Gratitude from a Child's Perspective-Day 10

Mariah is thankful for:  
-everyone

Jayden is thankful for:

-windows

Myles is thankful for:

-Mariah and Jayden

A few oldies just for fun!  Sometimes I miss those "simple"days of barely mobile and verbal babes!

Saturday Morning

Trying on some stocking caps! They wore them to watch The Magic School Bus after eating donuts for breakfast!  Fall Saturdays are the best!!

Mariah's first family homework project-a feather for her class' thankful turkey. She used felt, flowers, sparkles, feathers, etc. and did all the work herself!  It is so her personality! Love it!

Some little guy likes to dress up and practice cutting a million pieces with his scissors.

Trunk or Treat

I LOVE our Church and I love the energy of the people and the vitality of the place! My kids love it, too!! Tonight we had Trunk-or-Treat!  Such a fun event!  My in-laws came up from Texas to go with us and my dad got to go with us, too!  I spent a whopping $7 total on costumes (superman plain blue tshirt, blue pants and some felt for the logos).  The kiddos went as "Bat Girl", Superman, and a Firefighter.

 This last pic cracks me up!  This was after Trunk or Treat---out to dinner in his 'stache and heavy eyebrows!

Soaking

Today I'm trying to soak up the last remaining hours of 2011. I'm not going to hit the highlights of the year quite yet, but rather, enjoy the current candy making, kid sleeping, candle burning, gift wrapping, bag packing, stocking stuffing, laundry folding, Cheerio sweeping, gift opening, coffee drinking, cinnamon roll baking, movie watching, Tylenol giving, craft making, pajama wearing days that remain in these last few precious weeks of the year.

I have a love-hate relationship with the fact that my BABIES are getting so big! I love that they are gradually getting into the spirit of holidays and the excitement that each holiday involves. We are evaluating and planning traditions for our family and starting to gradually add them to the mix that we brought with us from our families of origin. I'll share some of those here very soon. Nothing earth-shattering, but hopefully meaningful, fun and simple ways for our family to share together at Christmas.

Merry Christmas!

Intentional

We are striving toward being intentional parents. Hubs and I had a kid free weekend last weekend and decided we needed to sit down and come up with a list of family expectations/goals. It's scary to think that we only have 17 more years to go before our last baby leaves the nest. We have lots of soul feeding to do before they leave us!

We came up with a list of 6 "We" statements. These are things that our family does (not tries to do). This is our identity. If you are in our family, this is what is expected of you. That kind of thing. I painted a little sign to put above our kitchen table, as a daily reminder.

To implement these, we are trying to take one word each week and add it to their (specifically our 3 year old's) vocabulary. This week we focused on respect. Respect for self, others, parents, God, material things, etc. We tried to help add the word and meaning to her vocab. Just for fun, we are adding a song to go with each word. So, obviously, our first song played at dinner was by Aretha Franklin:)

As a huge disclaimer, we are not very good at all 6 of these things. But there's nothing like little eyes watching, to keep you on task! We really want to instill selflessness and love in our kids (and ourselves). This is something we truly have to work at on a daily basis! Our main hope is that they'll carry at least some of these ideals on with them when they leave us some day.

these are the moments

Once Upon a Time

I used to have a blog. I used to be a semi-loyal blogger. That is, until, I had kiddos that I couldn't blog about, share photos of, or of course keep up with!!

Well, I'm back! We'll see how this gig goes! I would love to share are life as we know it, with a just-turned-three year old daughter, a 21 month old son and 14 month old son. We've gone on a nearly three-year journey of foster adoption, that resulted in three beautiful children, all under the age of three!

Join me in my adventures of child-rearing, cooking, decorating, Christ-seeking, tot schooling, organizing, and wife-ing!

Meet my little guys:

"Ri"-my three year old; loves dancing singing, writing on the walls with chalk, reading, and keeping us on our toes!

"Jay"-my 21 month old; loves music, flirting, playing in the dirt, eating bugs, playing in the toilet, and dancing!
"Mylesie"-my 14 month old; loves giving kisses, opening/closing doors, playing with balls, throwing food, and singing!

These little guys keep my life fun and definitely entertaining!

All photos by Mandy Stansberry Photography