gobble gobble!

i hope you all had a wonderful thanksgiving! we stayed in town and feasted at brian's parents' house with his brother and family. my mom & grandmother joined us, as well as brian's grandmother, and it was a wonderful, relaxing day. i didn't get very many pictures because my in-laws' recliner is oh-so-comfortable, but here is one of the kiddos at their little table...


i know it's past thanksgiving, but i wanted to share this quote from one of last week's pages on my elisabeth elliot daily calendar... (ashley, that's for you!!!)

accept, positively and actively, what is given. let thanksgiving be the habit of your life. such acceptance is not possible without a deep and abiding belief in the sovereign love of God. either He is in charge, or He is not. if He is in charge and loves us, then whatever is given is subject to His control and is meant ultimately for our joy.
oh boy, did i really need to hear that before last week hit!

the week of thanksgiving for our family could pretty much be summed up with one word: sickness. caroline had been fighting a cold since saturday, which i really thought was teething... but then tuesday morning, ethan woke up with our family's very first ear infection. poor guy. so i knew where the germs had come from: the bottom bunk! well, we can't say we haven't taught our daughter to share. brian's throat started hurting the same day, and by wednesday night, i was beginning to feel run down. everyone is better now except me. now i just can't shake this congestion, and i have not been able to smell or taste anything since sunday. (so guess who's been on dirty diaper duty!? ha! i really should clean out my fridge before my crazy-hyper-sense of smell returns!!) we had also scheduled to have the carpets cleaned in the middle of all this, so the night i started feeling bad, there was an area rug drying on my kitchen table, laundry coming out of every crevice in our house, sick kids needing mommy, and mommy needing to go crawl in bed!! when my mom and grandmother came over to help me get some laundry done, i said, "this is what the house is supposed to look like 5 days after the mother doesn't feel good... not when i have just gotten sick!"

this past weekend, i was really hoping to pick out our christmas tree and decorate it before december got here. since i was pretty pathetically sick all weekend, that didn't happen... but i was well enough to be really aggravated about it. (never mind that it also POURED RAIN all weekend, and we wouldn't have gone to get a tree anyway! i was still upset...) i was frustrated to be really "behind" from the kids being sick all week, etc. etc. etc, and i felt like i just couldn't truly "enjoy" thanksgiving weekend as i'd hoped. well, bah humbug to me! i finally came to my senses while blowing my nose in bed at some point and began thinking of all that i truly do have to be thankful for... even just about the past week. i'm thankful that ethan's ear infection only bothered him for three hours. i'm thankful that we weren't planning some big family thanksgiving trip, only to be traveling while we were all sick. i'm thankful that brian's mom sent some wonderful homemade soup over on friday night. i'm thankful that i was able to taste all the delicious food on turkey day before my sense of smell took a vacation. i'm thankful that our children are rarely sick, and i'm thankful that all of this sickness went down now vs. in 8 weeks with a newborn at our house! so anyway, i could go on and on, but you get the point. there is always something to be thankful for, and as elisabeth elliot said, we should seek for thanksgiving to be the habit of our life. i love that. as she also said, God is in control, and that is worthy of our utmost thanksgiving!

i will let caroline end this post... just in case you'd already forgotten what a turkey says.....



and now let the christmas festivities begin!!!