A Thanksgiving Prayer

I'm thankful for a lot of things.  My family and I are blessed in so many ways.  Tonight I am especially thankful for this little girl and the sweet prayers that she offers at bedtime when we kneel together as a family.

We had a wonderful Thanksgiving this year.  It was pretty relaxed and low-key, which was fine with me.  We slept in, had cold cereal for breakfast (per Grace's request!), then enjoyed a yummy Thanksgiving meal with the Dodd/Austin family.  The girls and I came home for naps and movies while Justin drove to College Station to watch the Texas A&M game.  His friend, who we went to the World Series with, was able to get tickets for the (possibly last) game against UT.

At bedtime tonight, Grace declared that it was her turn to say the prayer.  Fine with me!  She's been stubborn and refusing lately when it's been her turn.  I just had to document the words of her prayer because it was hilarious.

Grace: "Dear Heavenly Father, we thank thee for this wonderful day and the good food.  Thank thee for mommy being nice.  Please bless us to be good.  Please bless Grandma Erlenbusch because her back hurts really bad.  Please bless daddy to be safe and he's gone a long time.  Please bless Kenzie because she's my friend and she can come to my house to play.  Please bless Dolphin to be good and play nice with Cinderella.  Please bless Kenzie's daddy to be the king of the monkeys.  In the name of Jesus Christ, amen. Oh, and please bless me and mommy and Claire to sleep good."

WHAT???  I have no idea where she got the 'king of the monkeys' idea or why she wants Kenzie's daddy to take the throne. 

Also, she has an imaginary pet dolphin named Polkadots who goes with us everywhere.  She buckles Polkadots in the car seat between she and Claire every time we get in the car.  It's pretty funny to listen to her 'play' with Polkadots.  I love her vast imagination and that she's not afraid/embarrassed to show it to us.  Also, Cinderella is her friend and usually plays at our house, but lately she's been spending a lot of time at Kenzie's house.

Just An Ordinary Day

I blog a lot about what we do when we have a special outing, holiday, or visitor.  I thought it would be a good idea to blog about the ordinary, every day things that go on around here too.  Now, these pictures weren't all taken on the same day, but it's a good depiction of what happens in our home on ordinary days.

 Justin fell asleep one afternoon while I was out and about.  This is what he woke up to.  Grace did an awesome job of putting my make-up on the right parts of her face.  It took me two days and a full bottle of eye make-up remover to get the mascara off her eyelashes. 

I hope these two will grow up to be best friends.  For now, these sweet moments where they show love for one another don't come around too often.  There's a lot of screaming in our house. 

Claire laid on the floor coloring for about 30 minutes one evening.  I love that she's getting to the age where some things can keep her attention for decent amounts of time. 

This girl loves the bath tub.  I find her like this at least once a day.  She just climbs right in and yells at me, "I WANT TO TAKE A TUBBY!"

One day I turned on the TV in my room while I was getting ready so Claire could watch Micky Mouse Clubhouse (her ALL TIME favorite right now.  This girl is crazy for Mickey!)  I had a laundry basket on the floor full of clean clothes and she just climbed right in and laid down like it was a little bed just for her.  When I saw her she looked at me and said, "Hi mommy, I'm laying down."  She was quite proud of herself.

Like I said before, Claire is crazy for Mickey.  All day long I hear her saying, "I wanna watch Mickey Mouse!"  She sat on the step stool holding her Minnie Mouse doll and watched the entire 1 hour episode of Mickey's Space Adventure.

So there it is.  Ordinary days at home with the kids.

Grandma and Grandpa Came to Visit

My parents came for a visit at the first of the month.  It had been since Claire was born that my mom came to visit, and for my dad it had been over 3 years!  We were so happy to have them here.  We didn't do a whole lot (really, what is there to do in Gilmer?).  We spent a lot of time at home just hanging out and playing.  We missed them as soon as they left.  Claire really took a liking to my dad (finally) and was so happy to just sit in the chair with him and watch TV.

We drove up to Pittsburg one day to Efurds Orchards for some homemade peach ice cream

(that's Grace playing peek-a-boo behind the tree)

We ate some yummy bbq

Grace was LOVING those ribs!

Justin and I left the girls at home with my parents for a couple hours and when we returned they said the girls had been so good.  Yeah.  SO good.  This is what the back of Grace's bedroom door looked like.  The front wasn't quite so bad.

Luckily, it was Canton weekend while my parents were here.  We spent most of the day at the flea market.  Grace begged us for hours to ride the "ferris wheel." We finally gave in and she loved it.

All in all, it was a great week.  It was certainly too short, but still great.  We can't wait for their next visit.

Opportunities To Do Good

During the April 2011 General Confrence, Elder Eyring challenged each stake to have a day of service to commemorate the 75th anniversary of the church's welfare system.  You can read the talk here.  Our stake chose October 29th for our day of service.  Our ward did a lot of painting around the town square and the Chamber of Commerce, as well as trash clean up.  The striping on the steps around the courthouse needed some repainting.  Grace and Claire got in on the action too.  The kids had so much fun helping dad. 

Claire decided to take a juice break and sat down on one of the freshly painted steps.

Halloween 2011

This year, Justin was out of town the week prior to Halloween so the girls and I headed over to carve pumpkins with several other families from church.  Claire was totally freaked out by all the people and the unfamiliar setting.  Grace was loving cleaning out the pumpkin, until she saw a bunch of kids playing on a playground/swing set.  We had a good time, but Justin is definitely the pumpkin carver in the family.  I didn't even get a picture of our carved jack-o-lantern.    

 Jaici was so sweet and tried to make Claire happy

 Grace diggin' in to her pumpkin

On the 29th we had a tri-ward trunk or treat at the church.  Grace is really into the Pinkalicious books, so when I found this dress on clearance a few months ago I knew she had to be Pinkalicious for Halloween.

 Here she is playing 'pin the nose on the jack-o-lantern'.  That guy next to her is supposed to be a deviled egg.  I thought it was pretty clever.



In the books Pinkalicious has an imaginary unicorn named Goldilicious, Goldie for short.   I made up a unicorn costume for Claire so she could be Grace's little sidekick.  Below is a picture of one of the book covers with Pinkalicious and Goldie.  We couldn't get a good picture of Claire.  She was the cutest unicorn EVER!  I even made her a golden mane and tail with pink flowers.  I might have to dress her up in it again just for a photo shoot. 



World Series 2011

Justin and I had the opportunity to go to game 3 of the world series this year in Dallas.  Justin's friend Chris was able to get us tickets with fantastic seats.  Chris was an umpire for 8 years so we had a fun time listening to baseball stories throughout the evening.  Unfortunately, our Texas Rangers lost that night to the St. Louis Cardinals, but not without a lot of really great hitting.  We were able to witness Pujols' three home runs that night, the first one opening the game.  We left after the 7th inning when the score was 14-7.  We were pretty disappointed by the loss, but we had a fantastic time anyways.

 Ronnie Dunn sang the National Anthem and during the song they rolled out the American and Texas state flags.  It was an awesome sight.

 This is the view from our seats (during batting practice)