Happy Thanksgiving

i'm not a holiday mom. like at all. you wouldnt be able to tell by my pinterest boards. i mean, maybe you could tell, a little. the only time i was ever the least bit festive was if i was invited to a holiday themed play date and/or a church activity but that's about the extent of it. we don't do traditions, we don't have decorations, no special christmas eve dinners, no turkey at thanksgiving (we do a tongan thanksgiving here with lupulu and manioke. no matter how hard you try to photograph lupulu to make it look good, it just doesnt, but it tastes AMAZING), no easter baskets for the kids with crazy gifts. we don't do any of that. maybe, just maybe we'll remember to wear green for st pattys day. holidays... they just aren't my love language. i feel no pressure whatsoever to display a festive home on social media. plus, i have ZERO storage in my house for decorations. so basically, if it's out, it's out. like my christmas tree kitchen towel that we keep using since last christmas or the christmas lights that just stay up in the room because white christmas lights can go with any time of year. i also HATE black friday.

i guess i inherited this low-maintenance (or no-maintenance) holiday thing from my parents. they weren't crazy holiday people either. the grams would buy a few christmas things that we've used for years like the clay village pieces that you could paint and we loved painting those together. or the over expensive "the nutcracker" spinning twirly thing that played all the music. we did have matching wal-mart sweats a couple of years and we usually open gifts when everyone is awake and start from youngest to oldest. but other than that, we just enjoyed the time off from work and school and the chance to lay around and do absolutely nothing except maybe go out to eat a lot and go to the movies. good times. serious good times.

today i was feeling particularly sorry for myself. i literally laid around the house and didn't do anything. i'd just scroll and scroll through all 50 of my instagram accounts, then scroll some more. i walked around mindlessly. i indexed about 80 names today, threw in a couple loads of laundry and that was the extent of my productivity. the sun was out and it actually looked like a day i should have taken the kids outside. ohhh pregnancy and cold weather and basement living, how you take away my motivation to do anything. it was a very existential day. like, WHAT AM I DOING ANY OF THIS FOR!? but then my husband came home early, we all took a long nap and i finally got a shower and put on my face and felt so much better.

life is ridiculous but so, so good, isn't it? between all of the sadness that is the ferguson situation, the anti-duggar campaigns and everything else that is awful floating around in the news and social media, i hope you can dig down (but not too far) to find what you are grateful for. just take a break from whatever it is you are busying yourself with

i'll start with....

- an incredible husband who accomplishes everything he sets his mind to and who works so hard to build our life physically and spiritually
- two hilariously beautiful fair haired babies who drive me crazy in all of the best ways and make life better than i could have ever imagined
- a warm place to live, food in my fridge, too many clothes and lots of extra things in between
- the best parents who still parent me a lot and have become the worlds greatest grandparents

how about you?

enjoy your family day, don't stress.

quiet service

it's thanksgiving week, which means a lot of reflection time and/or stress. for me it's reflection. i don't stress about thanksgiving. i'm not really a holiday person. i love holidays, but i don't go all out decorating every inch of my house or carrying out traditions. and i don't do the black friday thing either cause well, we don't have the money for that, as cheap as things are. it's not worth getting into more debt just to buy stuff and battle the other crazies out that day.

the other night, when i was feeling particularly sorry for myself, i had this thought. and it basically went like this:

before i was pregnant, i could go out, often, and deliver treats to friends. help watch their kids if they had appointments or were pregnant and needed some rest. i could show up to a service project and actually serve and work and sweat along side everyone else. i didn't have to do a lot of coordinating to get out my door and to a tiny bit of service. 

but now, two kids later and another pregnancy in the works, i can't. do. anything. i'm too tired to leave my house. i can't run into different stores to stroll around and find things that will cheer people up without a massive production of prepping children to head out the door then wrestle them in and out of car seats and in and out of shopping carts. geez, typing the entire process is making me tired. this pregnancy, just thinking about slightly strenuous activities literally makes me tired. and service projects? there's no way i can go to a service project because my husband probably has to be there and one of us has to chase the kids and it can't be him. 

and then in the same train of thought i became literally enlightened and it finally hit me: my service is here at home with these babies and my husband. my husband is a bishop right now, and his service is needed much more than mine. the service i can give him is to take care of the kids and the home and let him go out and take care of everything he needs to. it's caring and teaching my children.

i mean, we all know that, but do we really, really, know that? has it sunk in? it finally sunk in for me. i don't always love it, but i get it now.

and to sum it all up in the most perfect way possible, my friends at the small seed wrote this on IG one day:

lesson printable and craft for lesson 15 - I will be thankful

november, thanksgiving. so we are going to be doing gratitude activities the last couple of weeks this month, duh! i spent all of last week revamping our closet with the motor skills activities, that i really didn't have time to think of a thanksgiving thing. and my personality is to make things as simple and stress free for myself as possible. which means i'm only doing one big thanksgiving lesson/activity the week of thanksgiving. it just makes my life 10 million times easier. i'm juggling two kids under three by myself every sunday since my husband is the bish, so naturally i'm all about the one-trip-wonder method. gather everything--bags, nursery stuff, snacks, kids and take it all all in one trip into the building.

i've created a simple printable for coloring and a craft! each printable i create, i want the kids to have the opportunity to learn, see letters, color in lines, etc. not just color a picture. though your nursery party kids may not be able to read just yet, some might be able to identify letters, enjoy learning a phrase. the printable provides some dialogue for the teacher. dialogue = extending an activity by four to five minutes (in my personal experience!) i'm all for making the time go by!

hopefully most of these things you already have in your house or can find for cheap/free at different places. and if you don't have stuff and not a lot of budget, ask the parents of your nursery party kids if they have things they can save (like toilet paper rolls, cereal boxes, pringles cans) or donate (scraps of paper, paper bags, lunch sacks, etc). if they are anything like me, they'll have hoards of craft things hanging around the house that their spouses are dying to get rid of.

and here's the "I will be thankful" booklet that you can use in addition to the worksheet provided in the manual.

i love free hand stuff. let the kids put stickers, stamps, markers, pens, crayons all over this little booklet. the older kids might enjoy tracing around the letters and coloring them in.

just print, cut and staple! and if you want it to appear to be a little fancier, use that vintage brown looking scrap book paper for the cover page and the last page.

here's the link, enjoy!

if you are having trouble downloading it, send me an email at josie.nurseryparty@gmail.com and i'll send you a copy!

and here is the thanksgiving paper plate turkey! cut the paper plates, the toilet paper rolls, beaks and draw the eyes in before you take them to your activity, helps keep the attention span!