Thanksgiving is for Giving Thanks

As part of our Thanksgiving unit, I read Thanksgiving is for Giving Thanks with my student. I had him make his own book of the things he was thankful for. It was a fun activity.

I decided to make a list instead of a book because the book would be too long. So here is one for each day of November.

1. I am thankful for a God who loves me.

2. I am thankful for the Atonement so that I can repent. And Jesus Christ without whom the Atonement would not exist.

3.  I am thankful for my job that is so fun.

4. I am thankful for my siblings who have supported me through the rough times and who I know will always be there for me. I wouldn't be here without them.

5. I am thankful for my friends who laugh with me and make life so great.

6. I am thankful for the Young Single Adult Branch that I attend and all the awesome people who attend there and serve to make it work.

7. I am thankful for my car, Hollie BeeBee. She is just a cutie.

8. I am thankful for my snuggie.

9. My laptop! Yay I finally can be comfy and work at the same time.

10. That I get to visit my family for christmas this year. So excited!

11. Christmas time! I love the spirit in the air at christmas time.

12. My chair and a half. If you sat in it you would be too.

13. Toilet Paper (that's for you Deanna.)

14. My education.

15. The scriptures and the knowledge that is in them.

16. Prophets, especially our modern day prophet. (For more on this click here.)

17. The restoration of the gospel. (more info here.)

18. My knowledge of the plan of Salvaton. (again here.)

19.  Flip flops and that in Houston I can wear them 90% of the year.

20. The internet and how any question can be answered by google. :) And how it makes my job easier at times.

21. Christmas music. Especially my new CD Noel by Josh Wilson. Tis amazing! Especially this song.

22. My adorable nieces and nephews who make me smile.

23. Food because I can't live without it and so much of it is so tasty.

24. Earings. Especially of the dangly blingy variety.

25. The new stake center that only takes only 3 minutes and 42 seconds to get to.

26. A printer and scanner. This makes my life so much easier not having to locate one.

27. Chocolate.

28. Toothpaste.

29. Good books.

30. Photography. Both taking photos and seeing other people's awesome photos.

31. And I am thankful for all the blessings God has given me. He really is amazing.

32. Oh and I am thankful for all the people who care about me enough to read my ramblings on my blog. You, yes you, if you made it this far I am grateful for you.

There was two extra there for you.

What are you thankful for? I challenge each of you to comment with one thing (or more) you are thankful for. I have learned that being gratiful makes you and others areound you happier. So go...

The Thrifts

One thing I am very grateful for is our wonderful Institute Teachers and YSA Advisers Earl and Cheryl Thrift! They do so much for us all the time. Not only do they teach a wonderful institute class every wednesday and feed us a great meal but they also invite us over to their house for FHE (Family Home Evening) once a month and take us out on their boat. The left over food from these activities have given me food to eat when things were tight many times.

They are so generous to us and that never seems to stop. For example, today is Cheryl's birthday (Happy Birthday!) but does that stop them from inviting us over for FHE even though they just had a party for us on Halloween? Nope. We are still having FHE there tonight!

To show you of their awesomeness here are some pictures from the Halloween Party we had there last wednesday. I was fortunate enough to be able to help her plan and make some of the things for the party as well.

This is Cheryl and I in our costumes for the party.

This is the yummy dirt pudding she made!

 I made these eyeballs for the party by covering pumpking donut holes with chocolate and then decorating them.

 

These are the carrot fingers Sister Henson helped my make. (Thanks Sister Henson)

Apple mouths that Sister Haynie helped my make. (Thanks Sister Haynie)

The cheese fingers Fatima made. Aren't they great. Thanks Fatima!

Eyeballs made by Sister Henson and Deanna I believe. (Deanna helped on a lot of them. Thanks!) 

 

Susage mummies Ayesha and I made. These were so yummy! (Thanks for your help Ayesha!)

 Pudding ghosts that Deanna made. (Thanks again!)

 

Banana Ghosts I made. They would have looked better with chocolate faces but I just didn't have the time or energy to do that.

 We also had some games to play which the favorite was pumpking bowling. (That's Ayesha bowling in this picture.)

