Thankful Calendar

After yesterday's post about Halloween, I thought I should "get up with the times" and discuss Thanksgiving. What a wonderful time of year, right?

This year, I saw on Pinterest.com a 'Thankful Calendar.' Every day until Thanksgiving, you would write down what you were thankful for and put it on the calendar. It is a countdown I guess. Although we really should be thankful every day, it's hard to stop sometimes and just thank the Lord. We are so incredibly blessed in our lives, or at least I feel like I am. I try very hard not to take it for granted. We all forget sometimes though. I recently saw a pin that said, Only in the U.S. would we spend a day being thankful for what we have, then spend the entire next day trampling over each other for new stuff. True story! But, I still love Black Friday. :)

Anyway, I want to just state right now that I am not crafty. I do not have the patience and I don't have a lot of craft items on hand. For example, I've never owned a bottle of Mod Podge in my life. I just got a glue gun a couple of years ago, from my mom, and I burn myself incessantly!

So, I thought that when Lucy and I made this, we were doing pretty well:

We decided to hang it on the fridge, at least this year. As you will also notice, I created the calendar for up to the 24th, rather than the 22nd that Thanksgiving is on this year. I hope to reuse this calendar in the future and added a couple more days. Each day, we all say what we are thankful for. Since 'family, friends, four-legged family members and friends, food, shelter, faith, and a few others, are already written on our calendar (not in the picture; I added more after I took it), we try to think of other things - small things in life that often go unappreciated.

Heath has been thankful for daycare, technology, football, stuff like that. I've been thankful for cell phones, cars, and baking. We usually explain them a little bit to each other, but just write down a word or two. Lucy's are great! They make me laugh. She always says, "Mommy, Daddy, and baby Olive." It makes my heart melt with love, while wanting to burst with pride! But, she has also said, Aurora (her baby doll), Bonnie (her stuffed horse), her blankey, pumpkins, and really anything in the general direction she is looking. haha.

We have also decided to be thankful in other ways. We have started to say grace before meals. And, we decided to be better church goers. This last weekend, we decided on which one and would like to start going consistently.

It feels great to stop asking for forgiveness, when I take this life for granted. I still complain about stupid, stupid stuff; but, I'm getting better...

Tonight, I think I will put down that I am thankful for...my blog readers. :) Thank you for always supporting me and telling me that I'm not the craziest momma on the block! Have a great hump day!

Halloween 2012

I have to hurry and share about our Halloween. Otherwise, it will be too close to Thanksgiving and Christmas to do so acceptably.

First, a few notes: October 2012 was my all time low of blog posts; I apologize. I really thought I'd do better. Also, I won't be writing a post about the Countdown to 25 Days of Christmas on ABC Family. But, I still recommend it! :) Here is the link to the schedule. If I see any good movies on, I'll post it in the 'I Love Lucy Jean' Facebook group. (Thanks Becca for reminding me!) I find that the countdown has historically been better than the actual 25 days schedule! And, finally, I realize that I need to change the name of this blog to include Olive, and change the photos - all in good time. :) I have had two suggestions on blog names too; oddly, the same title was suggested. I love it! (Thank you Nikki and Nicole!)

Anyway, on with the story - this Halloween was a lot of fun!

We carved pumpkins, which only lasted a day in the afternoon sun. They shriveled bad this year. We enjoyed them for a small while though. I always try to carve something a little challenging. This year, I chose Michael Myers. He is the "killer" from Halloween (1978), otherwise known as the best scary movie ever...with the best scary music ever. If you don't know who he is, shame on you.

My creepy Michael sat next to Olive's pumpkin that Aunt Honey carved for her. :)

On the other side of the steps, Lucy's Cinderella sat next to Heath's scary face. I carved Lucy's for her. She didn't do much, but cheer me on. It was appreciate though. :) Heath's looks kind of like a mean Ninja Turtle to me...

Halloween finally arrived; Olive and I took a trip to the Peru Daycare to trick-or-treat the campus with Lucy.

We weren't able to really get around town that much. But, we parked and strolled around for about half of a mile. Olive slept most of the time.

We ended the evening at home around 8:15 pm, after eating supper. We had three trick-or-treaters then. Lucy was sad that Halloween was over. She still asks to watch It's the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown. Apparently, Charlie Brown's Christmas isn't quite as interesting, because she didn't sit still long enough to watch any of it! We'll keep trying...

Here comes Thanksgiving! :)