Thankful

I have long admired Jamie and all of her Thankful posts.  I read them and think how nice it is that she takes the time to document all that she has to be thankful for and think, I really should do that, and then don't. It seems that I am dealing more and more with children who are not seeing all that they have and tend to be focusing on all the "stuff" they want....soooooo, I figured perhaps it may be my lack of example in praising the Good God for all that we do have.

In no particular order, here are a few of the many, many things that I am thankful for!

I am thankful for being 26 1/2 weeks pregnant with an almost 2 year old and 4 year old who still think they are my babies!

So thankful for the family vacation we took a few weeks back to Wisconsin Dells.  We had fun in the indoor water parks, went bowling, played games and shared all this fun with another family we brought along with us!

Thankful for this big sister who helped out a pregnant momma by going on the water slides with her daring little brother!

Thankful for this big brother who puts his little brother down for nap time!

Thankful for a $2 box of Fruit Loops and the hours of entertainment it has brought for the younger girls in the house.  I mean, all of the stringing practice to develop their fine motor skills! :-)

Thankful for messages written in the snow!

Thankful for the snowy hill in our yard that the children built a "bob sled" track on.  They love sledding and then coming in for hot chocolate with marshmallows!

Thankful for little boys and remote control trains.  The best part is the "choo-choo" sounds he makes while driving this Thomas the Train all over the kitchen.

Thankful for my crafty girls. This is Madeline modeling one of the hats she has crocheted and has for sale in her etsy shop.   More to come on that in a later post!

Thankful for birthday celebrations with friends!  My wonderful husband celebrated a birthday last week and we had some friends over for supper and Dairy Queen ice cream cake - a perfect evening!

Thankful for little boys who think they are big boys. Peter will eat just about anything as long as it is not cut into "baby bites".  He prefers to push a chair up to the island, pick it up whole, and chow down!

Thankful for big sisters who spoil their baby brother.  I left to run a few errands and came home to find this picture on my camera.  Madeline and Haley got Peter his blanket, a bowl of M&M's and mini-marshmallows, and put Thomas the Train on television.  That boy has quite the life, don't you think?

This really is just the tip of the iceberg.  I am going to try and do this more often and really focus on all that I have been blessed with.

Have a blessed week and remember to take some time to count all of your blessings!

Heather :-)

June Recap

This past month has flown by.  I have been checking in periodically to read some of your blogs, but just haven't found the time to post.  So here is a massive dump about what June has been for the Kraft family.

Todd and I went to the MN Catholic Home Education Conference...without any children!  Madeline and Haley both took the babysitting certification class last summer and have been practicing up their skills over the winter.  They watched the children for two whole days and nothing burned down!!!  Seriously, they all did a great job and it is a huge milestone as parents to be able to have children old enough to babysit.  Whoo-hoo!

If you've been reading my blog for any amount of time, you'll know that we've been trying to sell our home for the past 3+ years.  Our realtor advised us from the beginning that most clients require granite and hardwood in the kitchen of which our kitchen had neither.  We didn't want to put any money into the house that we were trying to sell, so we just left it.  Fast forward three years and we decided to take her advice.  We put in the granite and hardwood, painted accent walls throughout the house, and removed any personal and religious items from the home.  She staged the heck out of it and I must admit that it looks amazing! So far...no serious lookers.  But, it's only been re-listed for 15 days.  I'm hoping and praying to sell soon so that we can be moved by the fall and the start of the new school year.

Our kitchen before with linoleum flooring and laminate countertops.  Looks nice, right?

We let the kids take Sharpies to the flooring the night before the wood floor  installers got started.  They loved it and let their creativity flow!

The kitchen after with wood flooring and granite countertops - looking even better, yes?

Do you see all those pretty plates precariously placed throughout the kitchen?  

Because we re-listed the house and it is beautifully staged, I decided to take the children to North Dakota for a week.  It's tough to keep a house (full of breakable items that belong to your realtor!) looking clean and uncluttered with 7 children.  My mom and dad graciously agreed to let us take over their house for 8 days.  The entire trip went remarkably well.  Other than the fact that Peter whines and/or cries every minute that he's strapped into his car seat (did I mention that it is 8 hours of driving time?), the entire trip went off without a hitch!

I celebrated my birthday in Minot!

The kids got out golfing with Grandma Eileen a few times.

