Giving Thanks

This week for Family Home Evening, we had a talent show.  I gave the kids 2 rules - The first was that they HAD to do or share something,  and the second was that every comment about the things shared had to be 100% positive.  David showed off his spinning and rolling skills, James showed us his dragon drawing, Evie played her flute, Aaron showed a fancy origami flower he had made, Anna played her trumpet, Eileen sang, I played and sang and Daddy shared his baking talents by sharing his Boston Cream Pie with us.  It was a wonderful uplifting night!  

Tuesday was the kids last day of school for the week, so on Wednesday and Thursday morning, we met up at a park with Sandi and Taz and Kai.  We had a great time playing together and running around together and walking together.  The kids were so happy to see their cousins and I was so glad that we had some nice weather for being outside in!  

Thanksgiving was pretty chill.  Dan smoked the turkey, pies and cranberry sauce were made the night before, and Eileen did rolls, so all we had left was the asparagus, mashed potatoes and gravy, and stuffing.  I'm pretty sure this is the only Thanksgiving I have ever spent with only my immediate family - even when I was in the hospital for my surgery during Thanksgiving, I think we had family visit.  Dan made it a bit more special by pulling out the fancy serving dishes and plates and glasses.  

Friday morning, we had some errands to run, then in the afternoon, we tried out a place that Dan found on FB where you could cut your own tree.  They had lots of animals too - which the kids loved, but we ended up not getting our tree there, so after, we stopped at Home Depot on the way home and got our tree, but the tree we got was beautiful and the kids loving getting to see and hold and feed the animals!  

Eileen has been wanting to watch an anime show that her friends in her chat group keep talking about, so she enlisted Anna and I to watch it with her - the funny thing is that it's about volleyball, and Eileen has no interest in sports, but her friends like it, so she's watching it with us.  We told her to recommend it to Grandpa so he could talk about it with us too.  :)  

We spent Saturday getting Christmas Decorations out (tree will get decorated on Monday) and set up all over the house and we are finding that we have more places to decorate in this house, we got everything out and it still feels like we should have more.  So we will check out the after Christmas sales for next year!  :) 

Church today was wonderful and we had a fun afternoon playing games and chatting together.   Our real estate agent dropped off a couple pies this week.  Knowing we wouldn't be able to get through all that pie, we let the kids have at it.  I think they ate the whipped cream more than they ate the pie.  :) 

Last week President Nelson asked us to flood social media with gratitude - it has been so wonderful seeing my facebook feed filled with gratitude and joy!  What a wonderful way lighten our hearts this season! 

I've Seen Sun and I've Seen Rain

 It has been a somewhat crazy week.  Not because so much happened necessarily, but because with Oregon locking everything back down due to COVID, tensions are running high.  The kids are having some virtual activities with the youth, but otherwise, nothing.  The kids have been going nuts, and with rainy weather, we haven't gotten outside enough.  We are having trouble with tempers and kids on task with school and selfishness.  Anna went to babysit for Taz and Kai during the week, and she has been working hard to earn money for an iPad for her art.  

One of my favorite things to do is go on walks with Eileen and Anna.  We took an epic walk earlier this week - ended up being gone for nearly 2 hours and came back exhausted but having had a great time.  Also, now that Eileen has her new glasses and can see, we've had fun enjoying the beauties of this area.  On Monday, we could see the fog sitting in the valley and walked down into it and then back up out of it!  

One of the sweet sisters I minister to works for Nike and gave us a pass to the employee store - so Dan took Anna there to get her some new shoes - she grew out of her pairs from earlier this summer....  But she is so excited by her new pairs and I'm so grateful for a sweet sister who has opened her heart to us!  Her daughter has also been chatting with Eileen online and Eileen walked over to see her this week!  

Friday morning, President Nelson gave a broadcast - it was so beautiful and spoke about the healing power of gratitude.  I felt strongly that this was what my heart needed, so I have been attempting to follow his challenge both on social media and in our home with a gratitude jar.  It has been softening our hearts and bringing a bit more love to our home bit by bit.  I'm so grateful for a prophet who guides and directs us in the Lord's way! 

Saturday, we dragged all the kids out of bed and headed into town to go to a park near where Dan works.  Mostly we all had a blast, but Eileen had stayed up too late the night before and wasn't interested in being at a park  :)  David would climb up every little hilly area in the park (and there were a lot of them) then he would proclaim himself king of the mountain.   

