Heritage Village Museum

Yesterday we bore the rain and headed across town to a heritage village museum. It is "living" museum representing the area in the 1920's. Some of the historic things were way over the kid's heads, but they enjoyed the children's play, the restored Tram (electric local train car), the carousel, the model train exhibit, and the yummy treats. After leaving the train exhibit, Jackson said to me "I like this place SOOO much!" I think the trains won him over! This museum is open year round but has a Christmas theme through the end of the year. The boys liked all the Christmas lights, trees, and music too.

Big Tram-Little guys (these were how tall the original steps were)

They were pretty impressed with the size of this thing and that they could go inside and out and ask the conductor all sorts of questions. Jackson told the conductor all about how train couplings work!

Ready to ride!

Good thing daddy rode, it was a very fast carousel!

Best shot of the day! They were flying by and it was so hard to get him smiling at me.

A Day of Thanks...

We had our first Thanksgiving (with the boys) away from family and were so blessed to have a group of like-minded friends to share my favorite holiday with. We had a relaxed day at home, cooking and playing with the boys, and then headed to nothing short of a feast with our American friends. The boys had a blast and were more concerned with playing their hearts out than eating the food (except the chocolate pilgrim hats).

We are so thankful for so many things: our friends here to walk this season with, our supportive and loving family back in the states, our precious boys whom we LOVE being mommy and daddy too, and our spouse for journeying this life together. But most of all, we are thankful for a loving God who has cleansed us from our sin, saved us from the mess we'd made of ourselves, offered us a new life in Christ, and given us a hope, a future, and purpose for living! I enjoy this holiday most because, to me, it's not about materialism, selfishness, or gifts, but about honoring the one whose the giver of all good gifts! AND because it is the perfect start to a season of celebrating the best gift of all, Jesus!

I lugged my camera through an hour of public transit but failed to take a single picture! Here's a few my friend was gracious enough to send me. (I failed to get one of Jackson...sorry Nana!)

Evidence of the only thing Hudson would eat...chocolate Pilgrim hats.

Best husband I could ever ask for!

He kept retreating to open spaces on the floor (even if it was the middle of the kitchen floor) to have some space to play by himself. I think all the action of the big kids scared him away.

Mighty Machines & Little Sous Chef

The boys are definitely immersed in a "mighty machines" fixation right now. We go to the library every week and check out a new MM DVD to be repeated all week long. Their favorite part is just playing the intro music over and over again and dancing to it. We caught some of the silliness on 2 videos, although I will say these are the mild captions of their enthusiastic dancing and singing. They are anything but shy, but they do get a little more reserved when we pull out the camera. Hope it makes you smile!
Mighty Machines Dancing 1
Mighty Machines Dancing 2
Jackson has also become my little Sous Chef in the last week. Through interviewing him on his birthday, we learned that he most enjoys golfing with Daddy (we already knew that b/c he talks about it all the time) and cooking with Mommy. I was really surprised and a little convicted by this because its been quite  a while since I've let him help me in the kitchen without acting like he was making things harder. So, I've been making a conscience effort to let him help me bake some fun treats for snack time at our school. I am really glad I did that birthday interview b/c it gave me a little insight into his thoughts and what he really enjoys doing to spend quality time with his parents. I think I should do that every 6 months or so and adjust the questions. Since we are going through so many transitions this year and will be going through more in a couple months, I often wonder what he's really thinking and how he's handling these changes. I'd like to come up with some age-appropriate questions to ask that will help me understand how he's really doing with all the changes. We made pumpkin cookies with cream cheese frosting (my Fall weather favorite!) and tried a new recipe to make some pumpkin-carrot cream cheese swirl bars. They were SO good! We'll have to make these a traditional treat as well.

My little Sous Chef in action.

Rainbow

A week ago, after one of our frequent afternoon showers, there was the most amazing rainbow out our window. It was very bright and at one point a double rainbow, but then it turned into almost a full circle. I've never seen one do that before and that it was pretty awesome.

What cracked us up about it is, we kept saying "whoa, it's a double rainbow! What does this mean?" Our friends recently showed us a youtube video of this guy who was more than a little enthusiastic about the rainbow he saw. I guess it's had over 7 million hits and he's been on some tv shows for it. Here is the link to the video, it is pretty funny. Double Rainbow Guy