Giving Thanks

We have so much to be thankful for this year~health, happiness, friends, and family. We spent Thanksgiving at home in California celebrating with my dad and Daniel's aunt Barb and uncle Harold.

Some traditions include making a thankful tree, reading books on giving thanks and making homemade pumpkin pie the night before.

My mom had a great idea to cook the mashed potatoes a few hours early and put them in a crockpot on keep warm which saved alot of last minute hassle even though I managed to have a headache off and on the entire day (the cook always forgets to drink her water :)

For once someone else taking a picture...of course it was my dad~we both always have our cameras ready! :)
Lauren's Thankgiving art pieces from school.


After our Thanksgiving feast we decided to make room for pie by taking a walk to the nearby park and playing in the leaves.

Shannon is being saved by uncle Harold as aunt Barb chased her around they playground.

After the park we enjoyed some pie and relaxed

My dad and the girls

Pilgrim Lauren

A few days before Thanksgiving Lauren turned into an almost full time cat....it made for an interesting holiday :)

Happy Thanksgiving! We are thankful for and love you all!

Adventuring

We decided to take advantage of the sunny November weather and go for a hike. A few weeks ago we went hiking and roasted in the heat so today was much better. For the girls to last the entire hike Daniel pushed the jogging stroller for when their little legs needed a rest. Overall it was a good day~we were out in nature and enjoying eachother's company.

Operation Christmas Child

This was our 3rd year filling a shoebox for Operation Christmas Child and by far the most fun since the girls are old enough to really get into picking out gifts for others. We hit Target's dollar section and found all sorts of fun things for a girl aged 5-8.

Next week November 17-21 is collection week for all shoeboxes (not sure why the the top pic says oct). You can go to this link and enter your zip code for a drop off location. http://www.samaritanspurse.org/

Paper Party!

So it turns out I was holding on to unimportant (nicely filed) papers for the last oh, 12 years :) Since last months focus on flylady.com was paper clutter I decided to get serious since I do have the time and it needed to get done! The last time I attemped mass amounts of paper shreddings (2004) I thought I broke my shredder...turns out I just was putting too much into it and jammed it up...so after my fix-it skills I managed to rig it to work as long as it's 1 paper at a time and I am very careful! If I could burn the box of papers I would but of course that is a no no in California. Oh well, mission accomplished and lesson learned...shred as you go (or not and let the kids have a GREAT time playing in the shredded papers) :)

Happy Halloween

The girls with Laney and Phoebe

Shannon as Princess Annalise

Lauren the pink unicorn with wings

Pumpkin carving last week since Daniel had a work exercise all week (12 hour shifts)

Shannon painting her pumpkin (unfortunately she painted the inside as well so little jack'o lantern did not last until the 31 :)

Shannon and Caleb enjoying some pirate booty after trick or treating :)