Continuing on with my 1000 gifts from above ...

~ This morning I woke up to singing. Not like when I was younger and I woke up to my mom singing to the AM radio station. No, this was not really in tune. Not really quiet either. But Nathan was belting out roasting chestnuts on an open fire and then added some drumming and a cymbal noise (with his voice, not actual drums or cymbals). He is really talented in his own way. He makes up his own music and then adds words that someone else has already wrote. He later told me that it was hard to make up your own songs, you just gotta listen to the music and let it get inside your head and then you make up the words, they just kinda come to you. That's pretty genius if you ask me for a 2nd grader wouldn't you say? So, even though the music wasn't what I was used to I'm sure it was glorious music to Jesus' ears and it was a gift to wake up to early in the morning.

~ Sunday night, Nathan and Jenna spent the night at their grandparents house (Jason's family). Nathan took his phone with him. At 11:00 PM our phone rings. Jason flies out of bed because we are sure that it is an emergency (isn't it always when it is at that time of night?). It's Nathan making sure that he told us goodnight. He remembered us, even though it was probably pretty chaotic there with 9 people staying the night in that house. Yes, it was an emergency, but it was a different kind of emergency, one that was a total gift of love.

~ Cats. Have I ever said how much our cats make us laugh? We have a HUGE cat and a normal sized cat and then a kitten (6 months old). Hercules chases our middle sized cat (Pumpkin) around the house because he likes to torment her. When he gets done tormenting her our kitten (Si) will crouch real low to the ground and then sneak up on him and pounce on him and grab him by the neck and try to wrestle him to the ground. A lot of the times, Hercules will just get up and start walking off, and Si will just be hanging on and biting at his neck and eventually fall off. Imagine a 2nd grader attacking a professional football player and the football player could just walk off with the 2nd grader hanging on for dear life continuing the fight. That's kind of how this scene is played out and it happens often. This is something that can make even the saddest person crack up. We find laughter in our house a huge gift from God.

~ This year Jenna made a gift at school. We always get the gifts of pottery or whatever else and this year (on her own doing) she has decided to give it to someone else who is more deserving of it apparently. It is a gift of God that she has continued to have a heart of giving.

I have many more and I really should write them down as the day goes on but I always forget. Old age ... is that a gift? I can't remember.

Si ...

As in Siamese ...

This is our other cat, Si. She's about 6 months old and very hyper. She hoards this ball all the time ...

And Hercules. He's quite a bit bigger (OBVIOUSLY) but he has lost weight. Now he is only 10 pounds!And Payton ... no explanation needed.

More Hercules

I think he finally likes us. He has always liked Jenna but he finally has decided that we are okay.

And a picture of Payton. You can kind of see her first tooth in this picture. In this picture she has crawled/scooted (she does this thing where she is on her hands and knees and goes forward just to kind of crumple to her tummy and then back up on her hands and knees again and so on and so on) and she's done this until she got under the printer table. Now comes the fun part, since she is mobile.

Meet Hercules ...

This is Jenna's cat Hercules. He is a 13 pound cat from the Humane Society in Casper. He is a Siamese, they say he is a ragdoll and he does have some characteristics, like big boned. He doesn't necessarily flop around when you pick him up but I think he would if he wasn't so chubby, I think it hurts him to be picked up.

He is very shy, moody and we have seen him for approximately 4 minutes all day today.

Here he is on the bean bag.

He got lost earlier today and it took us 2 hours to find him. How do you lose a 13 pound cat?

He loves his belly rubbed. He drools when you do this.

He hates to have his paws touched at all. He will swat at you if you touch a paw. I'm not sure if he had a bad experience with a groomer or what.

His paws are huge. He's huge. He's afraid of our other cat and she is a third of his size. At first she was all hunkered down but now she doesn't even care where he is. He is having a little bit of a hard time getting used to the noises of our house but our black cat takes off and finds a quiet spot when there is a lot of racket too.

So he just hangs out and sneaks around and when he runs, he doesn't run like a normal cat. He runs with his front paws first and then his back paws catch up. So he kind of hops instead of runs and he looks like he is a polar bear, his hair moves like that when he hops around.

Random photos of Nathan and our pets (some)

Meet Ivy. Ivy loves our gigantic bean bag and she will often try to sneak in the bedroom and lay on the bean bag. They are the same color and if you don't have good lighting, you hardly can see her. She blends in really good.

See how well she blends in? She loves her owner too.

This is our cat in the rain gutter ...