Happy Thanksgiving

We are busy beavers around the homestead today. Cleaning and baking. My mom is preparing the turkey and dressing and I told her I would take care of the rest.
So today I am making fruit salad, oatmeal cookies and a turtle pumpkin pie. It's a new recipe I am trying. I might pick up a pumpkin pie just to be on the safe side. :)
Tomorrow I will get up early and crockpot green beans and corn, roast carrots, broccoli, and cauliflower, and bake a sweet potato casserole.
I love to cook for the holidays.
Saturday evening we will be going to the Light Parade on the River here in our town. People decorate their boats and then float up and down the river. It's a lot of fun. Especially when the weather cooperates and it's nice and chilly. :)
One day next week Dh and I will drop the kids off at my mom's early and then we will get most of our Christmas shopping done. I was going to go online and do it all, but the prospect of a day out with my honey was more than I could fathom. So our excuse is Christmas shopping. I can't wait. Hopefully since we are going early in the month on a weekday it won't be to bad.


In just a few days we will be celebrating my mother in laws birthday here at my house. Roy's sisters are coming so it will be a fun time. I'm not sure of the menu as his sisters want to plan all that. My plan is to put up our fall decorations tomorrow evening and pull out our Christmas decorations. I will decorate through the weekend and be ready for the party next Saturday.
I think I might plan a birthday party for myself this year as well. I have been wanting to have a night of desserts and games for all of our friends. I might just do that on my birthday which falls two days after Christmas.
Our anniversary falls on December 15 and Roy and I are looking into affordable options for a fun time. I am continually amazed at how our budget is met every month and even stretched to allow some fun things. God is awesome!
Lots of fun and exciting things going on in these next two months. I love the hustle and bustle of the holidays. But I also enjoy the coziness and togetherness that this holiday season invites.
One night we will turn on the AC and have a fire in our Florida fireplace. It's tradition. LOL

Hope you all have a wonderful Thanksgiving!

Be Blessed!

Three sisters

Sisters through and through, that's what my girls are. They laugh together, cry together, argue with one another, and fight to the death for the other. Sisters. I never had a blood sister growing up. Fortunately I found some wonderful older girls who semi-took the role.

I remember not long after I got engaged I emailed Roy's three sisters. I told them how excited I was to finally have sisters. Oh, if I only knew then what that would mean.

Various family squabbles through the years have put people in and out of touch with one another. The last time we were all together was in 2001 when the siblings came together for a picture session for their parents.
Through it all Ellen, the oldest, was a rock. She kept up with everyone. Her sisters talked to her daily. Through Ellen we found out what was happening with nieces and nephews. She was the peacemaker. She hated the fighting.

This past weekend I watched two sisters trying to cope and learn to function without the third sister. It was heartbreaking. I watched a little brother look around lost and dejected. I watched him cling to his two remaining sisters, one who'd refused to speak to him for years. Watched these three siblings remember the one who held them all together.

I thought about my three little girls. I wondered what adult life held for them and their relationships. I prayed and prayed for the three little sisters that I'd left back home. My girls. Would they watch out for one another? Would they protect one another? I watch them even now and know that they will.

I think about the sister gone. Taken from the lives of her little sisters and baby brother. She has through death accomplished one thing that I know she hoped to always accomplish. Unity. She left behind sisters and a brother who understand the importance of one another now.

At Thanksgiving this year we will all come together again with our families to remember the lost sister. Brother and sisters will be thankful for one another. For time spent together with families.

Thanks Ellen!

I am Thankful

I will be super busy over the next few days getting ready to visit friends out of town for the holiday. I wanted to take a moment and be thankful!First I am so thankful to Jesus Christ who died on the cross so that I could live in heaven forever. I am thankful that He knows my name. He knows everything about me..and still.. HE loves me! I am thankful that I am free to proclaim His name as loud as I can to one and all and I don't have to be worried that those words will be my last because I am breaking a law.

I am thankful for the brave people who came before me. First the ones who founded this great country for religious freedom! The ones who were brave enough to walk into a new land and set up camp so that they would be free to worship the God of the Bible the way they believed He should be worshipped. I can not even imagine the first years of our country. How unbelievably scared and lonely some must have felt. They moved on through those years though and became pioneers of something great! Then, for the ones who fought to free our country from the oppression of England. To give us even more freedom! To the men who died. To the families who suffered. And of course to the men and women who still fight today so that we can keep the freedoms those brave men fought for so long ago!

I am thankful for my husband. OH! I am so thankful for him! When he walks in that door at night my whole day is complete. He makes me laugh. He is strong and brave and protecting and... AMAZING! I am thankful for these beautiful children God has blessed me with. I look at them and can not believe that God loves me enough to bless me so much with them! I am thankful for my mom, my brother, my grandparents, my aunts and uncles, my cousins... I am thankful to be part of a great family where I am loved and accepted and supported. I am thankful that my parents and grandparents have given me a godly heritage. They took me to church. They prayed for me. They raised me up!

I am thankful for my friends. Oh, I could go on and on about what great friends I have. I have my Tuesday chicks! I have my church family. I have my friends who live in other states now. I have my friends from highschool and single days. I am blessed with the best friends. Girls, who know that my DH and kids rank highest and support and understand that. Girls, who understand when I don't call them every day. I love you guys! Thanks for putting up with me!

I am thankful for the friends I have met online. Ladies who are willing to share their wisdom and insight with someone who does not have a clue. I am so grateful for all the ideas you guys put out there. It helps me so much!

All in all I am so blessed! To each of you I want to say..

HAPPY THANKSGIVING!

So much....

To be thankful for! My posts here lately have been a little on the... well, opinionated side! ;) I just thought I would balance it all out.....
I was reading somewhere recently, I think at A Holy Experience, about a Thanksgiving tradition.
It involved picking a verse of thanksgiving for the year, decorating a box with that verse, and then filling the box throughout the year with thoughts of thanksgiving and gratitude. The family contributes to the box as well as any guests who feel led. Sometimes people drop an offering of thanksgiving into the pot. At the end of the year (or the following Thanksgiving) all of the words of thanks and read aloud by the family. The coins are collected and put in as an offering to some charity or the church. Then the notes are burned as a tangible offering to God. Or least that's how I understood it.
What a beautiful tradition.
When we think of what we have to be thankful for every day it completely blows my mind.
God does not have to give me times of laughter amidst the struggles, but he does.
He does not have to wake me up with the song Jesus Loves Me as preformed by my 2 year old at the top of his lungs, but he does.
He does not have to let me find a pack of meat in the back of the freezer just when I thought it was all gone, but he does.
It's the little things. The hugs of a child, the sweet moments when everyone is getting along, the secret smile of my husband that lets me know he still loves me, the email from a friend to encourage... the little things.
Be thankful.

Be Blessed!