Happy Thanksgiving!

The view from our street.

Back in the summer, I had a crazy idea that the "Guy" family should take a big family vacation over Thanksgiving. Two of my nephews are juniors and I just realized how quickly the time has gone by, so we wanted to make the most of it and take 17 people on a trip. My parents, two sisters and families, and my chinese brother Kenneth were all on our trip. Props to my brother-in-law Gus who did an amazing job as travel planner. We stayed in a cabin in Pigeon Forge, TN. Surprisingly, it wasn't difficult to move around town with 17 people in tow.

We went to the Wonder Works Museum, Hoot 'N Holler dinner show, Dollywood, and the Dixie Stampede. We rode a train through the mountains on the Polar Express. Half of our group went to Cade's Cove. The other half lazied around on Thanksgiving Day and watched the Macy's Thanksgiving Day parade and had a Thanksgiving Lunch of pizza and funnel cakes.

One night, my dad (Paw Paw to everyone else) saw a black bear on the porch of our cabin digging through our garbage. It took our garbage can up the hill spreading the contents all around. This provided the next morning's activity of picking up the garbage on the mountain. We had a really great trip. Sophie was a great sport about the 13 and 1/2 hours in the car on the way home. I'm blessed to have a family that loves being together. It was a lovely trip.

Pretty mountains

Mom and her daughters

The Wonderworks Museum Was upside down. Really fun.

Abram the astronaut.

Some of the crew waiting to go inside.

Abram's favorite ride at Dollywood was the Lemon Twist.

Kenneth rode with Guy Braden and Abram the second time.

The kids just loved hanging out and playing together.

Angie and Guy Braden about to fly in the elephant.

Angie and Gus waiting for the Dixie Stampede to begin.

These two love each other. God blessed my sister Angie and me

with boys five weeks apart.

Santa Claus stopped by on the Polar Express. He gave each child a silver bell.

Guy Braden was SO excited about the train ride.

My Mom and Dad in the mountains.

My sister Stacy, nephew Jacob, Niece Kaytlyn

The crew waiting in the Carriage Room for the Dixie Stampede to start.

Sophie's Birthday

Well, I've been putting off writing about Sophie's one year old birthday party. Partly because I'm still a little in denial that she is one year old and partly because I wanted to write something really sentimental, but I've relinquished that expectation and I'm just going to document it.

The past year has been such a sweet one for our family. Not only is Sophie a sweet, precious gift, but watching her brothers love on her and interact with her has been such a blessing too. My friend Trish always says the best gift you can give your child is a sibling. I've seen this to be true with Sophie. Roe and Abram truly love having a little sister. They get so excited every time she wakes up or discovers something new. I joke that we're going to have trouble keeping her humble because she's gonna think she's queen of the world the way her brothers treat her. I also wonder how her brothers will influence her. For one thing, She thinks "Flash" is her brother. She walks around holding blue Batman in one hand and Black Batman in the other. She's going to be well aquainted with superheroes.

The past year has flown by. It's been amazing to watch Sophie grow and develop. I think I was able to enjoy each stage more being that she was my 3rd and I really had a sense of how quickly this time goes since I have older children.

We went to the farm to celebrate with my family. Daddy made a big pot of chili and I brought the fixins' and cake and we just ate, opened presents and spent time together. It was a nice evening.

I made Sophie a birthday hat to match her dress my friend Crystal gave her.

I've always made my children a "healthy" first birthday cake.

Sophie's was really a glorified oatmeal muffin.

We took off her nice dress, but the cake wasn't really "smashable"

So she didn't get all that messy. Aunt Angie was there to help.

My friend Carla made her cake. I added the store bought letters.

My mom always put these on my homemade cakes growing up.

We also had cake pops. If you've never had these, I highly recommend them.

SO YUMMY!

Isaac was a BIG fan of the cake pops.

Aunt Stacy gave Sophie a vacuum cleaner. She loves pushing it around.

The Girls!

The next day, Paw Paw, Roe and Abram picked up pecans.
Good Weekend with family!

God is Good!

Some of the amazing knitters in my life.

In late August, a friend from church taught me how to knit on a loom. I decided I was gonna make some hats for the homeless. My friend Courtney was gonna help. She asked on Facebook if anyone wanted to help as well. The response was unbelievable. We've been meeting once a month for the last couple of months to knit and have fun. People teach people and honestly I have no idea the exact count of people knitting, but it's crazy lots. All I know is only God could start a knitting movement that is blessing some people. To date we've handed out around 260 hats. Maybe more...honestly I've lost count.

One place we handed out hats was a ministry called "His Heart".

My friend Charla from college serves in this ministry downtown that ministers to children and youth. I have to tell you, these kids have STOLEN my heart. They come from a very poor area and don't have a lot of resources, but they are PRECIOUS. The ministry used to have a grant that paid for them to feed the children on Mondays and Wednesdays during Bible Club, but because of the economy they lost that grant. So, now they're only able to do PB&J on Monday and a snack of some type on Wed.

Last week, my small group wanted to feed them. It worked out that only Curt, me, and the kids could go, but we had a great time. I had emailed my friend in charge of drinks telling her that the kids liked fruit punch and usually got refills, so I recommended getting the cheap gallon containers of fruit punch. She emailed back that she was gonna get water and juice. I thought, did she not read my email? Fruit punch is what they need. Then, I spoke to her in person explaining that the cheap fruit punch was our best option. She seemed to understand, but Monday when I went to get the drinks there were large containers of fruit punch and LARGE containers of bottled water. I made a few snide remarks because I thought giant bottles of water were a waist when these kids NEEDED fruit punch, and could just drink tap water.