I took the kiddos to the indoor water park.  It was a ton of fun!

Todd rode the train and joined us on Saturday.  Here is surrounded by his adoring children on  Father's Day.

We came home for two days and celebrated Madeline's 13th birthday in the morning and headed out to Camp Lebanon in the afternoon.  We were there from Thursday evening until Sunday afternoon.  There were some crazy storms that passed through.  Two cabins had a massive tree uproot and fall on top of them!  Luckily, nobody was hurt.  We had a fabulous time and the children played and played.  Lillian and Peter had some weird virus over the weekend with high fevers and body and head aches.  Lillian slept the better part of two days and Peter cried a good portion of that time.  However, they are both back to normal and I am thankful that it was a short-lived illness!

Happy 13th Birthday Madeline!

Esther and Eleanor on the pontoon.

The big girls spent hours and hours in the lake.

Todd helping Eleanor with a sand art project at craft time.

Our next big undertaking is opening our home to 5 extra children for a week.  Our dear friends are heading down to Texas to visit her mother and asked if we'd take 5 of their 7 kiddos for the week.  The children are over the moon excited to have them!  It should be interesting with 12 kids for a week.  I'll let you know how it all goes!

And just like that, June is over.  It has finally heated up and feels like summer.  I know that July will fly by just as quickly. With so much going on, I know that I won't be posting much.  I decided to do periodic posts and spend more time just enjoying summer.

God Bless!

Heather :-)

December Birthdays

On the first Sunday of Advent, we celebrated Eleanor's 5th birthday.  She had a great day being showered with love, attention, and of course gifts.

 Do you think she liked the gift from big brother Joseph?

 Esther "helped" Eleanor with her sticker books!

 The birthday girl with her cookie cake that she helped decorate!  Happy Birthday, Eleanor!

Ten days later, it was Haley's turn. She celebrated her 11th birthday. We managed to fit in most of our school work, guitar, and dance lessons amidst all the birthday festivities.

Lillian knows about Haley's sweet tooth and gave her a yummy treat.  Esther wanted to be included in the picture, too!

Madeline gave Haley her crocheted dog that won a ribbon at the County Fair this summer.

The kids are ready to sing to the birthday girl.

She got all 11 of them blown out!  Happy Birthday, Beaner!

Now that the children's birthday celebrations are over, we can hunker down and finish out Advent before the real big birthday celebration on Christmas!

The children are all excited to pick up Uncle Neil from the airport tomorrow.  He's my younger brother visiting from Texas for a few days.  We haven't seen him in 2 years...we can't wait!

God Bless!

Heather :-)

Birthday Buddies

This week, we celebrated two birthdays in our household!

The birthday girl gives dad a hug....Elmo stickers!  Does life get any better than that for a 3 year old?!

Esther with her cookie cake.

Joseph is really into remote control things and guns, so this remote control tank that shoots BB's is the perfect gift! (too bad it didn't work...we'll be making a trip to WalMart for a replacement!)

Whew!  9 candles are tougher to blow out than you'd think!

And I couldn't resist putting a picture of our "sitter"...isn't he adorable!?!

And may God bless them with many more!

God Bless!

Heather :-)

How we celebrate birthdays

I recently posted about our 5th Annual Birthday Bash.  It is a celebration that we have each year to combine all of our birthdays into one humongous shin-dig. It is something that our family anticipates all year long.  It is an amazing event, but there is one question we get asked over and over again.  "What about their individual birthdays?  Don't they get to celebrate their day?"  The answer is, "Of course they do!"

Today was Lillian's 7th birthday.  Here is a peek at what a birthday celebration in the Kraft house looks like.

When the birthday kid wakes up, there is a sign over her door.  I don't know where I stole this idea from, but it has really caught on in our house.  They love having this silly sign on their door.  I let it stay up for a whole week, so it kind of prolongs the celebration.

All the children love running through the birthday door!

Of course I forgot to take a photo, but we started the morning off with monkey bread.  The birthday girl eats all of her meals on the "You are special" plate all day long.

After breakfast, we had family prayer time where we said a rosary.  This is special because the only intention was for the birthday girl - that she grow in holiness and learn to love and serve the Lord more in this upcoming year.

