Love and Chocolates

That is what I think of when I think of Valentine's Day.  I know that a lot of people hate Valentine's Day and think that it is a made up holiday by companies to sell more chocolates and flowers.  It well may be.  I have never taken the time to learn the origins of Valentine's Day.  I don't really care to know.  I just love the day though.  I mean, who wouldn't love a day that is set aside specifically to show your loved ones how much you care for them?  I love taking this day to spend time with my family and to remind myself why I love them so much.
Growing up, my mom used to make Valentine's Day very special for us.  She used to buy us little boxes of chocolates and write us each a little Valentine's Day card and have them at our spot on the kitchen table when we woke up on Valentine's Day.  That little gesture of love has really stuck with me throughout my life.  I always knew that no matter what, my mom would express her love on Valentine's Day.  Because of this, I have continued the tradition with my kids.  I love to buy them little boxes of chocolates and write them a Valentine from their Mom!  I also buy my kids a Valentine's Day shirt for them to wear on Valentine's Day to remind them to be nice to each other and to show each other how much they love each other.
That being said, I want to wish all of you a very Happy Valentine's Day!!!  I hope that your day is filled with gestures of love from all of those people who are near and dear to you!

The Day After . .

It seems as though I always write a post the day after a big event. Maybe this is because I am so busy during the day OF the big event that I don't get time to actually write.
I LOVE Halloween! I know that it is a day of scary things, however it is still one of my favorite holidays. Maybe it's because it's a day where you can pretend to be anything that you want. Maybe it's a day where you get bagfuls of free candy. I don't know what it is, but I love it!
It's interesting to me that now that I am all grown up I actually find that I love Halloween more than I did when I was a kid. I love helping my kiddies choose out costumes and try to create a "theme" for our family. I love doing a costume photo shoot in the beginning of October so that we can have fun pictures for Christmas time. I love doing my girlies make-up and hair really special so that it looks great on Halloween. I love volunteering in the girls classrooms at their school so I can spend as much time with them on this fun day as possible. I love handing out candy at my door so that I can see all of the neighbor kids' costumes and say "hi" to my friends. I love to sit with my kids and go through their candy and watch how excited they get when they see their favorites. I love taking my kiddies to my parent's house and then visiting their next door neighbor every year. She gets so excited when she sees them and she always saves them a special treat. I love going to my mom's house and drinking apple cider and showing her my kids' costumes.
It's just so much fun right now with my kids at the ages that they are at to be able to celebrate holidays. This year the weather was INCREDIBLE! It was 16 degrees and so the kids only had to wear sweaters when they were trick or treating. It brought back so many memories of when I lived in Dallas and I didn't have to wear any coats when I was trick or treating. I have NEVER had this kind of weather in Canada on Halloween. Because it was so nice, Dustin had a lot of fun and he lead the way for the others to go trick or treating. When we were at my parent's house he just kept on opening candies and eating them. He loved it!! I have a feeling that today he will spend the entire day eating candy. That's okay with me. I love making my kids eat all of their candy on November 1st because then it gets it all out of my house!!!
So now it's time to start looking forward to the next big celebration in my house. . . . Otto's birthday! It just happens to be on the same day as my cousin's birthday which is on Tuesday! So I have a feeling I will be creating another post at that time!!!
I hope you all had a Happy Halloween!!!

Fall Pics

Of course it's that time of year again when everyone goes out to the park to play in the leaves and take pictures. I wasn't planning on taking any traditional pictures this fall, but my mother had other ideas. She called my Aunt Judi and we all met at Bowness Park on Thanksgiving morning to take some pictures. Here they are:

Best Buds!!!

Jen Jen!

My baby sister!
My sister's family!

Every child needs an Uncle who will rough them up a bit!

The Comins at work!

Who doesn't love getting down and dirty in a pile of leaves???

My babies!

These three LOVE to do things together!!! They are my computer babies!!

Jay, Suzanne and Maximus!

My little (okay, not so little any more) family

Mom and Dad

My Family

So there you have it! Our fall family pictures! I was plesantly surprised that we were able to get so many good ones considering it was about 3 degrees outside and the kids were all cold! You can't even see our breath in the photos! WAY TO GO AUNT JUDI!!!

I think that the kids favorite part was going back to Nana's house afterwards while the boys all played football and grandpa went and hit some golf balls. And then we all went out (except for Jenna and Kristin who boogied it back to Edmonton) for dinner at Moxies afterwards.

That was a great way to spend Thanksgiving Day!

