A Lot to be Thankful For

This year marked the 6th Annual Kosmicki Thanksgiving Celebration with Brad's family making the trek to our home. Grandma and Grandpa arrived late Tuesday night via plane while Doug and Kim made the long journey by mini-van. We are so thankful everyone made the effort to come out to our house as we had a great time. I felt a bit disorganized with the meal planning (hey, who needs milk and bread!) but with extra sets of hands around the house things went smoothly and I don't think anyone went hungry throughout the weekend. I must extend a special thanks to Kim for bringing the very tasty Eileen's frosted sugar cookies....yummmy....a favorite of mine from when I was a kid!!!! Grace and Henry had a blast and played non-stop the entire time. And all the kids were pretty busy and there was not one single kid issue which I must say is pretty impressive since there were six of them below the age of 7. We were joined by our friends Kevin, Jenny, and Leo both for our Thanksgiving feast and to watch the Huskers play Colorado. This weekend reminds us once again how blessed we are with wonderful family members and friends.

Check out the bunch of wild turkeys in our backyard!

Super Cute Cousins

Grant

Grant was a mover and a shaker before he was born....he was always performing belly acrobatics and from this video, you can see that he hasn't stopped moving since being born. It is so hard to get a picture of the little guy because he always has an arm or a leg flying around which shows up blurry in the picture. He is such a sweet baby and we are loving every moment with him! He has been teasing us with a big open mouth look for weeks but finally gave us a big wide mouth smile this evening several times!!! And he is getting really strong too. He loves it when his Big Sis and Big Bro talk to him and will respond to them with little coo's.

Falling into cooler weather

Fall has been beautiful here...cool mornings, warm afternoons, crisp evenings. Now we are entering into the weird in between time of rain/snow/no sun. We just never know what we are going to get these days. Before the dampness hit, the kids and I have had some fun afternoons in the backyard playing in our very small pile of leaves. We would rake and scatter and re-rake the tiny pile but it sure provided a lot of fun.

Grace's Soccer season

Last week marked the end of Grace's soccer season. You know how soccer games have gone in the past in our world...a lot of dancing, cartwheels, and spinning with small bursts of interest in the game which would at times result in some kicking of the ball and occasionally a goal. This year, we had a totally different Grace. She was not only interested in the game of soccer but she was actually pretty good and it was fun (instead of painful) to watch the games. She scored at every game (multiple times per game on most days) and this season was a big boost to her self-confidence which I think is one of the most important reasons for being involved in extracirrcular activities...knowing you can accomplish something with a little practice. We are really proud of how well Grace did this year but hope she always knows how proud we are of her just for being her cute little self and for giving it her all...no matter the outcome. In the video I loaded, Grace doesn't actually score but you can see how her ball handling skills have improved and how she actually goes back after the ball instead of doing her old "kick the ball once and then look up, smile and give thumbs up to Mom and Dad" move!

Happy Halloween!!

We had a very fun Halloween around here....Grace really loves to dress up and so this was a most exciting day for her. Will also likes to dress up and once he figures out people were going to be handing him candy it became even more exciting. He liked to hold the candy in his hand instead of put it in his bag and at each house he would put down the candy he had in his hand to take the new piece. He would never pick up the old piece in excitement over the new one so without the help of Brad, I, and Grace he would have only had one piece of candy to show for the whole night (this wouldn't be all that bad really....we got a lot of candy for the amount of time we spent trick or treating! Our neighborhood is very generous!)

In addition to going around the neighborhood, we went to Old Town Pocatello to walk the streets doing a bit of trick or treating in the afternoon. We wouldn't have made it very far without the help of Leo's family. With Grace being so excited and trying to run a head and Will being well, Will, and having the potential to dart all over, we needed all the hands we could get. Grace thought Grammy was pretty cool and always enjoys being around other kids. Grant slept through all the festivities which makes me wonder how crazy things could be next year!!!