on a schedule, YAY!
• Jacob is amazing, he brings so much joy to us! He is so bright, clever, sweet and kind-hearted.
• Juliana brings SO much life to our house, her entire face smiles, and always bops to any music she hears! (not always at dance class of course...)
• Showers! I may not get them real often, but I surely am VERY thankful for when I DO get them!
• Hair straighteners! Where have you been all my life?!?
• Bob, my van, he's the bomb diggity and has made traveling-life SO much easier and enjoyable!
• My parents, they are SO wonderful to me, Matt and our kids. They are the most amazing parents and grandparents ever!!! They make and take the time to build nuturing relationships, and for that I am SO eternally thankful!
• The Pumpkin Patch Crew! It's so nice to have a group of friends to talk with, laugh with, cry with, and simply have the most odd conversations with!!! And to know they're always there.
• The Office :-) When Friends went off the air, Matt & I were utterly lost for comedic relief. And HA HA - The Office has definitely provided that! So to Michael Scott, Jim, Pam, Oscar, Meredith, Angela, Kevin, Kelly, Ryan, Stanley, Andy, Creed and even Dwight - THANK YOU! ;-D
• For God being so compassionate and merciful! He knows every little thing about me, all my thoughts and fears, hopes and shortcomings, and yet always has open arms and ears for me.
• The Bible! It has all the answers to the questions of life...if we'd only read it and take heed to it. An area I need to be better at!!!
• And lastly, that this darn Thanksgiving series of blogs is finally OVER!!! 8-) Let's move on to Christmas, shall we?!?!? :-D

22 Days Of Thanksgiving: Day Twenty-One

I am thankful for play dates! I'm not the first mom to admit that you start to go stir-crazy as a stay-at-home-mom, and getting to talk with another adult is pure bliss!!! Today I play dated with Karen, and I tell ya, it was SO nice getting to talk with another adult and having your kids play with other kids! Although we still find that we can't get through an entire sentence...however we realized we can't do that even when there are no kids are around ;-D I think they have trained us to simply NOT speak an entire sentence as we're never given the chance, so our brains don't know how to do otherwise anymore! Oh well, one day, it'll come back...right???
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Anywho, thanks for having us over, Karen! The kids had a great time playing, and it was so nice getting to catch up a bit!!!

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22 Days Of Thanksgiving: Day Twenty

Today I am thankful for moms who understand! Today my face has looked like this A LOT - >:-[ I don't know what the deal is, but my kids have been in rare form today, just getting on each other WAY more than normal, whining like crazy, whacking each other with things, you know the drill. I had thought about cancelling a play date this morning but hoped that maybe the change of pace would be enough to make them FORGET to act like that. Yeah, not really! They were definitely overall better than before Melissa arrived with her two youngest boys, but still did their thang. Juliana wouldn't let Evan help her with something, so while pulling it away she knocked over my full glass of Diet Coke all over the carpet...nice. Jacob almost stepped on Baby Matthew's head on the couch. Jacob whacked Evan with his alligator rain boot! Juliana threw a remote at Jacob. Jacob hit Juliana with a car. Jacob and Juliana just kept ticking each other off, definitely on purpose, which in turn caused more whining, etc.

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They are all in bed now...yes, I even put Jacob to bed! I told him that he has been acting FAR too unacceptably and off to bed he goes!!! (of course, followed by more whining)

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Melissa was sweet as ever, just took it in stride, she of course knows about days like this (days...weeks...months...years!). As I know you all will understand as well :-) Still drives me nuts though! And I'm looking forward to when they start getting along again...soon, right?!? :o)

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My more humorous way of viewing how today has gone...

