Happy Thanksgiving!

I love Thanksgiving! I love the whole week of Thanksgiving! It truly is my favorite holiday, I guess because it is centered around being grateful for what we already have - not for what gift we just opened. There are no material gifts involved. I love the thought of millions and millions of people sitting down together with people they love, all at the same time, and just being grateful . That's all. No piles of wrapping paper, kids fighting over toys, trips to the mall.


I found this quote that I love on the Internet last night:


"When you strip away every illusion of success. When all earthen treasures fail. There is only one thing remaining, but that is the greatest treasure of all - the love of God our Creator.

If we are to celebrate Thanksgiving with prayers of praise that will not fade. If we are to give thanks with smiles that are more than superficial, we must set our priorities straight. The essence of Thanksgiving is not to be found in the cost of the goods and services that may fill our horn of plenty. The important things are the resources we bring to adversity. What strength can we call upon when these earthen treasures fail?

When the act of counting our blessings leads to the anxious condition of counting upon our blessings then the meaning of Thanksgiving is diminished. But according to Biblical witness Thanksgiving is something we do when the troubles of the world are still very much with us. It's not a question of waiting for that moment of euphoria when you seem to be carried away on a cresendo of good feeling. To give thanks is to take up the tangled threads of your life and present them to God come what may."


Here are a few pictures from Thanksgivings past:

Goooooooooooo UTES!!!!!

Isn't it awesome when your husband, a die-hard BYU fan, doesn't have any control over your family's blog? Gooooooooooooooooooooooooooo UTES!!!!!



Oh, and isn't it awesome that this same husband and BYU fan has been unknowingly driving around in his car for two days with a big, red "U" on his passenger door (placed there lovingly by Grandpa Osborn - truly the world's biggest Ute fan!!) Nice!

Playin' in the leaves

One thing I do love about our new house is the back yard. There are tonz of trees and a little wooded area that the girls love to go explore in. Eric and I both agreed that our family has spent more time outside in two months than we ever did in any of our other homes (and that's really sayin' something!)

Halloween Marathon

This year, Halloween seemed like it went on, and on, and on! I swear the week of Halloween is more work than Christmas! Between the Trunk-or-treats, school parades, wear your costume to dance class, and oh yeah, then trick-or-treating. Whew! I think we've decided next year that the primary Trunk-or-treat will have to suffice, and we'll just make the kids answer the door and pass out candy on Halloween. Is that so mean?
The only picture of our entire family currently in existence!

Kate with her darling, "Belle-obsessed" cousin Camryn

The Osborn cousins on Halloween at Bryan and Janalyn's house. (Halle's face doesn't really look like that - normally.)

Kate in the Halloween parade at Draper Elementary

Annie in the Halloween Parade at Draper Elementary

Home Sweet Home Depot

Well, as many of you know, we finally moved into our new "old" home on Oct. 9th. We actually spent the four weeks prior to the move living at Home Depot, or at least it seemed like it. We refinished the hardwood floors ourselves, painted the garage floor, painted the kitchen and bathroom cabinets, refinished the girls shower, removed the old carpet ourselves and had new carpet installed, and painted almost the entire home ourselves - with A LOT of help from our awesome family.

I wasn't able to get pictures of my Dad and my brother Bryan painting, or pictures of my Mom, Janalyn and Amy providing countless hours of babysitting, or Dawn unpacking all of my kitchen - and you can see where this is going: we had a lot of help!

We have so much to be thankful for this Thanksgiving, and top on our list is our extended family. I don't know what we did to deserve them, but they have been there for us through thick and thin and I hope they all know how truly grateful we are for helping us and loving us no matter what!

Tiny Dancer

I know I haven't posted in over a month - which is really lame, I know, but I feel like moving is a pretty darn excuse, so there!!! I've got a back log of pictures, so here goes:

Halle started a little weekly dance class in September, which she LOVES, and yes, her teacher looks and sings exactly like Ariel and Gisselle - too cute!!

Stop the insanity!!!

Is it just me, or is this a lot of catalogues to get in the mail within a three day period? This is what was waiting for me in my mailbox when we returned from our 3-day Disneyland trip. I'm beginning to agree with Eric that Satan invented catalogues and that my life would be much more rewarding if I would just chuck them, but I'm not quite there yet.

Tooth Fairy misunderstanding

Wow - we don't know what is up with the Tooth Fairy these days, but she is really off her game! Annie lost a tooth three days ago and Annie still hadn't received anything for her tooth. We discussed it and decided that the Tooth Fairy is probably confused about which house Annie is sleeping in, and that maybe if we left a note on the door of the new house, it would clarify things for her.

Fortunately, it worked and Annie got 50 cents under her pillow this morning. Silly Tooth Fairy!!!

I totally know what I'm doing!

Since we had to paint all of the bedroom closets and baseboards, we figured it would be easier to just rent a paint sprayer from Home Depot. Eric had everything under control.


Umm, yeah. Everything's under control. The best part about using those paint sprayers is that you have to return them totally clean

But you probably shouldn't have stacked all of the carpet right in front of the only hose faucet in the back yard.

One staple (I mean step) at a time

So we FINALLY finished "refinishing" the hardwood floors, and they look much, much better than they did before (if I do say so myself!) They are by no means perfect, we learned the hard way that even though it's tempting, you should always, always go with the grain when using a belt sander!
I have to say though, I think the hardest part (physically) was staining the floor - all that crawling around on your hands and knees and trying not to stain yourself into a corner - so fun!

Once we were done with the hardwoods, we moved onto ripping out all of the carpet and pad on the main and upper floors. It's not really the carpet removal that's bad, it's all those pesky staples and all of the dust that gets really annoying.

On Friday night, we were working at the house and both feeling a little overwhelmed, when our awesome friends the Hagens showed up with their kids around 10pm or so at our doorstep to say hi. They were on their way home from something and wanted to see how it was going.

Their visit totally cheered us up, and after they left to go home and put the kids to bed, Eric and I were talking about how grateful we are for the awesome friends and family we have (my Dad was home babysitting our kids so we could work late) and how we wanted to be better friends and family members.

About 15 minutes later, Sean was back on at our house with his work clothes on asking where he should start working! Mind you, Sean just had DOUBLE knee surgery 3 weeks ago and had no business doing this type of work, but it was pointless trying to stop him. And of course, Sean wouldn't leave until Eric did - that's just the kind of guy he is. We want to be like him when we grow up!

Unfortuneatly, the guys didn't find out until after midnight (Sean texted his friend in construction) that there's actually a special tool that carpenters use to just scrap all of this stuff out of the floor. But I'm sure they still had fun crawling around and ripping them out with pliers one-by-one. Good times!