Shoe Box Packing Party

Who knew when Lindsay Otte introduced our group of "girls" to packing a shoebox gift for kids around the world in college that it would become a beloved family tradition in our home?After writing our letters after school Friday night we had pizza and took a trip to the store to purchase the rest of the items we needed to pack our shoeboxes for Operation Christmas Child. It gets funner ever year now that the girls can really get excited to pick out items for "their" boxes. Grace of course chose purple items and Faith chose pink.

Titus plotting...
See that big orange cup....its full of water. Titus is currently trying to eat a ring pop through the wrapper.
Then he grabs the playdough out of his box and chucks it. This boy has got an arm. No pictures of this but just imagine how much water that cup holds and it going everywhere....opps!
So we decided it was time for Titus to head off to bed before we prayed for our boxes. This picture cracks me up. I told the girls to pretend to get ready to pray so I could snap a quick picture. Jeremy wasn't wanting to cooperate and I snapped the picture anyway. The reason it makes me laugh is because it looks like it was a very spiritual moment...however it was not.
I can't wait to someday take the kids on a trip to a processing center (they have to be 13). But for now we love this November family tradition!!

Reading is Yummy!

In October Grace's class started the Pizza Hut Book It program. I was excited because this is something fun I remember doing from my childhood. Grace brought home her sheet and we had the entire month to send it back. Since we only had to read 8 books I knew we would have it filled out in no time. I was trying to just let her write down one or two books each day. But, she just couldn't take it. So by day three we read all the books and wrote them down. I'm pretty sure she was the first person to return her form. We had been looking for a good opportunity to turn in her certificate for her own free personal pan pizza. We choose a Friday night and I made homemade pizza for the rest of the family. As soon as Grace opened her box she promptly put two of her pieces on Faith's plate because she wanted to share. I was so proud of her. I was hoping I could sign Faith up to participate as a preschooler, but you have to be in kindergarten to participate. We are looking forward to doing it again each month.

Happy Halloween!

By Halloween we were just about trick or treated out...or maybe that was just us parents. We once again participated in our church's Trunk or Treat event. The girls did a great job handing out mini cupcakes we made to share.

Our small group's "trunk" was sports themed. The kids could kick a soccer ball, throw a football, and try and make a basket. It kept us very busy. Titus loved trying to chase the ball around. He was a full time job to keep track of. After the girls ran out of cupcakes Jeremy took them around parking lot. Their favorite was the clown trunk where they got balloon animals.
Eating a "big boy" hot dog in a bun out of necessity. Unfortunately he was the only one who got a hot dog because they ran out before the rest of our family made it back to the snack booth. So, the girls and I enjoyed a bag of popcorn for our dinner instead.
Here are the girls all ready for school in their orange and black on Halloween morning.
It was a fun filled five days of costumes and candy and I'm grateful to move on to Thanksgiving.