Looking forward to the Holidays!

With Halloween and the true signs of fall setting in I am getting excited for the Holidays, of course there are somethings I wouldn't mind skipping this year like raking the leaves. On Saturday we decided that we needed to get the leaves raked because we were suppose to get snow Sunday and Monday. Well we spent 4 hours raking until it got dark and were only able to get the leaves raked into piles, we ended up with 57 piles of leaves by the time we were done and decided that we would have to finish moving the piles of leaves down to the garden area on Monday, fortuneately we never did get the snow, but unfortuneately it has rained everyday since and we have still not gotten around to moving the piles, rain or shine we will have to do that on Friday.

Back to my excitement over the Holidays, this last week I have been compiling a list of the menu for Thanksgiving, we will be blessed with Cynthia and Joe, Benji, Timmy, Logan and Luke. Of course the food will be great, but some of the other traditions I am looking forward to is shopping at 4 in the morning the day after with a couple of the kids, which usually awards us some priceless treasures and a good time (there is just something about standing out in the cold for hours waiting to get in to a store to save 50% on a toy or two that really bonds a family)! Also this week I have been working on a special homemade gift for my married children and Darin's sibblings, we have gotten so excited about this project we are even doing it for Darin's Home Teaching Families.

Of course we will miss not having Kerstin's and Brent's families or Matt with us, but know they will be busy making traditions of their own wherever they are and if there is one thing we are grateful for at this time of year is our children and their families whether they can be with us or not.