Thanksgiving

We sure do have a lot to give thanks for this year. We've had a wonderful year living in Lexington, we have our health and a smart, helpful, and happy daughter. She really is the light of our lives- pure entertainment all day, every day (well almost every day- grin).

It really is amazing to see how Grace has grown and changed over the past year. Not only is she taller but her personality and smarts have come out this year. If you can imagine- she knew her letters around 18 months old and knew all of her phonics soon after she turned two. I figured the next step was to teach her to read...and guess what...she can read! She's great at 2 letter words (in, at, of, on, etc.) and does well with 3 letter words (Sam, hat, get, etc.). She even knows some 4 letter words. I can't begin to tell you how rewarding being a stay at home mom is now that I can actually see and hear what she's learning from me. You know, when you have a baby, of course they are learning every second of the day (facial expressions, food textures, etc.) but the reward is different. You might get a smile or a chuckle. But gosh, now observing how Grace acts around strangers, how she picks up her toys, how she loves to help me around the house, how polite she is- it's just amazing. I know that she learned these things starting when she was a baby by watching Evan and I but now that she's actually doing and mimicking what we have done is just fantastic! It really does reinforce, to me at least, that I really did do something right...and have been doing the right thing around her for a long time. I wish everybody that read my blog could spend time with her because my words just can't describe her. We have been very blessed that she has been healthy this year and hope we can say the same about next year.

Again, we had a great Thanksgiving this year. My brother Dave and his wife Jen were in town from California this year and made a trip Lexington to see our new house. We were so flattered that they made the time to come down because they are always so busy visiting others when they came back home to Indiana. they came to our house Wednesday and stayed until Thursday morning. Gosh, did we have fun. It was so great to have them here and wish they would move here so we could see them more often. I'm keeping my fingers crossed.

Thursday we drove to Wabash to have Thanksgiving with the Beauchamp family. What fun! We were able to see almost everybody (Grandmere, Grandad, Mimi, Poppy, all of the Aunts and Uncles...and cousins). I think the only people we didn't see were Parker and Katie and Andy and Alisa and hopefully we'll see them soon. We hope they had just as happy of a Thanksgiving as we did. Friday we spent the day and night at my mom's house and Saturday we headed to my dad's house for another feast! Again- so much fun. The entire Brunsman family was there (all of the siblings- doesn't happen often since we are all spread out). We always love to get together and appreciate the opportunity to do it- thanks Dad and Billie! Your new house looks amazing-

We've started family night here in Lexington with last night being our first night. We took Grace to see Santa and got a wonderful (better than expected) picture. Grace didn't want to sit on his lap but she did tell him that she wanted presents for Christmas (big boxes, little boxes, and red boxes...he he.- oh, and pink tights and candy). Then we went to Chuck-E-Cheese. We've been once before (Owen's birthday party). Grace was a little more hesitant this time with some of the rides but she still had a blast! And with her tickets she was able to get a piece of candy, a pink comb, stickers and a sticky frog.

Today and the rest of the week Ball Homes (our homebuilder) is going to be here to fix everything on our one year list. Believe it or not, it's been great! We'll see how the rest of the week goes- I'll keep you posted. So far, so good...no...so far, so fantastic! Yup, I'm still corny.

Grace has started playing her piano and singing along. It is toooo cute. And she has started saying "alright" after everything. I can say ,"Mommy's funny" and she'll say, "Mommy's funny alright!" Ha ha- Hilrious! Our buddy Mike (aka Milhouse) gave her a remote control helicoptor- she's really good flying it (better than me- no kidding). And we are still going strong making homemade pizza. Grace loves to roll out the dough herself- and of course, she's good at it! Ha ha.

Have a good week- Jen