Thanksgiving!!!!

I am unspeakably grateful to Jesus Christ for all my blessings.  Thank You for having mercy on me, saving me from what I deserve.  Thank You for covering me in grace, blessing me with that I do not deserve.

We had a good day.  We were happy to have Timmy's mom join us for Thanksgiving at my parents.  It was really nice not to have to go to two houses and in fact we are spending the night here tonight!

Pop Pop and Jamie playing play-doh

hmmmmmm I wonder if Timmy is checking his fantasy football stats?

Mommy making sweet potato casserole (which I don't eat!)

Papa Phil hanging with Marvin and Wendy

Poppy and Mom... partners for the evening

gee, is daddy on his phone????

Mr. Man in the same outfit he wore last year.  Too big last year and a bit too small this year, oh well!

before

Tatie, old dog, but still hanging in there.

Belly rubs from great grandma!

Playing games with daddy.

mommy really excited about cooking!

my sweet turkey!

I told her to be as serious as she could be in the turkey hat.

Helping Ga Ga make potatoes

yum!

The reason why I'm on earth.

time for Tom's pie!!!!

Best buds!

God is good all the time.  All the time He is good.

PS
After Jamie fell asleep Timmy and I attempted to get in line for the opening of Toys R Us at 10:00pm.  The line was wrapped all the way around the shopping center.  Ridiculous!  Needless to say, we went home and went to sleep.

The Last Nummy

Last night it just hit me that today was going to be the last day I nurse my baby.  God was just really clear.  I got in the bath with Jamie and I told him, "Tomorrow morning when we wake up we are not going to have a nummy ok?"  He seemed to be okay with it. " I explained everything we would do.  "First we will get up and go to Dunkin Donuts and a get a special treat.  Then we will come home and get ready to go over to GaGa and Pop Pops for Thanksgiving.  Then we will sit in Mommy's favorite chair where she reads her Bible and we will have our last nummy before the babies come."  He agreed, pretty willingly.  And when we got up this morning that is exactly what we did.  He was upset when I refused to nurse him when he woke up, but it wasn't as bad as it could have been.  When it was time to have the last nummy, he was really happy about it.  (Although I'm pretty sure he was happy to be nursing randomly during the day, not happy it was his last nummy.)  We sat in my favorite chair, the chair I first held him in and nursed him in when we got home from the hospital.  I let him nurse as long as he liked.  We talked to each other about nummy and I sang him his nummy songs.
"Yummy yummy yummy I've got nummy in my tummy, nummy really fills me up right!"  and "Him works hard for hims nummy uh huh uh huh, so hard for hims nummy him works hard for hims nummy and it really fills hims tummy uh huh uh huh."  The second one always makes him giggle because I make a funny face during the "uh huh" part.
Timmy took pictures and a video... and then all of the sudden my baby just hopped up and ran into the other room.  I said "Are you sure you're finished?"  and he simply replied "uh huh."  and that was it.  Obviously I cried, not sobs, but I was sad.  I needed my moment and now I will move on.  Timmy sweetly reminded me that I will soon be pregnant and have many more years of nummy ahead of me. 

I love you sweet, dear little boy.  May mommy's hugs, kisses and love loves fill your heart and give you peace just as your nummy always has since the morning you were born.

Pre School Thanksgiving

We had a very relaxed little day today.  We listened to the story of the first Thanksgiving done by Jill and Lauren (who spent 4 hours making little puppets for the story!!!!, good thing Aunt Erin sent that puppet theatre!)  We had pizza for snack (and bagels, thanks LB!!).  Then we made the famous turkey hats!  I made these ever year I taught!  What a super little morning we had!

an "attentive" audience.

I love how Liam is like "Mommy what are you doing?"

Evie bear checking out the scene! (and Jill taking a nap!)

not sure if it gets any cuter!

play doh!

Yea!!!!!  Jesus, thank You for blessing all of us with each other.  You always know just what You are doing!

Aunt Erin is cool!

Jamie's Aunt, who is also "Erin Gaeng"  got Jamie a super cool puppet theatre and puppets for Christmas.  She said we could open it and play with it right away, no need to wait until December 25th.  Jamie thinks its pretty neat and we think Aunt Erin is pretty  neat too! 

We love to go out to Westminster to visit her, Uncle Chris, cousin Christopher and cousin Anna.  We had our Thanksgiving with them a little early and had a great time.  I managed not to bring my camera, I guess I wasn't really thinking about it since Aunt Erin was going to be taking our photos for our Christmas card while we were there.  We arrived at 9:30am and headed out for the photo shoot.  I think the kids did really well, plus they were super cute so that always helps.  We got back to the "Other Gaeng's" and ate lunch.  Yummy alfredo pizza Erin whipped up super quick.  Then the two Erin's got into the sangria, always a good time!  The kids played hard!  We all enjoyed the newly finished basement.  Lots of room to play and hang out.  Erin's friend Tricia and her husband and little boy Bennett came over for dinner.  We all had such a good time.  I love seeing Jamie play with his cousins.  This is when memories are made that last a lifetime.  I am grateful to the Lord to have such a fun family!