Saturday afternoon, Dan and I went on a "date."  What we really did was go shopping for Christmas gifts.  We hit a bunch of places with masks firmly in place and got a good chunk of our Christmas shopping done.  Then we had some take out dinner sitting in our car and watching the Great British Baking Show.  Then we went home and put the kids to bed and watched the Fast and the Furious 8.  Anna usually watches those with us, but she was already out cold.  :)  

My sweet hubby made a Boston Cream Pie for me - and I am majorly looking forward to eating it!!  

Well my computer isn't letting me put pictures in right now, so I will have to wait until later and try again.  :)  

Fall is Here!!!

 Well, Fall is here!  It's been cool all week and our trees really began dumping leaves, so when the kids had Wednesday off of school for Veteran's Day, we spent some time at a park, then headed back to the house and had fun with the leaf blower.  James was trying to make a big pile to jump in, but the leaves were all pretty damp, so they didn't do much jumping in the pile, but we did get a bunch piled up and put into the yard waste bin.  We also had a lady from the ward drop by to pick up boxes - she brought her 12 YO son to help her carry boxes, but he and Aaron got along really well and spent the whole time chatting and I helped her instead.  :)  

On Thursday, we had one of the sisters I minister to and her daughter over for dinner.  We had a great time chatting with her and her daughter.  They are such wonderful people!  

Friday, the kids had off school too - but it was pretty rainy, we tried the park again for a bit, but it started raining and we had to head home :(  But we did see a glorious rainbow!!  

Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday, Dan had work in the evening instead of the morning, and Anna was watching Taz and Kai so Sandi, Jon and Dan could all meet together.  She came home pretty exhausted, but had fun with them.  

Saturday, we finally were able to get Eileen and Evelyn in for an eye appointment - so Eileen will get new glasses soon and be able to see again - Evelyn's prescription hasn't changed that much, but her lenses were getting a bit scratched up.  

Sunday was church in the morning, we had a wonderful virtual sacrament meeting and wonderful talks!  We had a nice time chatting with our parents.  Then in the evening, we had a family over for dinner.  They are one of the bigger families in the ward with 5 kids - and their kids and our kids all got along great and we had a fun time with them!  The house was full of noise, fun and music and it was wonderful!  

Otherwise - it's been mostly school and work and play.  It's been rainy, but that's Portland area for ya!  

Sweet 16

This week started off with a bang!  Eileen turned Sweet 16 on Monday!  It was a very different sort of 16th birthday than most girls dream of - but since she has no interest in driving or dating anyone - there's not really much different about this birthday than the ones which came before.  She chose angel food cake for her birthday cake and of course chicken roll-ups for her birthday dinner.  We had a fun little party for her and I think she enjoyed it.  

 

The kids were given amazon gift cards from Grandma and Grandpa Cox for this year - and since we are finally in our new house and have a place to ship them to, I finally let them use them.  David got trucks and trailers so we can play cars more.  :)  He loves them.  

Between those gifts and ordering stuff for school and the gifts, there were packages arriving all the time.  The kids thought it was great - Koopa not so much.  

Otherwise, our week has been full of school.  There was a lot of rain this week and Dan and I were both surprised to see just how many people here are still out walking and out doing yard work and everything else in the rain.  

That has inspired Dan to be out more in the rain too.  Even Anna and I after going a bit stir crazy, took a walk in the rain.   He comes home even wetter on his runs here than he did one his runs in Texas, but I think he enjoys getting wet from the rain more than he does sweating like a pig.  

I've been slowly trying to get my craft room set up, and today I got my sewing machine out - the one from Great Aunt Joan, and put the pin cushion she made next to it, so I was feeling grateful to her and missing her a bit today.  

We also went on a nature walk with the kids today.  There are tons of beautiful walking trails around here!  After, Dan took the kids and went home in the car, but Anna and I walked the mile+ home.  On  the way we met some people in the ward (the BYU hat and shirt gave them away)  Plus we got to do tithing settlement today, so we had a zoom meeting, then walked to his house (about a block away) to drop off tithing envelopes and cookies.  Plus I got some sisters to minister to, so I texted them and had a nice chat with one of the ladies!  It was nice to get to know some more people in our ward! 

