2014 Thankful {home}

 I have had every intention of doing this every single day this month.  In fact the girls and I have kept up with our daily activities but winter caught me off guard and it's exhausting.  I now have a self imposed bed time of 8 because I can't keep my eyes open past then.  

 We didn't get to ease into winter.  Last Saturday it was 70 degrees and then Sunday night a storm blew in and the highest we've gotten since then has been 10 degrees. Taking care of the animals Monday was pretty awful.  Since I've never dealt with having to feed horses in such cold weather I just assumed the six inches of ice that formed on top of the watering trough even though we had a heater for it was just normal and spent the day going out every hour or so and chopping ice with an ax.  By the time Chris called I could only cry especially when he told me that shouldn't be happening and the heater wasn't working.  The next morning I called the neighbors (so, so , so thankful for them!) and they came and fixed it and doing chores hasn't been so bad.

 As for the girls, they just love the fact there is snow and are pretty upset when I will only let them go outside when the temperature has to have two numbers.  It's only happened twice in the past week and then it's still freezing to me but I think they have more fun wandering around out there then they do in the summer. 

So for the thankful topic of our home, I am extremely thankful for our home and how warm and cozy it is inside.  I actually think I'd like the whole winter thing if I never had to leave my couch and being curled up in front of the fireplace.  Luckily Chris will be home soon and I'll have two weeks to look forward to being constantly warm. 

2014 Thankful {ears}

Today we are thankful for ears.  Our assignment today was to sing songs together but since our primary program was also today Hunt said she was tired of singing.  I don't blame her.  I've been paranoid about the program and that none of the kids would sing and I'd be stuck doing 8 solos so the past month Hunt has been forced to sing the songs over and over again so at least it would be a duet.  Luckily all the kids sang, the program was wonderful, and my child now wants nothing to do with primary songs.  So instead of having a family song fest we talked about the things we are glad our ears can do and moved on.  Later on I was working on more primary stuff when I could hear the girls giggling.  I looked up to see them cuddled up on the couch cracking up while playing some game in Spanish.  They sat there forever doing it and I was able to just listen and watch.  It was the best sound ever and I'm thankful I have ears to hear it. 

2014 Thankful {eyes}

Today our thankful topic was eyes and yes I'm very thankful for my sight!  Last year Paisley scratched one of my eyes and I went a day without being able to see out of it.  It was only half my vision but made me extremely grateful for good vision.  I am so glad that I can see everything around me, the world is a beautiful place.  For our activity we were supposed to "watch" something together as a family.  We went and watched the high school football game and not only was I able to watch the game I watched Hunt and her friends build a "tree house."  It was a really good game but watching the kids find random sticks and garbage and turning it into their creation was pretty entertaining.

2014 Thankful {neighbors}

I am thankful for neighbors.  Moving has brought us a whole new set of neighbors that has been a little different than our last neighborhood.  More like complete opposite.  Instead of lots of houses close together and kids running around all of the time we have a lot of space in between our house and theirs and we are the only ones under the age of 60.  It's been quite the adjustment but we are grateful for the people we live by.  Every single one of them would drop whatever they are doing at a moments notice and come help if I ever needed it.  In fact, they created a "neighborhood watch" for me and I have a schedule of who is "on call" in case I go into labor.  We live by great people and I'm thankful they are so willing to help but hoping I don't really have to activate their system.

Our "assignment" for today was to do something nice for our neighbors.  Since Hunt gets home from school around 3:30 and it's dark at 5 there wasn't a whole lot of time to do much so we figured baked goods are always nice.  The girls helped me make banana bread and then we spent the evening taking it around which led to playing with all of our neighbors pets and a late bedtime.  The girls were pretty happy about that. 

2014 Thankful {prayer}

November is here.

The past three years I've done a daily gratitude post during the month of November but this year I've been struggling.  

Not that I'm struggling to come up with things to be thankful for, I'm thankful for SO many things, I just am having a hard time coming up with things to actually write about so I've kind of just avoided the topic all together.  Which made me sad because I really do like looking back on the years and knowing I can always count on November being documented well.  Plus yesterday when Chris was leaving for work he mentioned he was glad it was November and knew he'd get a blog post to read every single day this month and how much he looks forward to that.  So here we are.

Except I still have to come up with things to post.  So I cheated this year.  I had a friend share this Thanksgiving countdown from www.somewhatsimple.com on her facebook page.  The whole idea was to help young children (or 30 year old really slow thinking pregnant women) come up with ways to be thankful and how to show their gratitude.  I printed the list out and the girls and I started tonight.

Today out of our thankful jar we picked prayer.  The challenge for today's topic was to say a prayer and only be thankful during that prayer.  To help the girls out we talked about all of the things we were thankful for and wrote/drew some of them down on a piece of paper.  Hunt thought it was pretty awesome to have a cheat sheet when she said her prayers. Seriously though, I really am grateful for the gift of prayer.  I am so glad I have a way to communicate with my Heavenly Father and that he is always available and willing to listen to me.

Paradise in Montana

Saturday was a beautiful day.  Probably one of the last few nice days we are going to have so we decided to take advantage of it and go explore a place we had heard was really nice.

Really nice was an understatement. Welcome to Cliff Lake where the water is crystal clear and you can see the sand shining underneath it. 

 It was gorgeous.  And when you are in gorgeous places you just feel happy.

 I think the girls could have stayed there forever, which is good because I plan on taking our trailer up next year and just moving in for the summer.

 This can be my permanent view.  Except the girl will be in the water and the guy will be sitting next to me holding my hand.

Paradise.

Maybe the little boy formerly known as Paisley will join us too.  Although I hope next summer she leaves her cute hairdo in or else I'm hiding all of her camo.