Happy Thanksgiving!

On this Thanksgiving Day, I am thankful for our God and my Church.  I am thankful for our Pastor, who just got diagnosed with Prostrate Cancer and the Grace he has with God's plan.  I am thankful for my creative abilities that allow me to make the church's bulletin boards a little more inviting.

I am thankful for my Husband who has come back to life in rare form these days!  He is fun, energetic, and a joy to have around my kids and me.  Who knew he had such animation and humor in him?  He works so hard every day to support and love us; he's always trying to make life better.

I am thankful for my kids, 3 little miracles.  These kids are so smart, giving, and loving.  Thankfully they also got spirit and a fight in them that I don't always like during their childhood years.  I know that these traits will help them become independent, strong young people in the world.

I am thankful for all my pets past and present.  I LOVE my kitten, although she is getting quite huge!  She is teaching me patience as she is NOT a lap cat but will occasionally come up to me, meow at me in the shower, or lay by me on my bed to show me that she does care!

I am also thankful for both sets of my parents, without them life would be so hard!  The older I get the smarter they become!  They are always ready to love us and their grandkids, even if we are happy, tired, or sick.  I am thankful!

Daisy Meeting

Ella had a Daisy meeting last Thursday.  The girls decided they want to rotate houses for the meetings.  The girls made sunflower for craft.

They sang songs and learned about their Promise Circle too.

Camden had a sleepover with Mommy that night with a snack in bed, a game and a Movie!  He had a sleepover last night with Grandma Bonnie.  I told him I made fish, Couscous and broccoli for dinner and he excitedly told me that HE had spaghetti, garlic toast and chocolate pudding!

Snow Prep!

We are getting ready to take a short snow vacation this weekend and the twins found some entertainment with the suitcases!

I thought it was too cute!  It's funny that they are little enough to sit inside, yet big enough to hold each other's weight and roll each other around!

Erik LOVES his snowpants.  I love how he looks in his snowpants!

All ready to go, but not packed yet!

School Conferences!

We had Camden's school conference at 7:10am this morning!  The twins had their conferences today at Noon.  All 3 kids are doing excellent work and received straight As!  We couldn't be more proud of them!  Camden and Ella need to not talk as much in class though (we thought it would be Erik!)

The school does student led conferences where the kids show us their portfolio of work and we can ask questions as we go.  We can see the improvements on paper over time and then the teacher goes over the report card.

I stayed for his Thankful celebration and he shared his turkey puppet with the class.  His turkey was wearing a Minecraft outfit and had a full set of teeth in it's mouth!

Then Brian brought the twins to meet us for their conferences.  I brought all 3 lunchboxes and a stack of new library books for the 2 who weren't talking with the teachers.  Ella got to go first.

She had good behavior reports and is a helper in class.  Here is her monster.

Her Fall tree.

Her owl.

Her teacher complimented her on her classroom map, saying it was the BEST of all the students!

Finally it was Erik's turn.  His reading level is off the charts and the school cannot really meet his needs as the 1st grade class has reading the mornings.  The staff are looking into some other ideas on how to best challenge him...

Erik's monster.

Erik's tree.

Erik's Owl.  They asked us to have him work on printing his first and last name with one capital letter and the rest lowercase letters on the same line.
I couldn't be more proud of my 3 Genius Children!

Girl Scouts

Last Saturday Cousin invited us to her troop's pottery painting service project!  Ella loved seeing Cousin in her Girl Scout uniform!

The troop bought 100 bowls for the girls to paint and then give away to needy families.  Ella choose her color paints and got down to work for over an hour!

 I decided families in need wanted a yellow bowl and got painting too!  Jennifer took this picture, I love how Ella and I both have our heads tilted the same!  It was fun.

AWANA Fundraiser

We had a Pizza fundraiser night to raise funds to send to our Missionaries.  I didn't bring my camera, but Brian was able to catch this sweet moment on his work phone!  I love all the church kids just hanging out enjoying each other.  I love the big smiles even though their money had run out.

Fence

The twins were so excited to see the fencing man at school installing the play ground's fence!  Only the bark dust/rubber padding and then they can finally play.

A Few More Boards...

I realized that today was the last weekday I had before this Sunday's service and only one classroom did not have their  bulletin boards done!  This is Camden's Sunday School class (1st &2nd Graders.)  His teacher wanted space to put up their work.

This is the other side of their classroom in the back.  The Biblical reference is below the brush, Eph 2:10.  I made this one kid work friendly as well.!

I also covered Lisa's office door with this life-size thank-you note!
(I am not sure if I already posted this?)  It gets the most comments out of all my boards; I think because it is in plain view not a classroom? 

Bulletin Boards

I have a new non-paying part time job for the next few weeks as the Church's Bulletin Board Designer!  This once was my 2nd board for the library.

The Pastor wanted the Missionary ones done, this was just the map hanging on the wall before.

This is the adult's Missionary board downstairs.  Pastor can just switch out the old emails with the new ones now.

This is the 3-5th grade classroom's new board.  Each circle has something like "You need a cavity filled or Your best friend moved away, etc."

This is the other 3-5th grade board.  I stapled the spinners on the board and put extra playing pieces on top so the kids could actually play the game too!  It's so much fun to create art on a large scale and hopefully impact some of the church youth as well.
 

Cub Scout Stampede

We took Ben with us to Cub Scout Stampede at Cub World this year.  We fed the boys lunch in the van on the way!

They chose archery first, this was Erik's first time participating too.

The Ben chose BB gun shooting.

3 happy and tired boys!

Of course no trip to Cub World is complete without running around the fort!