Giving Thanks

The next week is gonna be busy, so I'm posting this now.

I love Christmas as much as the next person, but I prefer to celebrate my holidays one at a time. So right now, I'm focused on Thanksgiving.  Now on November 27th, I may or may not be taking the kids to visit Santa or check out some lights, but that's a different story. So today, and most of this week, is about Thanksgiving.

Giving thanks.  Being thankful.  Thankful to God for His many blessings and provisions for our family.  Thankful that I live in a place where I can freely worship my savior, Jesus Christ, without fear.  Thankful that I have a warm house to go home to each night, and a bed to sleep in. Thankful for the family He has given me.  Thankful for my church family, and small group, that I get to share life with.  Thankful for friends that I can text back and forth with.  Thankful for a husband who loves me and leads our family well.  Thankful for these two girls...

There is SO MUCH to be thankful for and so many more things that I could name.  As Kate ends most of her blessings, the thing I am MOST grateful for is Jesus. Amen.

Normal Days

So this is what our normal nights look like these days.  A happy baby (usually)....

Squiggly sitters...

My big girl...

And little sister...

These are the moments I want to always remember. The normal, everyday, nothing extraordinary kind of moments.

THESE are the days that fly by. The days when I get home from work, rush to make dinner, make sure kids get baths and then tucked into bed. I'm not sure how those 3 hours pass so quickly, but I blink and the day is over.  So these few hours each night are something special. 

And on a side note, this girl told me "Take my picture, Mama. I look cute."  And when I pulled out my camera, she struck this pose.  This kid. :) She is something else!

Back to Blogging - Halloween Catch Up

I've been checked out for a while.  No apologies.  That's just life.  BUT, I'd like to make more of an effort to keep this thing up.  If for nothing else, I print my blog each year and put it into a "book".  So this is kind of my scrapbook of sorts, and I definitely need to do better!

What's been up with us?

Well first of all, HALLOWEEN!  It was Karsten's 2nd Halloween but really felt like her first.  Last year she was just 25 days old, and we were still trying to wrap our heads around the fact that we actually had a newborn in our home.  Newborn Halloween costumes were definitely NOT on my mind.  It was more like "How many hours of sleep will we get tonight?"

This year, I was so looking forward to finding a costume and it did not disappoint. Kate, of course, was so excited for the occasion to dress up.  I asked her what she wanted to dress up as, and despite the fact that she already has 3 Cinderella dresses, she said she wanted to be Cinderella and picked out a NEW dress.  Props to Disney for creating a "new" dress for their latest Cinderella movie, that is just different enough from the original one that all girls will be requesting this.  Marketing at its finest. I had no preconceived ideas of what to dress Karsten as, so when we came across this cute little piggy costume at TJ Maxx, I knew it would be perfect.

Here are the girls on Halloween.

We don't really live in a neighborhood so we get ZERO trick-or-treaters, which I guess is a good thing since we're actually out trick-or-treating ourselves.  We met up with some friends and went through their neighborhood.  Kate had a blast.  Honestly, Kate had so much fun dressing up and playing with the other kids, she wasn't all that concerned about the candy. We got home late and put it away, and she almost completely forgot about it. Score for mom, right?  (Don't get too worked up. I have let her have some of it! But definitely in moderation.)

Halloween 2015 was a success for sure!