Our Little Tree

Many weeks ago we made this gratitude tree on an afternoon that our dear friend (and girls' godmother C) came over to spend a leisurely Sunday with us. It's easy in our family for other fall traditions to get momentarily eclipsed by Halloween festivities, since we love planning out our costumes and our annual party so much that we spend weeks and weeks doing it. Okay, I confess that this year several of my friends and I got WAY into the costume planning and may have started kicking around some ideas back in August. But since there's really no better season to reflect upon what we're thankful for, this little tree caught my eye one day while shopping at Target.

So among the acorns and the leaves, we have our family on the tree. We also included grandparents, aunts (especially the three that just came from Ohio to spend a long weekend with the kids), godparents, and school friends. The kids enjoyed picking out the pictures with us, especially the picture of my parents from my dad's graduation back in the 60's ("Who's THAT?" they asked.) It was relaxing to assemble the tree. Ry helped with the acorn assembly. And because the tree is a bit flimsy, we're reminded of its presence almost every day when the girls knock it over and then have to put all the people back on it!

I guess I've taken it for granted that along with saying grace before meals and occasional bedtime prayers, the kids will often say what they are thankful for as well. Ry's list last year included "biking", "school", "family", "God" and "yoga"....talk about a non sequitur!

Hooping!

I'm grateful for a lot of things these past few weeks. We had another round of sickness last week, and it was inconvenient, but we got through it. Friends of ours have had far worse sicknesses such as pneumonia and what appears to be the entero virus or something similar.

I did try my hand at taking some pictures on K's old 30D, and it was a lot of fun. In the last two weeks I've taken over 1000 shots of the kids, a birthday party, baseball game, and the school walkathon. I'm learning a LOT such as experimenting with whether to control the aperture versus shutter speed. K is excited for me to try his shoe flash but I'm not sure I'm ready for that yet!

In the midst of everything I'm constantly being entertained by the kids. The girls have hilarious things to say most days, although they are often very loud, talking constantly, trying to talk over each other, and then yelling at each other, which results in me feeling like I may be going deaf some days. Many days I must sound like a drill sargaent, barking out orders on who is allowed to talk next, such as "A stop talking for a minute! C you go first but keep it short so A can have a turn!"

Ry and I have also had some crazy fun together. One day we played basketball at his school playground with a bouncy red ball and it turned into a full court 1-on-1 game. I would say our skill level is comparable, even given my height advantage. Then we decided the other day to pick up some hula hoops. I've always wanted to be able to hula hoop and could never do more than 2-3 rotations. We watched a bunch of youtube videos and practiced a lot. I got a larger one (that's actually weighted for working out) and finally got the hang of it! I got up to 3 minutes of hooping today. I'm sure that I'm quite a sight to behold. But I feel like it could be a great indoor fitness activity we could all do together. Or perhaps I'm just reverting to things that I never really experienced in my childhood!