Thanksgiving 2014!

Thanks to my brother and sister in law for hosting a fabulous Thanksgiving Dinner!  The conversation and food were wonderful!  Having family and friends is one of life's biggest blessings after knowing and having God in our lives first.  We are so blessed!

Back Row L to R:  Benjamin T., my bro and sis in law, my mom, my dad, Mr. and Mrs. Heyer/ Front Row L to R:  Kayla T., Maria G., Melissa B., Jamie H., and Aimee G.

ABOVE:  A group pic of the "extended family."  :-)

BELOW:  Kitchen prep/chat

Above:  My dad and Mr. Heyer chat

Below:  The AC gals fellowship though Jamie was doing her best to not be seen in the pic.  :-)

Sophia with Granddad.  She is looking at me like, Really, Aunt Carolyn.  Do you ever not have a camera on you and "paparazzize" me?  :-)

The dinner.  No further comment necessary.  :-)

Aunt Carolyn and Grandma trying to put Sophia to sleep for her Mommy so her Mommy could enjoy Thanksgiving.  The girl fought hard not to fall asleep.  Too much action was happening in her house.  :-)  Fun video's of our attempts to put her down can be seen at the end of this post.

Above:  My bro and sis in law relaxing in their home.

Below:  Only at AC are a group of Freshman friends happy to be Freshman.  :-)  Lovely gals and so kind and sweet!

Above:  Benjamin teaching the gals a game that he had.

Below:  My brother lighting a cool looking candle in his kitchen.

Above:  My mom actually let me take an intended pic of her.

BELOW:  VIDEO'S of Grandma and Aunt Carolyn trying to put Sophia to sleep for the night.
First Video:  Sophia apparently thinks that if she uses her fingers like toothpicks and uses them to prop her eyes open that will keep her awake, and guess what it did!  She's a fighter!  I guess the positive is that, that trait can be used in a great way to serve w/"sticktuivetiveness" when she is a bit older.

Mom and I sang "Are you Sleeping" to Sophia in French.  I'm no French expert, but I know enough to know that you don't pronounce the letter "S" at the end of words in French, but I sure did in this video when singing.  LOL.  The East Texan in me.  I love how Sophia is now thinking, if I look at Grandma really sweet, maybe she'll get into all of my baby cuteness and let me stay awake tonight.  :-)!  At the end, all she wanted was her Daddy to come and spend some time with her, and after she got daddy time in, she fell right to sleep.  So Sweet!  Daddy's little girl!

Happy Thanksgiving---A Beautiful E-Card

Thanksgiving E-Cards are not really something that I'm into, but I stumbled across this one with music and lovely words, and thought it was a beautiful reminder of why we observe Thanksgiving.  The card can be found at the link below (copy and paste it) if you so desire to view it.  HAPPY THANKSGIVING to all of my lovely and wonderful family and friends!

http://www.123greetings.com/events/thanksgiving/wishes/thanksgiving_a_beautiful_reminder_.html

The Familia! :-0

 It's so nice to have a big brother who is willing to drive his little sister to work when the roads are a wee bit icy, and she's scared to drive on ice!  :-)

 Most of the Sophia pics are when she is happy, but here is one cute one I shot last week when she was not so happy!  It was her first time alone in Aunt Carolyn's house.  A break for Daddy and Mommy, and some Aunt/Niece bonding time.  Sophia loves to be held, and for you to walk around with her, but I had to put her down for a brief moment, and she was not happy.  She was "away from home," so I can understand.  Sophia has a bit of Aunt Carolyn's personality, so she lets you know how she honestly feels about situations, only she hasn't dvlp'd "converted tact" yet.  :-)  I love this pic.  It looks like she is trying to grab my camera with her hand and shut me down.  LOL!  Love my niece!  :-) I should have taken an after shot, but I was holding her by then and she was back happy!...so it ended on a happy note.  :-)

Fav Quotes

"Courage doesn't always roar.  Sometimes courage is the quiet voice at the end of the day saying, I will try again tomorrow." ---Mary Anne Radmacher

"Human nature wants to be popular and well known to make one feel like they have a sense of great self importance to please themselves, when Godly character remains humble, and uses the state of being well known as an opportunity to serve others by being able to set the right example for many."

For all of the Sophia Fans :-)

 Here are the latest Sophia pics taken by our lovely family friend, Gladys W.!

Above:  Sophia with Gladys and her Mommy.

Below:  Sophia!  :-)

She's definitely born into our fam....the only way shoes stay on the feet is if they are strapped on.  :-)  Barefoot is so much more comfortable.  :-)

A Wedding Gift, Friendly Time, and Appreciation

 Latest CCoatsOfManyColours! design

This Sunday's extra homemaking project was sewing this new pillow design as a wedding gift for Jeremiah and Breanna Jacques.  I hope they will like it.  I went online to their wedding registry, and it looks like their home color theme is brown, sand, white, apple green, and teal, so I went with chocolate brown as the foundation color with golden accents.  The gold accent is for the royalty that they are.  :-)

 This custom design for them can be used as a bedroom sham set.....

 or, it can be used as a living room sofa pillow set...among other ways etc.

Hope it will go with their theme.  Like I did with my brother and sister in laws wedding, I will re-make this design for my Etsy shop.

 Going back to Saturday evening Jamie and I had a spontaneous kosher ladies evening out.  We found this chic, sophisticated sushi restaurant that we really liked.  They served fried sushi.  Sushi isn't my favorite, but if it's prepared a certain way I like it....and this was delish!  The question is, since it was fried, was it still really sushi?  :-)

 What we both had....in photo and menu

 We couldn't pass up each having a nice glass of champagne.  We toasted to the blessing of friendship.  I love that you can see the bubbles in this pic.  :-)

Below:  Only I would take a pic of the restaurant.  :-)  Such a foodie.  It was peaceful b/c we were pretty much the only ones in there at first, but by the time we left there was a large party of people.

 Nothing to do with this weekend, but below is one of Melinda B.'s crocheted hats that she made for me.  The 1920's and 1930's era style of dress is my favorite.  The 30's was a bit more conservative which is wonderful.  Women dressed so feminine back in the day.  I love the 30's flapper/bucket hat styles.  Ironically, I had on a 30's style dress too, so it worked perfectly to model Melinda's handiwork.

 Simple, but one of the best gifts ever!

Mrs. Aldrich got this for me as a FOT gift, and I knew I was going to blog it.  Not to show off with an attitude of  "look what I got" but b/c I think this is a really special gift b/c of what she wrote in the card.  She even got a card that looks like a designer purse.  She knows me!  I have to say Mr. and Mrs. Aldrich are so giving.  Way back when I graduated high school Mrs. Aldrich bought me a very expensive perfume gift set, and when my brother and I were the HQ singles coordinators back in 2004, Mr. Aldrich, back when he was single, bought us an expensive Paris pen set to say thank you.  I think they set a wonderful example of being thoughtful and mindful towards others.  The physical things are nice, but it's more of the thought behind it.

 Below:  I meant to blog this earlier, but hats off to Kiall Lorenz for being such a giving young man.  He's so young, and has been very helpful to both my dad and mom.  This FOT, unbeknownst to me since I was in Georgia, my parents car zonked out, and Kiall volunteered, took charge, and picked them up for services nearly every day of the FOT.  He even took them to restaurants after services giving up his own time to serve them, and being an AC student, he was already swamped in being busy with FOT jobs.  When I heard about this, I was so amazed and thankful that I gave him this box of chocolates.  I also gave Michael C. a box too for fixing my flat tire, but I've already given him props on my blog.  :-)