A Bit More Grateful

This morning I woke up to a beautiful thing. The familiar sight of soft white snow covering the ground and resting on the branches of my pine tree, reflecting the orange light of the street lamps. It's a comfortable, sweet picture to behold.

Makes me think of this:

Our new favorite thing around here? Brad takes the kids outside and plays "No Bears are Out Tonight" Last night after Family Home Evening I was inside cleaning up supper and baking the cookies (thanks, Alyson!) and all I could hear was the laughing and screaming of the "villagers". Then a few minutes later Jesse came in crying. He was scared. Breanna wasn't scared but she pretended to cry anyway. They went back out and when the cookies were ready we all ate them together. That night I sat in the rocking chair and read Winnie the Pooh. It was a pretty perfect evening.

I love coming downstairs to evidence that my kids are playing:

I also found a park right by my midwives...

That has a merry go round!! Yay!

My kids are so lucky to have Grandma's house and lots of cousin friends!

I have a week and a half until my due date. Could be any day! That is if I was normal, which I'm not....it will probably be another 3 weeks, which is almost a month, if my other labors are any indication. And yes, I get rude comments at the grocery store. Ahhhhhhhh!

A week ago I wrote a long complaining post, but as you can see I really have nothing to complain about. I am surrounded by family, friends, and a church community who care and are there to support me. I deleted it when I realized I was being kinda pathetic. BUT I'm not gonna lie....I wish I had

Nothing.

To.

Do.

This is a picture of me eating a caramel apple and wishing I had nothing to do. Brad loves to take flattering pictures of me, as you can see. In it, I am wearing socks and sandals, because none of my shoes fit anymore and I can't bend down to tie my running shoes. My fingers are too swollen anyway and I have pregnancy carpel tunnel. My maternity clothes are too small and I have spilled on my shirt, right on top of my belly. So charming. Thanks, Brad. Someday I'll make a montage of all the flattering pictures Brad takes of me. Also, the flattering video. His favorite angle? Camera right in my face, angled upwards, usually while I'm eating.

Have a happy snow day!! :)

Breanna ballet

I'm not sure if you can really call this "ballet" but she sure loves it and I sure love watching it!!

Halloween

Because we are so stinkin' creative around here I thought I'd post our Halloween experience so you could ooo and aaah and think to yourself, I better step up my game next year.

Just kidding! But really, we did have fun even though we didn't do the traditional trick or treating. I like holidays because they mean family time and traditions. I looooove family time. We had a little party on Friday night, carved pumpkins, danced to Halloween music, decorated cookies and watched The Legend of Sleepy Hollow. My kids did well during that scary movie, but we were cuddling them really close :)

Our handy Brad carving the pumpkin with a suspicious light glowing above it.

Mmmmm icing....

Wow aren't we good.

The Bride and The Ninja at Trunk or Treat. 

The Ninja kicking some butt!

Our pumpkins.  One is Tinkerbell. 

Now my kids are exhausted and have had too much sugar, but no time to waste, we're on to the next thing(s) and I'm not even close to being ready for all of it. And why is it that every Friday my house is clean and every Monday it looks like a tornado has blasted through it?

It's a Date

One day a couple of weeks ago I realized I have never really had a lot of alone time with Breanna. And as soon as baby is here, we will really never have alone time. So I decided to take her on a date.

I was only slightly more excited to give her this dress than she was to get it. I've been waiting for weeks to give it to her. She always wants to dress up and all we have are church dresses. So today before we left I said "what dress do you want to wear?" I brought her to her closet where I had it hung up and she saw it. She was pretty stunned, but mellow and even-keeled as usual. "Uhmmm...I want to wear Snow White!"

We went to Storybook Theater and watched Once Upon a Lily Pad and ate popcorn. Breanna was so sweet- she sat very still and quiet the whole time and clapped enthusiastically after all the songs.

When it was all over the kids went and played on the set. Breanna loved it! She would have stayed there forever.

Dancing on the lily pad

She kept jumping off this "log" over and over and over.

Then of course I said, let's go get a treat. What do you want, Breanna? And guess what she picked? JUICE! So we went to Booster Juice. I even said 'cupcake?' a couple of times because Crave was just around the corner...but juice it was. I love her little personality, how pensive and thoughtful she is. How laid-back and nice she is. Just so easy to be with. So precious.

THE END