many things to be thankful for

Thanksgiving Day!  We spent the day at mom and dad's house.  It was the first time that we could enjoy this holiday with family and sleep in our own beds at night!  We joined mom and dad for church in the morning and ate a delicious traditional meal for dinner with Ryan, Heidi, Kerry and their girls.  It was hard not to have Rodney or my grandpa there with us.  Grandma, Jim, Lavonne and Nathan also ate with us.  And later Janelle and her boyfriend, Brenda, Breanna and Courtney came as well.  It was a relaxing, fun day.  Our lives are richly blessed!

Enjoying the unseasonably warm weather!

We had fun looking through the ads in preparation for our shopping day on Friday.

On Saturday we drove to the roller skating rink in Sheldon and took the boys skating for the first time.  Dorian and Levi did great since they had never skated before.  And I had a blast!!!  I can't wait to take them again.  :)

 

Nearly Thanksgiving...already

This is Dorian's preschool class.  They had an officer come for a visit one day.

Snacktime at preschool!  :)  Dorian has been doing really well with preschool this year for which I am so thankful!  He is often excited to tell me about some of the things that he does there.

Grandpa and Grandma Tintle sent the boys bells for their bikes and immediately upon opening them, they ran outside to try them out.  :)

It was the day before Thanksgiving and everything was covered with white frost.  It was beautiful.  I STILL have yet to see a flurry of snow fall here.  I think I may just be excited for the first snowfall.  :)

We made the stuffing to have for our Thanksgiving dinner.  It was fun to have the boys help us!  It really was a family effort.  :)  The boys are good helpers in the kitchen.

Raking leaves

Since we didn't have piles of leaves to rake at our house, we took our rakes over to Ryan and Heidi's house one afternoon and had a blast raking huge piles of leaves and watching the kids jump in them.  Molly was hilarious!  She was so hyper and just charged her way through the leaf piles.  She was having just as much fun as the kids.

a new puppy!

It was a Saturday morning, October 29, and we had talked previously many times about getting a puppy for the boys.  Unexpectedly that morning, I called over to the Dog House to ask what kinds of dogs they had and decided to go and look at them for something to do.  :)  Well...we came home with a 3 pound, 8 week old, poodle/bichon puppy.  We named her Molly.  :)  The boys were running all over the backyard with her when we got home.  It was precious!

At the pet store, we were debating between 2 different dogs and Levi was very certain that he wanted the white puppy.  He carried her all around the store.  Levi tends to be pretty decisive.  :)

Dorian carries Molly around everywhere.  I found him laying Molly on the 3rd bookshelf from the floor, starting to walk away when I informed him that it wasn't a safe place for her to sleep.  :)  Can't believe that she stayed sleeping when he then put her on the bottom bookshelf.  :)

We had lots of visitors come over just to meet Molly.  :) 

All of the cousins took turns helping Molly get her first bath.  :)

We bought her a new little bed!

Dorian was looking at Molly and said, "I love you the best...oh...I shouldn't say that."  He looked with a concerned face at me and I thought he was going to say that he loved me the best  (I was hoping that I still ranked above the dog :), but instead said, "I love God the best."  I know he loves his new puppy, I know he loves me, and I'm so thankful that he loves God the best!

The Fire Chief & the Postman

I decided to buy the boys costumes this year for Halloween and figured that they would have fun dressing up with them.  I narrowed down the selection and Dorian picked to be a Postman and Levi chose to be a Firefighter.  We went to a party sponsored by one of the churches in town where the boys played lots of games and won some fun prizes to take home.  We ate a free supper, didn't have to wait in long lines to play all of the games, and the boys picked out a reasonable amount of prizes with the tickets that they won.  Most of the things that they took home were not candy.   When we left Nathan said that it was the best experience that he's ever had on Halloween.  :)

The boys were excited to see our neighbor, Micah, there.  They had just played with him outside the day before.  :)  We also saw Aniah, Eden and many other friends that we've met since we've moved here.

Aren't they adorable!

Colored Leaves

I was pushing the boys on the swings one sunny, beautiful afternoon and was struck by how beautiful our birch tree was against the clear blue sky.  Since it is our first Fall in our new house, I went in to get the camara and photographed some of the trees around our house.  The boys wanted to be in some of them.  :)

This is the view from our patio.  The road that you see was put in since we've moved here and there are 6 new houses that have gone up already!  We can still see fields and a barn from our back window which I love, but someday it will be filled in with new houses.

 The boys found out that these bushes have little berries on them so they were making berry soup.  :)

Looking down our street, you can see there are still empty lots...but that will be changing soon with all of the building that is happening.

These aren't real leaves....but it was fun to get a little creative and make this candle holder at MOPS.  :)