Lauren's first Thanksgiving

As Thanksgiving weekend comes to a close, I am ever thankful for my family.  We spent Thanksgiving at a friend's house with their family and had such a great time.  My mom was invited too, so that was nice.  Our day was filled with food, hanging out chatting, watching some football, a little dozing on the couch, and then also kiddos playing football in their back yard.  I'll update with pictures on another day. 

Lauren was so great that day, sitting like a big girl at the "kid's table", eating her turkey and mashed potatoes, and later running the back yard along with the football game of kids verses daddys. Our friends have "tween" girls, I think 10 and 12 or so years old, so they LOVE to play with Lauren.  She just follows them right along. They also have two dogs, which Lauren LOVES.  Lauren also followed the boys to the basement for a game of wii - so all in all, she had a great day. 

Her day was wrapped up by her "finding" daddy in the middle of his football game in the back yard, and motioning for him to walk the creek and they ended up in the park next door.  About 20 minutes later, Brad came in the house from the front door without Lauren.  I was like, "where is Lauren??" His reply was, "she's asleep on the couch in the living room" -- when he took her to the park, she feel asleep in the baby swing and he carried her all the way home asleep!  That girl was just totally worn out!  It was so cute - she continued to sleep through the second round of eating and more football games, but this time on TV.

It was an all around great day!

The rest of her weekend consisted of play time with Joshua and daddy, while I got some shopping done.  As a family we went to the Lexington Children's Museum - she LOVED that!  She helped my mom and Joshua put up our Christmas tree (while Brad and I slipped out to Panera for some mommy/daddy time), and we wrapped the weekend up with a pot luck at church last night to celebrate advent.  She helped, along with all the other children, decorate the church Christmas tree.  I think she's got the Christmas tree-thing down. :) 

I have to say, I'm not a big fan of decorating for Christmas.  Not crazy about putting up a tree, etc.... but because of Joshua and my mom, we do it -- well, they put it up...we just allow it in our home. :)  It seems like so much work and I've never really been a fan of decorating a Christmas tree.  But I can see that for Joshua and now also for Lauren, it's important -- they LOVE it - and lay on their belly just watching the lights and the train circle around the tree.  Lauren particularly likes to take off one ornament that has a picture of Joshua from last year and she walks around with it - telling anyone who will listen, "bye-ah, bye-ah" - which is brother in Marathi.  She LOVES her bye-ah.   I've found myself wondering this weekend what is she thinking when it comes to all this Christmas stuff and decorating trees.  I pray her little heart is filled with the love of God - so that she knows how very much SHE is loved by us and by our Lord.