Routines and Fun

 We've had a crazy and busy week!  Monday was a rather stressful day - I felt like I was never going to be able to get everything unpacked because the kids would never let us!  For Family Home Evening, we went to the temple - the grounds are closed right now, but we were able to look at it and feel the peace of it. It's nice to be so near the temple!  

This week also started out rather stressful because of David's potty training. He was having accidents because he didn't want to go to the potty - and he would argue with me every time I told him it was potty time.  Thankfully with some M&M bribery and some patience, he seems to be getting it.  He doesn't usually need me to tell him to go to the bathroom and he has had very few accidents.  He wanted to wear his underwear to bed last night, so we told him that when he woke up he had to go potty right away - and it worked - we will see how well it continues to work...  Either way - this has been a relatively easy potty training experience! 

David has also made the switch in to the size 4 clothes.  They are still rather big on him - but they mostly fit and the 3T stuff is getting small (plus he hardly had any pants) So we pulled out the size 4 stuff and now that's all he wants to wear.  It included this fun set of pajamas that Aunt Tina made for Anna many years ago!  He loves them!!  

David wants me to stay with him in his room while he falls asleep most nights.  The he often tries to snuggle with me as he falls asleep, which leads to interesting results.  One night he starts out by putting his hand on my face, then he moves his head to my shoulder, then his head to my chest, then he moves so his whole torso is on my stomach, then he keeps moving until his stomach is on my stomach and his head is on the ground on the other side.  Then he realizes that he can't get more of me by moving that way any further, so he turns and puts his head on my shoulder and lays his full body on top of mine- but that isn't good enough because my knees were bent, so his legs weren't on top of me, so he kicks my legs down and puts his legs on top of mine - then he whispers in my ear "there, that's better" and he does all that while pretending to be asleep...  But by that point, I was laughing so hard that he couldn't sleep, so I convinced him to move back to his bed.  :)  In the picture below - he fell asleep like that and I had to text Dan and have him come rescue me - he took a picture and laughed at me first.... :)  

James and Aaron have been doing a LOT of Origami to entertain themselves.  They found a book or origami animals and have been making  a ton of paper animals.  Koopa found one and brought it to me - and he just looked so cute!!  

Here is David rocking and having fun showing off his new underwear.  He LOVES his underwear!  It was never hard to keep him in clothes before - but it sure has been this week!  

This Thursday, the kids started back to school.  The first day was stressful and filled with technical difficulties and craziness - but it all worked out and hopefully things will start getting into regular schedules.  Friday went better and hopefully next week will be better still.  Thursday, the Relief Society President and Young Womens president came by to say hi and welcome to the ward, so we chatted for a bit - the ward seems friendly and hopefully we can get to know people here despite the whole COVID thing.  Friday was supposed to be a primary Halloween drive through, but Dan and I messed up on the time and we missed it - the kids were majorly bummed out.  :(

Saturday was the big day - and Dan and I had tried to plan lots of fun things for the kids for the day so that we could have a fun Halloween and a great time together even with out the usual trick-or-treating.   Dan and David started out the day by making banana bread and muffins, so I woke to a yummy breakfast!  David loves to help cook.  He asked me if when he was daddy's age, he could cook lots of things too.  And he told me that he really likes to make eggs.  

We got the cookie dough rolled out and cut into Halloween shapes, then baked them before heading out to go on a walk.  The weather was beautiful, so we headed to an area with lots of great walking paths, and went for a beautiful walk.  Eileen and Anna took a longer path than Dan and I did with the younger kids, but David couldn't have gone any further than we went.  

When we got back we carved pumpkins.  David mostly just poked his pumpkin and drew on it, but he had fun.  Evie got majorly squeamish about touching the pumpkin guts between this year and last - but we had fun!  Dan even got one for me to carve.  :)  The kids were struggling with cleaning out the inside of the pumpkin, so I ended up cleaning out 4 of the pumpkins - including my own.  It was a lot of fun!  

Then we had fun decorating out Halloween sugar cookies!  David would mostly just tell me what to do - and I would do it for him (with me giving suggestions and keeping his hands out of the sprinkles)  

Then we had a yummy dinner of fry bread and then some of the kids watched Nightmare before Christmas before eating a cookie and heading to bed!  

Church today was wonderful, and we had a beautiful Sabbath together!