Thanksgiving Eve

Give thanks with a grateful heart. That is my theme right now and it comes so easily. I sit here the night before Thanksgiving completely at peace with the world. I can look around my home and life and see the many blessings God has giving me. I am so thankful that Jesus is in my life and has been in my life and will be in my life. I can see how He has richly blessed me with my family, friends and life. Just looking around I see his work in bringing together my immediate family, Ben and the boys.

My best friend and husband is fast asleep on the couch next to me. I can truly say from the bottom of my heart I love him more now than ever before. Being a parent has softened him in a way that brings out the best in him. Being 35 now has slowed him a down a teeny tiny bit so that I have a hope of keeping up energy wise. Being married for over 7 years has taught us how to live together peacefully and joyfully. All our moves have continued to make us treasure that our best friend is always there when we get to the new location. It is amazing we gel as well as we do but then again I have always thought that God brought us together. We are complete opposites in so many ways. However I know the mutual love and respect for one another and our love for Jesus and enthusiasm toward life in general makes us a great team.

Upstairs our two small sons snore on. I mean that literally. Those two snore more than old men. While this week we faced our first racist comment head on, I still see a world of good ahead for the boys. It is our job to prepare them to handle the ridiculous mindsets of the world with grace and dignity and not to let it change their perception of who they are. I am overwhelmingly grateful for these two small bundles of joy that God hand picked for us and put in our lives. I would redo EVERY moment my life again, including the painful ones if I were promised these boys. When I think of them, I hear that saying "my cup runeth over". It does. There are no words to describe the depth of my emotions towards them.

My grateful heart resides in an aging body. I don't enjoy the gray hairs, aches, or wrinkles but I do like being 38. I am often the oldest mom around as I hang out with moms of toddlers, but I don't mind. I don't feel older than them. I don't wish to be in my 20's again. I like the calmness that age is bringing to me. I like that I haven't lost the joy for life of my youth but I have lost my immaturity in so many areas.(note I didn't say all... there is always room for growth!) I like that life's challenges have forced me to become the person I am today. I like looking back on my life and being able to admit where I failed and where I succeeded and learn from both. I can't imagine how mellow I will feel at 80.

Tomorrow I will get up and make Thanksgiving dinner for my beautiful family and our friends. While Thanksgiving used to be all about just family for me, the Navy life has taught me it is also about friends becoming your family where ever you are. Our guest list tomorrow is our good friends from Ethiopia, and two new friends we met this week, one from Ghana and one from Mali. It was not intentional but now we are having an American/African Thanksgiving. We will eat the food of the pilgrims and probably lament that lack of spice, but we will celebrate this tradition because it is American. I'll end on that note. While born a British citizen in Ethiopia and raised in Kenya, I am very proud to say that I am American. I am unashamedly proud of this country. I am so grateful for all it has given to me, my husband and my kids. It isn't perfect but which one is:).

So I wish you all a very Happy Thanksgiving as I head to bed to enjoy one of the best things in life and another thing I am always grateful for... a good nights sleep:).

Tell me a story please.

I hear this request all the time. They love fairy tales especially anything with the Big Bad Wolf. I made the mistake of telling The Three Little Pigs when Nati was too young. He listened intently to the whole thing and then burst into tears when I finished. He has been crazy about the Big Bad Wolf ever since. He talks about him at least once a day. He draws and builds houses that are brick all to keep out BB Wolf. If we go into a brick building I will hear with a smile on his face "No Big Bad Wolf." I try to get funny versions of fairy tales with BB Wolf so he learns to laugh at him.

Yared, on the other hand, loves to hear about how we became a family. I can tell the whole story and before I even completely finish he'll want to hear it again. If I leave out important details I get scolded. I get asked to tell so many stories that I have started turning the question on them. Yesterday Nati climbed in my lap and said he wanted a story. I told him to tell me a story and this is what I got. One side note, their orphanage in Ethiopia was called Hope.

"Two little boys at Hope."

"Hope called Mommy Daddy. Say tum (come) Mommy Daddy."

"Mommy Daddy tum Hope."

"Ya Ya Nati Mommy Daddy"

"Fa End"

That's right little buddy all of us together forever!!! "Fa End"

Trip to MI

We had planned to go visit Ben's sister and family in MI for Thanksgiving but plans got changed. Our Brother-in-law got very sick and was in the ICU. We decided to go up a few weeks early and try to be of some help. By the time we got there he was back to work but we managed to get some things done around the house for them and we were there to entertain the kiddos so I do think we helped a bit. The kids had a BLAST. Seriously it was easier to watch all four than to have just two. They are 5, 4,3, and 2 in age and they play so well together. They ran around the house, yard and park like a little gang of trouble. It was so much fun to watch them together. We also avoided any major traffic by traveling on a non holiday weekend so overall it was a great time.