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22 Days Of Thanksgiving: Day Nineteen

Man alive, you know what I'm thankful for?!? That this blogging series is almost done! 8-) I tell ya, I keep almost forgetting! And ya know, I keep not blogging about the stuff I'd normally blog about! I have about a kazillion pictures I would have normally posted by now, but they don't really go with the theme so I normally don't. (well that AND my screen is still messed up so doing anything with pictures is NO FUN these days)

Today I am thankful to have a day of rest :-) I did practically nothing all day, and it was great!!! I watched Wall-E with the kids, which we all loved (and I was pleasantly surprised by that, I didn't think I was going to like it very much). We built a nifty train track with Jacob's GeoTrax. Had lunch, played on the computer, harrassed Karen on Facebook (the kids helped me with that!), I laid down for a little bit (I have a cold, Matt just got one today too, bummer). Had homemade hamburgers and fries for dinner (yum). Then Jacob & I headed off to my parents house to drop off the chairs we borrowed for the baby shower, visited for a bit, then went grocery shopping for this week's festivities. It was so nice just hanging out with Jacob for a couple hours, we don't get much one-on-one time these days, so that was really nice! It will be an early-to-bed night, and for that I am thankful!

Oh yeah, AND I took the time to feed our squirrels today during lunch! I laid on the floor and took a picture of him grabbing a couple peanuts :-) Just a great laid-back day!!!

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Mr. Squirrel eating a couple peanuts on our back slider.

22 Days Of Thanksgiving: Day Eighteen

I AM THANKFUL FOR LAUGHTER!!! OK, so it started yesterday when I was cleaning the house for the baby shower I was hosting today. I was getting all the kids stuff out of the first floor of our house, and as I pulled away a toy bin, I LAUGHED as I noticed a Littlest Pet Shop frog hanging on our wall! It had obviously fallen back behind the toy bin and gotten so smashed against the wall that it stuck there. It was so funny! It was just one of those unexpected things that makes you laugh, ya know?

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Then at Austin & Gabe's double-birthday pool party, it was more fun than anything to see what the ADULTS were doing! Funny flips off the diving board, and Matt pretending to be Spongebob Squarepants. :o)

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And then Stephanie deciding to try to screw up a picture I was taking, but hey, that just means I'll post THAT instead! SO IN YOUR FACE, MISSY!!! ;-D

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Then today was the baby shower for my sister, and we had SO much fun! All of us who have been working on the shower have been desparately trying to keep it a secret that we've been working on a video for Karen, a video that shows why she's going to be a great mother of five. It has been SO fun taping it and putting it together, I swear it's going to have the best gag reel once I put it together! :-D But the actual video was a hit, it went off really well, and totally showed off Karen's crazine...I mean WONDERFULNESS!!! ;-D We laughed so much today, and I am so thankful for that!!! I don't have hardly any pictures from the shower, I was leaving that up to a couple other cameras. But trust me, lots of laughter!!! :-D

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(added later) OK, well Stephanie just sent out pictures, so now I can add one of the Pumpkin Patch Crew at the baby shower! (yes, we all have John Deere shirts on! ...well except the guest of honor!)

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22 Days Of Thanksgiving: Day Seventeen

I'm kinda in a daze right now...hmmm...let's see... I'd say that today I'm thankful that when you host shindigs at your house that it forces you to clean! Our house has taken quite the hit ever since Jenna was born, it's been hard to stay up on anything. But when you're planning to have a group of people over (especially a baby shower for your beloved sister whom you absolutely adore, so you clear most everything out of the bottom level of your house!), it prompts a deep clean that is so desparately needed! I am SO thankful to have a MUCH cleaner house today! So thank you, Karen, for having yet another baby!!! ;-D
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On a completely different note, I have SO many pictures of various events lately that I need to go through and post...so be forewarned...soon enough I will be posting a plethora of pix!!! :o)

22 Days Of Thanksgiving: Day Sixteen

I am thankful for weekends! Even though this is going to be an extremely busy weekend, it's just nice knowing that I'll have Matt home for a majority of the weekend to help out with kids, to have an ADULT to talk to, and just in general, it's nice having him home. Lots of fun stuff happens on the weekends! This weekend we had Awana Grand Prix tonight, again Saturday morning, double-birthday pool party Saturday afternoon, church/nursery duty Sunday morning, Karen's baby shower directly afterwards, and I had to say no to two other party invites for this weekend as well (which is hard to do!). And then just in general, we have a lot of cleaning and prep in between for the baby shower :-) So yeah, although beit a non-stop weekend, I am so thankful for weekends! Breaks you out of the norm, gives you a chance to be with other people, build lots of memories...so that said...LET'S PARTY!!!