Giving Thanks on Thanksgiving

I know that it is totally cliche to do at thankful post for Thanksgiving, but I do know that I would be ungrateful if I didn't do it.
Here are the things I am grateful for right now:

I am grateful that I have been blessed with such a wonderful husband. He is big and he is goofy and he is VERY different from me, but he is my other half. His strengths are my weaknesses and vice versa. He is very laid back and easy going and I love that about him.

I am grateful for my beautiful babies. I have been extremely blessed in this area. I have 6 beautiful babies in my eternal family and each one is my favorite in their own special way.

I am grateful for my family. My parents, brother and sisters (and in-laws). There is nothing I love more in this life than my family and I always look forward to when we can all get together. There is never a dull moment in my family get togethers and I sure do love spending time with my family and Otto's family.

I am grateful that I could live in a free country. I know that many people take this for granted (and I know that I do also), but tomorrow is election day and I am free to go out and vote for whomever I want to. I have the right to make that choice and I know that that is a gift that I have been given. I always vote. I feel it is a privilege to do so.

I am grateful for my warm home. I love my house and I love that it is the perfect house for my young family. I know that we will make many memories in this house and for that I am grateful.

I am grateful that I belong to the church that I belong to. Having a deep faith in my religion has helped enrich my life in ways that I can't even begin to explain. It has pulled me up from the depths of despair and it has helped me soar in times of plenty. I am grateful for the hope, happiness and peace that it brings into my life.

I am grateful for music. I believe that music is a very powerful tool and it can be used for good or bad. It plays a very important role in my life and in the lives of my children. I love sitting in my house and listening as I hear my children in various rooms throughout the house singing various songs or playing different instruments. My favorite sound in the whole wide world is the sound of children singing and I will miss that sound when my children are all grown up.

I am grateful for good friends. Like I said in my previous post I do not have a TON of friends, but the ones that I do have I love forever. I have been blessed throughout my life to have friends who have taught me things, helped me out and just been there whenever I have needed them.

Last, but not least I am grateful for Thanksgiving Day. I love that we have a day set aside to be able to think about what we are grateful for. I believe that I don't do it enough. I do know that when I take the time to be grateful for all of the things that I have been blessed with that I feel happy and loved.

What are YOU grateful for today?

Experiment

Okay, so I just finished digitally scrapbooking my latest album and it said that I could embed it into a webpage. So, I am going to try. I am not very good at these types of things, so hopefully it will work. . . okay. . . here it goes!!

Alright, so it didn't work. . . how about this link??
http://www.heritagemakers.com/?event=projectBrowse&projectId=192a1786-719b-443d-940f-9d2e74513bc4&productId=5&projectSponsor=294900

A Halloween Fit for a Queen (or 3 princesses and a knight in shining armor).

Yesterday was Halloween. . . . I love holidays, but they always seem to be so much work also. Yesterday the kids had so much fun, and that seems to be what this is all about. I LOVE watching my kids get excited about holidays and I will miss that when they get older!
For Halloween the girls were all princesses and Dustin was a knight in shining armor. It was adorable! The girls all had school parties and I made "Monster Brain Dip" for them to eat there. They all got candy from their teachers, friends and bus driver! Their candy bags were almost full by the time they got home and we hadn't even started going trick or treat yet.
Dustin's highlight of the day was when the two of us went and bought a Halloween cake. It was a chocolate cake and it had a picture of a pumpkin on it. He wouldn't stop touching it and calling it pumpkin cake, so by the time it got home. . . . well it didn't quite look the same. . . . but the kids didn't care!!
This year, instead of candy, we decided to hand out mini playdough. It worked great!! Otto took the girls out with the neighbor kids and Dustin and I stayed home and played playdough. Caroline tired out after about 8 houses, so she came and joined us. It was really fun! We didn't have very many kids come to our house for Halloween, so we still have tons of playdough left. . . better than candy if you ask me!!
After trick or treating was done, we went to my parents' house. It is something that we do every year and my mom seems to really like it. My brother Jason, his wife Suzanne and their puppy Max were there. They had even made a costume for Max and it was adorable!!! It was a little dragon costume!! Max hated it, but we all couldn't get over how cute it was! The kids had alot of fun at my parents house and we didn't end up leaving until after 9:30. So. . . I kept them home from school today because I figure that it will be easier for me to deal with 4 sleep-deprived, sugar high children than it will be for their teachers to have to deal with them. I guess that that is also one of the parts of having a holiday. . . the day after!!