The original plan had been to drive through the night Saturday and arrive Sunday. But thanks to yours truly we had to get a hotel that first night at 12:30. I tried for three hours to sleep while Ben drove but I just couldn't do it. This is the beauty of 7 years of marriage. In year one Ben would have stuck to the plan at all costs but 7 years later he now knows that I am one easy going person until you mess with my sleep (and sometimes my chocolate).

It was totally weird to go into full winter landscape as far as the trees. Our trees are just now in full color with leaves falling in the wind. Driving up and down was like driving in and out of fall. The kids did awesome on the drive. Ben and I knew that our kids would have to be good travelers to survive Navy life. We make road trips fun with unending movies, eating at restaurants, getting Happy Meals and playing tag at rest stops. So far our bribery and brainwashing is working and they get in the van saying, "Road trip woo hoo!!"

Here are some of our adventures in Michigan.

The brat pack. Just kidding they are all great kiddos.

She has the most expressive face.. it was fun to catch some of her moods.
Seriously he gets cuter every week.
Megan got a bag of new clothes while we were there and found these purple sparkly pants irresistible. The only problem is the elastic had fallen out. I caught one of many falling pants episodes as she ran at the park.
Audrey and I bonded when she was just a 10 month old baby. I am not a baby person but she was the easiest going little one. She would just snuggle into your lap and watch life go on around her. To this day she holds a special spot on my heart. Rumor has it she is stubborn but to me she makes sense and I get why she is being stubborn.
The boys LOVE LOVE LOVE little kids and were thrilled to help Audrey even when she didn't want help.

The eyes say it all.
He just cracks me up with this grin.
Audrey won Uncle Ben over too when she was little and he is a sucker for her just like I am.
We had a bonfire one night to burn boxes. The kids thought this was great fun.
These two adore each other. They enter this imaginary world and rarely come out of it.
Sliding on boxes.
On Dad's Birthday we went to the other Grandma's farm. All the kids had a blast on the tractors and Ben was even allowed to give them all rides.
One of my favorite things about Ben is he lets the kids do things that I think are above them. Here he is letting Yared steer.
I love this shot of Yared. He looks like a super model and it captures he sweet natural smile.
Camouflage.

Once again Ben teaching Yared how to do dangerous things safely rather than just banning him from them. I have much to learn in this area:).

With Bethany and Andy's busy schedules it was hard to get them all together for a group shot. We did this right before we took off on Saturday morning. The temperature had dropped over night and so everyone got red noses waiting to have the picture taken and poor Megan was in no mood for pictures as she was sad we were leaving. This is the best I could do with the lighting and emotions involved.

I know I am an awful Mom capturing the tears. He was so heartbroken to say goodbye and wanted us to move to MI. The only good thing about this sadness is he really is catching on that goodbyes are sad but that family always sees each other again. He spent so much of his first few years of life saying goodbye forever so I think it is beginning to sink in that goodbye is normally temporary.

He wasn't the only sad one. I know Beth's feelings so well. When family drives off, you feel all the old homesick boarding school memories try to suffocate you.

But the tears remind us of the great time we had together. It was a simple time of kids, parks, chores and family. It left our kids with a strong bond with their cousins and that is huge to me. It was great to actually be of some help to family and also spend some quality time with Bethany and Andy.

Halloween for my sister

Today is my sister's Birthday. She requested Halloween pictures on the blog so this is a Birthday wish for her:). I must confess to not being stellar with the photography this Halloween. I had a blast with the dress up but just didn't get into the capture-the-moment feeling with the camera. Originally the boys had planned to go as a Knight (Yared) and a Fire dog (Nati). I wasn't exactly sure what the Fire dog was going to look like but I had a feeling it was going to be a dog costume with a Fireman Coat on.

But everything changed due to my ongoing love affair with Craigslist. I was randomly looking around CL and found a lady giving away a bag of boys clothes size 4-7. We drove half an hour to get it but we were so excited by the volume of clothes that the boys and I celebrated our savings and went to lunch together. They are great dates. Once we got home I was looking through the clothes and most of it was great stuff. But I did think a few things were VERY odd. I finally realized they were Halloween costumes. One was a set of camouflage and the other was a pirate outfit. I know... can you believe it, a pirate of all things? This then led us to be a pirate and a Navy man as Nati called himself. We put Dad's old Lt hat on him and he proudly marched around saluting and getting saluted.

Saturday night we met up with friends at the Naval Hospital as they open up a few halls and give out boatloads of candy. This was very fun as they all recognized Nati's rank and laughed hard at it. Sunday our church had a Halloween event which I found interesting but had a good time with. They had a face painter there who did a great job with Yared. Only problem is that Nati somehow missed this part and was about to get upset about it so I threw on a mustache at home. He came out looking a bit scary but... as he is always cute it worked.

This last shot has nothing to do with Halloween at all but it is something we did in Homeschool and I thought it was cute. We traced them and they painted and colored life size Yared and Nati.