Present time comes next in our day.  The birthday child receives as many presents as they are old that year.  There is usually one present that is a little more "spendy" than the others.  We did, however, cap this at ten. So our 12 year old only got ten presents this year (she was totally okay with that!).   One of their presents is in the birthday box.  This is a special present that Dad chooses special for the birthday child.  The birthday box is the last present opened...maybe I'll have to post more about that later.  It's a neat thing.

She's been asking for this silly thing for over a year.  She was SUPER excited to get it...they tried 3 different slushies this afternoon!

The children always give each other gifts as well.  They know each other really well and get creative about finding gifts.  Sometimes it is something homemade.  Other times, they pool some money to buy something.  Joseph earned a free book from the library reading program.  There weren't any books that he was interested in for himself, but there were many that Lillian would enjoy.  So he got her a book and gave it to her for her birthday.

We simplified the cake baking process a few years back.  I make a jumbo sized chocolate chip cookie and the birthday child gets to decorate it.

That's a smiley face, 7, and balloon made out of chocolate chips...and a whole lot of sprinkles!

And it wouldn't be a complete birthday without candles and singing.

Looks like Eleanor and Haley are trying to give her a little help!

The birthday child also chooses what we have for meals and has the spotlight on them for the day.  They also receive cards in the mail from relatives and phone calls from grandparents. Who doesn't love getting mail and phone calls?!

That's what a Kraft kid birthday celebration looks like.

God Bless!

Heather :-)

7 Quick Takes - Birthday Bash!

On Wednesday our family celebrated our 5th annual birthday bash with 130 of our friends and family.  Instead of having 7 separate parties for the children, we combine them into one mega-party and go all out.  Using the 7 Quick Takes format, here is a peek at this year's celebration.

(1) T-shirts

We buy shirts on sale ($2.50 each) and Todd makes an iron on for the front (5th Annual Kraft Birthday Bash) and the back (child's name and birthday) so that the birthday kids are easy to pick out in a crowd.

Here's the front of this year's shirt...

and the back!

(2) Carnival Games

We have a carnival set up in our backyard and the neighbors graciously let us spill over into their yard as well.  Throughout the year we pick up prizes as they go on clearance (Target dollar aisle when it's 70% off if a favorite place to look!) to keep the budget down in that area.  Each child gets a bag with 30 tickets inside that they can use at any of the carnival games. The fishing game is always a huge hit!

Here's Haley and Eleanor getting the sucker pull ready - another crowd pleaser!

(3) Food

This is kept really simple and requires no cutlery.  I have sloppy joes or hot dogs along with carrot sticks, watermelon, and chips.  I also have two big drink containers - one filled with water and the other filled with lemonade.

We have the food set up in the garage.  There are a few tables and chairs, but folks take their food and sit on the lawn or in chairs they bring along to watch the magic show.

(4) Cake

I order two full sheet cakes from Sam's Club for $37 a piece.  This is a super tasty cake and is the best price I can find anywhere.

Esther really wanted to stick her finger into that big frosting balloon!

(5) Strolling Magic

This is the second year we had Magician Matt Dunn attend the party.  He did some strolling magic during the carnival which was a hit again.  More than one mom came up to me and said, "Your magician stole my watch!"  The kids loved being able to be up close and personal with a "real, live magician".  It was pretty spendy, but a favorite and memorable addition to the party.

(6) Magic Show

Magician Matt Dunn did a magic show after supper.  He has a very dry sense of humor and had us all laughing out loud.  He did an excellent job utilizing volunteers from the audience and including our children into his show.

Here's the guests all finding a spot to watch the magic show.

They loved being part of the show!

(7) Food Shelf Donations

Each year we ask that our guests bring a donation for the food shelf instead of a gift for our family.  This year we collected  606 pounds of food!  Over the past 5 years of birthday bashes our friends and family have blessed the local food shelf with 2,400 pounds of food!  Isn't that amazing?!?  It is such a wonderful thing to have the children bring the donations to the food shelf and know that their celebration is helping other families in need.

That's what 606 pounds of food looks like in the back of Big Blue!

Waiting for the staff to add up the total pounds of our donation.

And of course I need to mention all the generous souls who volunteer to help us with this wonderful event.  We couldn't do it without all of them.  We thoroughly enjoy this celebration and look forward to it all year long.  Eleanor asked me today, "Mommy, how many more days until the next Birthday Bash?"  I'm sure that isn't the only time I'll have to answer that question!

God Bless!

Heather :-)