Thankful for Thanksgiving

I am thankful that we were all home together most of the day, just the four of us, enjoying each other's company! We spent the day watching movies, some mild organizing, cooking, baking, smiling and laughing. I did a little early Christmas shopping (actually it is almost done-just need two more items thankfully) late morning/afternoon, picked up that french vanilla ice cream that Youngest said was a must for dessert with the pie and came home to the smell of pumpkin pie baking. We decorated the table "Hogwarts style" and ate till we were full. I am thankful that we had the delicious food on our table and that Hubby is a wonderful chef! Oldest was fighting a cold and I am thankful that it was only a cold with a mild fever. Thankfully, I never got the cold which is the second year in a row that I have not been sick during this holiday. Thank God for my health (as I am the one in the family that attracts sickness and been repelling it for the second year in a row, hurray)! While I was out shopping, I found cat food on sale and the licking of the lips showed us that Flower, our cat, was very thankful for sales! We are thankful for our goats, who provide us with milk, and our chickens, who provide us with eggs! Most of all, I am thankful that I am truelly blessed with a wonderful, caring and loving family! And as I am typing God has blessed our holiday weekend with more snow resulting in warm, toasty fires in our fireplace to keep us happy and healthy. Thank you, God!

Time at Home

It feels really odd but I'm loving it!!! I worked 2 days then off 1 day, worked 1 day then off 2 days, worked 2 days and now off 2 days. Going to work 1 day and off for another 2 days. It has been soooo much fun being home more. We had an absolutely relaxing, family together day on Sunday. We watched the same movie twice, finished our read aloud book, ate popcorn and drank hot chocolate and lots of hug time. Monday we had seven kids in our house enjoying the great winter weather outside including the melting snow along with pumpkin muffins and hot chocolate. We are looking forward to starting our Christmas gift making for our friends this coming long weekend. We are sooo blessed to have friends for fun times and family to hug and snuggle with while relaxing! Our friends are giving us their prayers for God's will regarding my recent job interview. We have mixed thoughts about getting this new job as it will result in moving out of state and away from friends but it has the positive side of new opportunities and possibly getting our own home. God's will.....

Veteran's Day Family Time

Well, I hadn't plan on today being much of anything but a day off from work. It turned out to be a fun family day for us. In the morning we decided to see if a yard sale would fly or not. The kiddos waved a flag that we had for sale. Got lots of horn honking and waving but also some takers of our stuff. Yeah!!! More ridding of stuff. The kiddos and I went to hunt for postcards as we are doing a postcard swap on yahoo groups to find out more about other states. We went to our local Kmart and asked at the customer service desk if they had postcards. To our surprise, they didn't have any to sell but had some collecting dust in the back and gave a bunch to us for free. What a blessing!!! We then went to the library which was surprisingly open today. We got a second blessing. The new book, The Lost Hero, was in. Afterwards we drove a short distance to go for a walk on the Pacific Crest Trail near our town. We had walked it before twice in one direction but decided to see what there was to see in the other direction. We got our third blessing! The other direction was even more fun and beautiful. We got to do homeschool science by seeing lots of critter poop/scat and tracks. Heard a hawk in a tree and saw antelope on the drive home. With some of the money we earned earlier in the day we bought pizza for dinner and ended a great day with Mom reading to the family from The Lost Hero. Sometimes not planning turns into great and fun family time plans!

Magic Club

Well today was a busy one! Half homeschooling and half cleaning/ridding. The kiddos and I did Magic Tree House activities. We did Warriors of the Sea and Land. We made medieval castles out of yellow box cake, frosting and upside down ice cream cones (the towers). The kiddos ate the drawbridges heading into their castles tonight for dessert (: They also made a medieval castle out of cardboard-complete with cardboard knights. We played pirate ship attack which is the game Battleship on paper with paper pirate ships to sink. They played Ninjas versus Samarais on paper which is completing boxes and whomever completes the most boxes on paper wins. We did a maze with reading comp. questions from one of the books. I also read the MTH book about Ninjas out loud along with Boys and Girls of Colonial Days-2 chapters. Today was mostly no television day which was nice. The kiddos thought it was a fun day! You should have seen the kitchen table after making medieval cake castles but it was well worth it seeing their smiles!

In the afternoon, we did a major fall cleaning. Went through three bookcases to lessen the book load in our house. Went through two closets and kitchen pantry. It was great. We are looking forward to more ridding of our stuff and hope to do another yard sale this upcoming weekend with weather permitting. Doing this with the hope of lessening what we have to pack when the big move comes. Besides with our big dream of fulltiming it in a RV we need to lessen and lessen and lessen our stuff anyway. IT FEELS GREAT!!!