 

The missionaries: Dead Elder Garcia, Sister Red Riding Hood, and Sister Haynie.

Us with Sisters.

Our little Exchange Family.

 

And while we are talking about Halloween I through this one in though it was taken at the dance. Stacy the Treasure Troll and I. Her hair is actually blue but you can't see it very well.

 

 

Thanks to the Thrift for throwing the party and to all of you who helped with it and came to make it fun. I love you guys, all of you!

Cane's Arcade

With it being November I thought I would post things that I am grateful for. But rather than just a list of them I thought I would post a story or project associated with each one.

The first one (and these aren't in any particular order just as they come to me) is my job. I am so grateful for my job as a Homeschool teacher. For as long as I can remember I have wanted to be a teacher because I love to teach and watch people's eyes light up when they understand something. After becoming disillusioned with teaching in public school with my experience there I thought maybe I am not meant to be a teacher. But after trying out some other career choices and then coming back to tutoring I discovered that I did indeed love education I just needed to go down a different avenue then what I had original thought. That lead me to be a home school teacher.

I never would have imagined that this would be the course that I would be on. When I was younger I actually was not fond of homeschooling at all and thought it was horrible. (I have repented of those thoughts and actually have made a complete 180 now.) But what God knew and I didn't all along was that this is where I need to be and what I need to be doing. And I love it. It is so totally me! I adore being a homeschool teacher because all the reasons why I got into education like seeing the spark of understanding and making a difference I can accomplish without all the other stuff that teachers have to deal with. (Sorry I did not intend this to be a soap box on teaching.) Anyway, I love it and feel extremely grateful that God was so good to lead me through some rather confusing waters to get me to this point! Thanks God! I knew there was a job out there for me even though all my friends thought I was crazy for quiting my job without a plan of what to do. You had a plan and I knew that. Thanks for giving me just enough of that plan at a time to get me to this point. (Isn't God amazing like that? I certainly think so.)

Anyway, all that is to say I am grateful for my job, very grateful! And I thought I would share one of the fun things that we did at school one day. The student I teach (for the sack of the blog we shall call him Rex as in T- Rex) loves arcade games. So I decided to do a little project with Rex to motivate him to behave well.

Have you seen Cane's Arcade? Well, if not then you are really missing out and need to watch it now. Go ahead, I'll wait for you.

Tissue? No? Me neither. (sniffs and clears throat) Pretty cool isn't it. I decided to make this more than just the video and encourage Rex to learn from Cane so I decided to have him make his own arcade game out of cardboard. Rex is only 5 so he isn't quite as advanced as Cane but I really liked the idea he came up with.

He loves space so his idea was to make an astronaut that you have to weave through the solar system. As we were working on it he changed his ideas around a little bit. This is what we ended up with.

 

Such a pretty arcade game!

 

Here's a close up. You can see the sun in the middle with the other planets orbiting around it. (And no they are not in order if you are trying to figure out which one is which (And yes we did include Pluto even though it was kicked out of the planet club because we are Friends of Pluto.)) That is Jupiter at the bottom right and you can almost see it's big red (really orange cause we had no red) spot. You can also see the awesome astroid belt through the center there.

 

 The game was that you take the astronaut (isn't he so cute!)

 

 that is attached to the string and have to manover him through space

 

to the hole in the bottom.

 

 

Then you drop it down and whatever prize the astronaut touches first is the one you win.

 

 

While this game was very cute we quickly discovered that it was just way too easy. Everyone got a prize everytime they played and the game lasted about 5 seconds so we decided we needed to make it more challenging and fun to play. We decided to put the prizes inside the box and then use the astronaut to knock the prize down the hole.

 

The only problem with that was that our astronaut being made out of cardboard was too light to knock the prizes down the hole. Our solution was to add a hook made out of a paper clip and marbles to add weight.

 

It worked wonderfully well. We then had a new game to play all day for the next week! Hooray.

 

It was a very fun project that we both enjoyed working on.

 

See? Don't you think I have the best job ever? Well, you don't have to think so but I do and that's what counts.