An Attitude of Gratitude: Our Month of Thanksgiving

We really wanted the children to focus on gratitude in the month of November as a lead in to the Holiday Season.  To help accomplish this we held weekly family home evenings in which various aspects of thankfulness were discussed (what is gratitude, what are we grateful for, what are ways to show our gratitude).  At the beginning of the month Dan sketched the outline of a tree on butcher paper.  We spent every dinner throughout the month writing one thing each day we were thankful for (without repeats) onto a paper leaf and then attaching it to our Thankful Tree.  This really brought a nice spirit into our home.  By Thanksgiving our tree was packed with leaves!

The kids had a lot of fun participating in thier various school Thanksgiving Celebrations.  Weston's preschool held a potluck Thanksgiving feast and Cicialy's first grade class put on a Thanksgiving play.  She had two parts: a cold and hungry pilgram and a narrator.  She was amazing!  She really conveyed her emotions to the audience by shivering and quivering her voice.  We may have a drama queen on our hands!

We hosted Thanksgiving at our house this year.  Our friends the Richins and the missionaries came over for a mid afternoon dinner followed by games.  We had so much fun playing minute to win style games.  It was hilarious watching everyone trying to accomplish the tasks. It may just have to become a tradition!

Blessings

I couldn't think of a more perfect way to start off this month of remembering our blessings and giving thanks than to bless our little Ruby.  It was a wonderful day and a beautiful blessing.  She was blessed to have a clear mind and understanding, to have a desire to live the gospel and be obedient to its teachings, to hear the whispering of the Holy Spirit, to be a peacemaker, to be an example, to have the desire to find a worthy companion and be sealed in the temple, and to have love and joy in her heart. 

Look at these cuties - am I blessed or what?!

By this point Ruby had had enough!

I wanted to show a close up of the blessing dress.  It was cute and simple with just a little embellishment.  Sorry it is so wrinkly in the picture; it had worked hard that day and suffered through lots of spit up from my little acid reflux angel.

I feel so blessed and grateful to be Ruby's mother!

Halloween 2012

One good thing about being on bed rest this summer was being able to plan out Cicialy and Ruby's Halloween costumes well in advance of the holiday.  William and Weston, on the other hand, were unwilling to pin point what they wanted to be until just shortly before the day.  Luckily, they both chose costumes we already had at home.  I died over Cicialy's costume (Little Red Riding Hood) when I came across it and knew it would be the perfect hand me down for little Ruby!  Ruby was only six weeks old so a full blown costume was not going to be her cup of tea.  What could more perfect than a cute knit strawberry hat!  So, here's the rundown of the Packer family 2012 Halloween costumes:

 William was a Kung Fu Master

Cicialy was Little Red Riding Hood

Weston was Harry Potter

Ruby was a strawberry

I was attempting to be a fun mom and so made ghost pancakes for breakfast.  The kids loved them (but they are easy to please)!

Cicialy and William insisted on wearing Halloween colors to school! 

We had the best Halloween!