Two days later, a parent of one of the children came to my friend Charla and said that their water had been turned off and they couldn't afford to get it back on until Friday. They asked Charla if the ministry had any water they could give them. Yes. They had lots of HUGE bottles of water. God was meeting a need before it was even known. It was humbling to me who thought I had it all figured out. Humbling to see the Holy Spirit whispering to my friend Paige that she should buy large quantities of water, when I was adamantly saying she should buy only fruit punch. I'm thankful that God works in spite of my limitations.

Thursday, I found out that last Monday two of the kids in this ministry lost their house in a fire. They lost EVERYTHING. So, I quickly began sending emails to people and was collecting quite a bit of things to take to them. I was trying to find out where to take the items when I found out the mother was $140 short to pay the rent on their new home, and had no place to put the things we had gathered. I began to cry and worry for this family of 8. Where would they go? What would they do? Ironically, I'm reading a book right now about Fear and the chapter I read the night before was about worry. It was about the time when Jesus had gone away with His disciples and all the people had followed and they needed to feed them. Tons of them, but they only had 5 loaves of bread and 2 fish. The author says the disciples stopped counting at 7 and worried. He then asks, "Do you stop counting at 7 or 8?". Yesterday, I was counting 8. Eight people who needed a home. So, I remembered the scripture that says "Whatever you ask for in prayer, believe that you have received it, and it will be yours." Mark 11:24

So, I quit worrying and I began to pray. Nothing fancy or liturgical, just an honest prayer. "God please provide this $140 for this family." I don't know how, I don't know when, but I believe You're going to provide it."

During this prayer, I was interrupted by a phone call. A friend from church, who never calls me was asking about an email she had gotten forwarded from someone else. She couldn't open it and wondered what it was. I explained to her it was about collecting the items, but that we couldn't take them right now b/c they had no where to put them. She said I have money for you. So, I met her at my son's pre-school and she gave me $100 cash that her husband had given her that morning to spend at Mistletoe Market place ( A big seasonal shopping event here). She said, I don't need anything; give it to the family. So crying, I drove home thanking God for providing. I then met with my mentor from church. I was telling her how good God is and all that had been happening. She said, "Noël, sometimes when I'm at the grocery I'll use my debit card and get cash back if we're going to eat out or something, but yesterday I used my debit card and got cash back and then thought why did I do that...I already have cash. It was $40. She gave it to me to give to this family. God heard my prayer. God helped this family. We are continuing to pray and collect items for them b/c they have a lot of obstacles in front of them. I pray that they can know that God loves them even though things are bad. I'm thankful for that.

Halloween

We had a really fun time this Halloween. We went trick or treating with our friends the Meyers followed by a party at their house. I'm always in favor of "themed" costumes when it comes to our family, but since Abram was adamant about being Flash this year... (He's worn the costume daily for 3 weeks now) we all just decided to pick a random costume. While we were trick or treating an old lady handing out candy looked at Abram and said, "Are you the DEVIL"? Obviously, she didn't notice those were lightning bolts coming from his head, not horns.

Roe initially wanted to be Ketchup. I guess this costume was to follow up being a Hot Dog last year? But I talked him into being Sherlock Holmes instead b/c I thought he'd actually play in these clothes at least one more time. Abram always calls Sophie Little Lady Bug, so her costume choice was obvious. I was Secretary of State Hillary Clinton thanks to my niece who happened to have a Hillary Clinton mask. Although the rubber mask sort of terrified all the children. And Curt was Flamingo Joe:A random person wearing a tiny visor riding a flamingo. Special Thanks to the Meyers for being our friends and throwing a great Halloween party.

Abram said, "This is the BEST Halloween EVER". I concur.

Secretary of State Clinton with her cousin Flamingo Joe

Flamingo Joe and The Lady Bug

Our Little Lady Bug

Lots of Investigating Was Done

Flash, Sherlock Holmes, and The Lady Bug

Our friend Kristen went all out. Mummy Dogs, Chicken salad tombstone sandwiches

Severed Toes with Toe Jam Dip...It was AWESOME!

Pumpkins Pumpkins

We declared this past Saturday Pumpkin Day. Roe LOVES carving pumpkins. Actually, it may be more the "idea" of carving pumpkins that he loves, because once it comes down to it actually carving pumpkins is kind of hard and kind of gross. But this year, I think Curt knocked it out of the park. We started the morning with pumpkin pancakes.

Delicious and one even looked like a pumpkin.

Then we carved our pumpkins. Our pumpkin carving kit options at Target were between a princess carving kit or a marvel comic superhero one. Living with a superhero, I knew which one to get. So, we ended up with two superhero pumpkins, an Auburn Tigers Pumpkin, and a traditional jack'o lantern face. It was a really good day.

Picking the pumpkins at the pumpkin patch.

Cleaning out the pumpkins. Curt is always left to carve the pumpkins, after the rest of the family loses interest.

Scary Larry-Carved by Roe Hale

Even carving a pumpkin in honor of Auburn couldn't help them beat LSU.

Curt knocked it out of the park with The Hulk

Best pumpkin he's ever carved.

.

I carved this one. Iron Man-Yes it IS Iron Man-

It wasn't easy, and NO it doesn't resemble Iron Man all that much, but I really tried.