And We Gave Thanks

We have oh so many things to be thankful for this year!

Sometimes it's hard to know where to start when thinking of things to be thankful for.  I have been watching all the people of FaceBook do their 30 days of Thanks.  I kinda think that is silly personally because for the other 11 months of the year I watch most of them complain about things that they are now thankful for! HA!

I can remember a couple of years ago I got my mother an online course and the one thing I can remember her talking about is she was supposed to list something everyday that she is thankful for. Sounds kinda similar to the FaceBook thing huh? But anyway, she proceeded to list things on a daily basis, I think she kept a notebook by her chair at the table and wrote something on it everyday.  Some days it was harder and some days it was really easy.

Isn't that the case in all of our lives? How many of us can point out something every single day that we are thankful for? How many of us have tried?
But once a year we all slow down, gather around a table filled with food that has been lovingly prepared and we are reminded again of things that we are thankful for.

In past years we have had a big group of people gathered around our table all providing their own versions of foods that have been passed down from parents or grandparents or food that just looked too darn tasty to not try this year; 2 or 3 or 4 different kinds of rolls; 3 different kinds of pumpkin pie and at least 2 different apple pies; sometimes 2 turkeys, both prepared in different ways; and an eclectic mix of people from all over the country to accompany all the food.

This year The Rooster has been home from Afghanistan just about 3 weeks and he really was not interested in a big house of people.  I couldn't blame him!  So this year it was just us: The Rooster, The Mama, and their 2 baby chicks.

And what a good time we had! It was calm and relaxed and fun and we ate when we wanted to and the food on our table was prepared buy none other than us.  West and Ruby, who have been helping me cook since they could sit up by themselves on the counter, pitched in and I don't think there was a single thing on the table that one or both of them didn't have a hand in making.

And who can be more thankful for this life that I have than me?
I may not be living in the state or the house that I want to be in but I have my husband and my children, my dogs, and good friends around who are all misplaced like we are.

We do have so many things to be thankful for here in this house!

Hope you all had a great Thanksgiving like we did; and here's to a year full of being thankful, not just a day,
The Anderson Hen House

A Day at Holbrook

Last Saturday Ruby deemed it another day good for picnicking. The weather was perfect for it and after the heat and humidity we have been having over the past few months we needed to get out and enjoy the weather/outdoors.  People in the north get cabin fever in the winter, heck I've gotten it myself! No one ever warned me about cabin fever in the south though.  Cabin fever down here consists of summer time though, not winter.  The sun may be up and out but it is so hot you don't go outside, and when the sun does start to go down at the end of the day there are so many bugs out you have to wear armor protection just so you don't get carried off.  Might I add just because the sun went down it does not mean it has cooled off in the least.

So when the weather presented itself last Saturday and we figured we wouldn't melt we grabbed at the opportunity! We packed our basket and grabbed our blanket and sent a message to a neighbor to see if they wanted to join us out at Holbrook Pond.  Sometimes a picnic with just me and the kids is good, sometimes a body wants other adults to converse with.

We spent a good few hours there playing and chatting and snacking and after our friends left I laid in the sun and the kids ran and played and danced off all of their summer cabin fever.
It was a good day, it was a beautiful day, it's days like these that make me realize living here isn't as bad as it could be.  It isn't Wyoming, but for now it is home.

The Count-Down has Begun!

The count-down to the Rooster's Return has begun.  We aren't 100% sure when he will be home but we have a round-about guess and so we made a trip over to Savannah's downtown to The Paris Market where they have all sorts of fun things to look at and want to take home with you.  The jar on the right (the tall one) is one of the things that wanted to come home with us and I could not tell it no! So basically we are moving marbles from one jar to the other with 2 big ones for the 2 final days of the count down.  We did end up making an afternoon of the trip and wandered around for a bit and stopped and got coffee and a snack at a coffee shop down there.

The marbles that were picked from the buckets of joy.

A view from the top. The top of our parking garage, the kids always want to park up here. Quite frankly I don't mind at all, I like the view as much as they like the idea!

I discovered this store (The Paris Market) has a few bucket-fulls of marbles, or as I like to call them 'buckets of joy'.

This walking elephant was quite cute, we sent him down probably 15 times before we got enough of him.  I could have adopted him and brought him home with us. 

A Saturday Afternoon Picnic

When asked by her friend what is your favorite thing to do? Ruby replied, "I don't know, right now having picnics on a Saturday Afternoon."

A Picture

Every time I see this picture I can't help but smile, thought I would share

Happy Sunday!

Aunt Mary and Uncle Jeff's

We were lucky enough to be close to Aunt Mary and Uncle Jeff this summer too.  We weren't there very long but we managed to pack as much fun stuff in as we could!
We spent the 4th of July there (when I think of the 4th I will forever think of Mary and Jeff and Lander, I can't help it, Mary and Jeff are part of what makes our 4th of July the 4th of July).
Uncle Jeff took the kids fishing where they both caught their very first fish, and 2nd and 3rd and 4th and ... the fish were apparently biting faster than Uncle Jeff could get the worms on the hooks!
We (or rather Ruby and Aunt Mary) made cupcakes.
We did some front porch sitting.
Played at the park where we saw that crazy moss growing in the river there and took a walk around the park on another day right about the time the sun was going down.
And of course there was lots of talking and coffee drank. What can I say? It's what we do, it's what we enjoy!

At the end of the summer we of course had to go home, but this summer was spent with people we love and enjoy being around.

Cheyenne

There is a park in Cheyenne where Scarlett and Aurelia live.  This park is full of things that other parks don't have like water you can get in, and a bridge that moves by the force of little hands pulling it back and forth, a cool fort with benches and tables in it, tipis with drums, a windmill that runs water from the pond up a hill and out spouts down the rocks and back into the pond...
We made it there once while we were there this summer.  We spent three weeks in Cheyenne playing, working, sewing, sweating, running, screaming, sleeping, reading, walking, dancing...

Cannot get over the cuteness of this picture!

Sorry for the 4 pictures of basically the same thing, but really I couldn't decide which one I liked the best (ignore the finger in the corner)

This, ladies and gentlemen, is the reason I have spent the last 7 months without the Rooster here, the fact that we can fly this flag and walk (or ride horses) up and down the street flying this flag! 

This one is for Grandpa, 2 tractors! Yes, you saw that right, 2 tractors in 1

The pink shoes? Really? Who doesn't want to eat this little girl for lunch?!

This one basically sums it up! Cheyenne! In the state of Wyoming! The state The Rooster and I have fallen in love with and hope to get back to some day

...but mostly what we did was relax, drink coffee, and enjoy each other's company! 

Love ya Aunt Elizabeth, Uncle Todd, Scarlett and Aurelia!