Here's a little peak of our photo shoot!  Erin is super talented!

Pre School Writer's Workshop

We have been diligently working on our "All About Books"  in school.  Jamie's book is of course "All About the Farm."  Today Kate taught a mini lesson on the joys of stapling your book together after having more than one page.  She used Jamie's work as an example and he was glad to share.  Have I mentioned that our pre school rocks?

This is the paper the kids write their stories on.  The smiley face shows them where to begin their sentence.

Sweet Natalie checking out a non-fiction book.

Hooray for our school!

Surprise!!!!

No pre school today, its a shower for Kate and Baby Girl!!!!!  We had so much fun planning this!  Some of the mommies got sitters for their kids and my mom came to watch the rest in the school room while the girls (and unsuspecting Rick) ate, talked and oooed and ahhhhed over all things baby girl.  God is so good and His miracles are ever present.  He healed baby girl in the womb and now all Mommy and Daddy need to think about is how wonderful it will be to bring a newborn baby girl home from the hospital.  Jesus, thank You for your love, mercy and grace on this beautiful family.  Your promise NEVER fails.  We believed that we had received a healthy baby girl and that is exactly what has happened.  We did not doubt in our hearts, but believed what we said would happen and it was given to us.  We asked in Your Name and now our joy is complete.

Mark 11
22 “Have faith in God,” Jesus answered. 23 “Truly[f] I tell you, if anyone says to this mountain, ‘Go, throw yourself into the sea,’ and does not doubt in their heart but believes that what they say will happen, it will be done for them. 24 Therefore I tell you, whatever you ask for in prayer, believe that you have received it, and it will be yours. 25 And when you stand praying, if you hold anything against anyone, forgive them, so that your Father in heaven may forgive you your sins.” [26] [g]

John 16
24 Until now you have not asked for anything in my name. Ask and you will receive, and your joy will be
complete.

My Jill came early to  help set up.  Good thing she did, I TOTALLY would not have been ready by 9am!

Surprise pretty momma!  NO school today!

this casserole was SO stinkin good I can't wait to make it again for Christmas morning!

chatin' it up

Poor Rick thought he was coming to watch Jimmy in pre school!

Fun girly time!

I love all things girly and pink!!!!

Kate opened a beautiful bracelet for baby girl from Melissa.

Kate pretty much had this look on her face the entire morning!

Family of 3 about to be 4!!!

gotta have a sophie!

checking out her new cloth diapers!  i love the cutie patootie baby girl patterns!

What an excellent time we all had.  Thanks so much to all the girls for helping throw Kate this shower.  And thank you Mommy for watching our little blessings so we could celebrate Kate!

Whats been going on in Pre School?

The end of our "Apples and Empathy" unit....

Fun fall art projects!

Bodacious Bible lessons!

Marvelous math activities!

Awesome alphabet lessons!

We are now working in our non-fiction unit "All About Books."  Kate is taking us through writers workshop lessons which are completely awesome!  We began by creating webs of things at which we are experts.  Kate used our farm field trip as an example since all of the kids had background knowledge from the trip.  Our first mini lesson was the expert web and then how to "write" our stories as authors of non-fiction.  We learned how to use the super cool line on the paper and begin "writing" at the smiley face.  We learned to draw our illustrations the best we can and then to move on (even if it doesn't look quite like we wanted it too.)  Our second mini-lesson concentrated on how to decide if we wanted to add to our current writing or if we wanted to start a new piece of writing.  After each mini-lesson we break up into "mommy and me" partners to work.  Its very interesting doing this type of work with this age group.  They are capable of so much, but have VERY short attention spans.  Quite different than working with 5 and 6 year olds using the same techniques.  Of course the beauty of home school is each individual child working at his or her own pace.  They are never pressured to do something they are not ready to do, only encouraged to try new things.  It is absolutely wonderful and I praise God for the opportunity to do this.  Future lessons will include using the stapler to add pages to our books (Jamie is super excited about this one!) and labeling our illustrations.  Thanks Kate for all your hard work!

Math... We started off this unit giving a baseline kindergarten math assessment to the kids.  (It is the assessment harford county uses.... x-harford county teachers = good ideas!)  I was once again in awe of these tiny people and their capabilities.  They are already doing what a lot of 5 year olds are learning in public school kindergarten.  Kate gathered the info and graphed it!!!! We now know right where our babies are and what they need to move forward.  Seriously who needs "regular" school when we have this!  God is so good!  So we are diving into geometry with shape study.  Our kids can already identify shapes so we are tackling attributes.  All the mommies brought their stash of shape activities from home and we put together folders with sheets to record how the kiddos do on each activity.  We are doing a quick mini-lesson and then getting into partners to work on activities.  Kate's genius once again!!!!  Hope we don't just stare blankly at each other when baby girl is born!  We will miss you Kate!

This group rocks and so does Jesus!