In the Spirit of Thanksgiving

Abraham Lincoln was a wonderful man. It was he who made Thanksgiving a national holiday! Here is part of his Thanksgiving Proclamation:

"We have been the recipients of the choicest bounties of heaven; we have been preserved these many years in peace and prosperity; we have grown in number, wealth and power as no other nation has ever grown. But we have forgotten God. We have forgotten the gracious hand, which preserved us in peace and multiplied and enriched and strengthened us, and we have vainly imagined, in the deceitfulness of our hearts, that all these blessings were produced by some superior wisdom and virtue of our own. Intoxicated with unbroken success, we have become too self-sufficient to feel the necessity of redeeming and preserving grace, too proud to pray to the God that made us. It has seemed to me fit and proper that God should be solemnly, reverently and gratefully acknowledged, as with one heart and one voice, by the whole American people. I do therefore invite my fellow citizens in every part of the United States, and also those who are at sea and those who are sojourning in foreign lands, to set apart and observe the last Thursday of November as a day of Thanksgiving and praise to our beneficent Father who dwelleth in the heavens." - October 3, 1863

Wow! I hope we will all take time to remember where all our blessings come from this Thanksgiving.

Also, here is a great clip about Thanksgiving that I thought was neat. Enjoy! Hope you all have a very happy Thanksgiving!!

Thanksgiving and Family Pictures...

It was a wonderful Thanksgiving!! We were so blessed to have all of our family members home at the same time. We had a crazy, whirlwind week that just didn't seem long enough. Chelsea was here for four days - and we enjoyed her so much! We ate (of course), watched movies, visited grandparents and friends, took family pictures, had many deep conversations into the wee hours of the morning and had lots of good laughs! My girls don't get to see their aunt Chelsea enough...but they just ate her up!! They get pretty attached to people and it made me sad when they woke up the morning Chelsea left and they were searching the house for her. "Where Chelsea go??" Heartbreaking...especially when it is unknown how soon they may get to see her again. They had fun playing with BrookLynn and Elle, of course. Their little eyes would light up whenever it was time to go see them. Pure excitement! It made my heart happy.

We were so lucky to have my family invited over to Leithead's for Thanksgiving dinner. It was so nice to only have to eat one meal and not have to race back and forth between families all day. Thank you Marla!!! Dinner was delicious...and as usual, we ate too much. In fact I am still eating too much!

As you can see in our family pics, Kacee made my hair beautiful again. Thank you, thank you, thank you!!!! Matty even got a trim...and Anastyn got her very first hair cut!! She was so excited. She went around for the next two days pointing to her hair and saying "hair!". Pretty cute. Kyle even got a hair cut (unwillingly)...but since it was after family pics you can't see...he has much shorter hair now. (Thank you, babe!! Love it!)

And, as I could have predicted, Kristin and I were only able to get one of our planned projects done. There is never enough time!! We completed the tu-tu's for the girls. That's it. Heaven knows how we are supposed to get 12 months worth of calendar pages for each of our mothers done in...lets see....24 days (we have done that before...but that was when we lived in the same town!!) I think we will have to enroll our moms in the "calendar page-of-the-month club" and just get one to them before its time to flip to the next month! Ha ha!!!

Now December has officially begun and I am in the middle of a Christmas decoration train wreck!! I did get the tree finished today...well, sort of. I usually put a whole bunch of ribbon on the tree, but I searched through all of my totes and boxes...no ribbon. I vaguely remember getting frustrated while removing the ribbon last year and throwing it all away! I must have been mad! Do you know how expensive ribbon is? So...the tree is finished...minus the ribbon.

Oh...and my Willow Tree Nativity (one of my most prized posessions)...well, when I started taking the figurines out of their boxes, I was sickened to find that three of them were broken. I wanted to cry! So I had to get the glue out last night and try to mend them. I hate moving...it is always your favorite things that get broken.

And then....grrrrrrr....ALL of my Christmas candles were melted!! Yeah...last January after I took all the Christmas stuff down, Kyle decided to put some of the totes up in the attic, which seemed like a good enough idea. We just didn't think it through to August in St. George, Utah. Uh-huh...candles don't keep their shape in 110 degree weather.

Anyways...its all good. Hopefully I can finish decorating tonight so that it doesn't look like a bomb went off in the living room anymore. And then I can start making a list of all the other things that need to be done by December 25th...oh boy...it's going to be a long list!!

Hope everyone enjoyed their Thanksgiving. I know that I have a lot to be thankful for...and more than anything...I am thankful that I was able to spend the week with all of our loved ones!! Enjoy December...hope it is {mAgiCaL}!!

I'm So ExCiTed!!!!!

I can't wait to get through this week! Thanksgiving is coming up, so we are looking forward to LOTS of family coming into town!! I have butterflies in my stomach just thinking about it! Since we moved back to Lovell, life's pace has slowed down quite a bit. So anything different - anything at all - gets me extremely excited. Not to mention I haven't seen some of my favorite people in the world for a very long time!!!

**I really wanted to put some of those countdown widgets in my post for a couple things that I am really anxious for...but apparantly you can't do that! You can only put them on your sidebar, which I didn't really want to do. I just wanted to have them in the body of my post. So - if someone knows how to do this, please let me know!!**

So, what am I so excited about?? I have not seen my sister since she moved to L.A. in MARCH!!! We get to pick Chelsea up at the Cody Airport next Tuesday!! I just cannot wait!! We get to have her for about 4 days. We always have so much fun when we get together. We never really go anywhere or do anything in particular...we like to veg...but we ALWAYS laugh really hard. That's my favorite part!! And it will be fun for the girls to hang out with her...they don't get to see her enough.

This coming Friday, Kristin, Eli and their girls are coming up! We get to have them here for about a week. We are going to have SO MUCH fun!! We can't ever get enough of these guys. We saw eachother on a daily basis when we were in St. George...and we have been going through some rather painful withdrawals since we left. Kristin and I were like the dynamic duo together...we crafted and cooked and all kinds of fun things!! But apart, we lack inspiration. So, needless to say, we have quite a few projects lined up to do while they are here. We will be scrapping (calendars for our moms Christmas gifts), making tu-tu's for the girls, and without a doubt, whipping up some of our famous carameled apples!!! Yummmmmmmmmy!

We are also hoping to get into the long-awaited, highly anticipated Twilight Movie!! We just cannot wait! Now, if I were still in Utah, I would have gone and bought our tickets long before now just to make sure we would be able to see it opening night. But....here in Wyoming....things just don't work that way!! I went to Cody the other day to see if I could get tickets in advance....no way, no how!!! What a bummer! So, we will just have to drive all the way to Powell or Cody and hope we get in!! Ha, ha!

And there are still more reasons for me to be suffering with anticipation!!! My beautiful sister-in-law, Kacee, and her husband will be coming Monday or Tuesday. Everyone jumps for joy when Kacee comes to town because she always pampers us when she's here (she is a beautician)!! Poor girl kind of gets taken advantage of...but that's only because she does such a good job! We love her and always look forward to being made pretty again!! I am in dire need of a haircut!!

We also get to see Kari and Tyler again sometime next week. They are so much fun to have around. Kyle and Tyler love to go coyote hunting together! The girls go crazy when they get to hang out with "Kiwi and Tyla". They get showered with attention and eat it up!! We have been lucky because we were able to spend time with them two weekends in a row over the deer hunt. It was way fun...and we can't wait for them to get here from South Dakota!

So...I hope this week goes really fast, cause I'm ready for the FUN to begin!!!