A few highlights this month:
1. Celebrating Veteran's Day with Grandma and Grandpa and Uncle Troy and the dogs.
We had quite the crazy night packing up the whole house for Grandma's house, dragging four children to Activity Days (Blake was out of town) beforehand.... and then quickly discovering it wasn't going to happen as Evelyn became sick right as we were about to head out. ACK! Everyone was so disappointed! Especially me!!! It's not easy packing all five of us up! But we woke up early and made the quick drive first thing. The kids had a blast swimming, eating at IHOP, playing with Troy, Nilla and Don, seeing the movie Trolls, and going to Chuck E Cheese. Evelyn and I shopped for her birthday during the movie- which was very fun. Love when the kids have a day off from school.
2.Evelyn's Birthday! (see previous post)
3. Celebrating and partying with friends!
Our good friends hosted a Pie Night in which we all got together to share the best part of Thanksgiving food-- that you never have room for--- the pies! Love getting together with my wonderful friends. We also hosted our annual Christmas service project night. My friend Jessica organizes this each year; she does all the work and planning and inviting... .I just host! It's so much fun. This year we had three stations of service. A card making station for the children who are in the hospital around Christmas. A fleece blanket tying station, again for children in the hospital. and then a station for cutting out the patterns for shoes to send to Africa. Each family brought a few pairs of jeans to donate and the patterns were cut out of this fabric. The program is called Sole Hope. It is definitely something I will do again for SURE! It was a special night thinking of others and teaching the kids the true meaning of Christmas. Towards the end of the month we celebrated Sameen's birthday!!! It was so fun to meet her friends and share in her special day. Also enjoyed going to see The Sound of Music with a few friends. Wonderful production and always a blast getting out and spending time with friends.
4. Trip to Seattle!
At the beginning of the month I flew up to Seattle for a very short time out for women adventure with my mom and sisters. We drove out to Portland for the conference and had such a great time eating out, staying up late, shopping around and listening to inspiring messages! Love my family and even though the trip was short.... it was an amazing time away. And of course, I couldn't have gone away without the help of Nancy! AGAIN! She watched the kids and helped blake all weekend. Loved the cute pictures they sent along the way of the games, and puzzles and fun times they were having. It's always so nice to know that everything is taken care of at home. And when I returned, Evelyn had cleaned the entire house! It was so wonderful and I was very grateful and hopeful that she is learning to serve and work. It was a special present that I wasn't expecting.
5. Decorating for Christmas!
I have few pictures to document, but this was such a fun day! The kids woke up early... and spent ALL day putting pumpkins away and getting trees, nativities, garlands, and ornaments out of storage. They were amazing-- seriously. It was so fun to decorate with them and it made me realize I'm truly in a different stage of life now! My kids are helpful!!! Hip hip hooray! This year we put together a cute little hot chocolate station near the fridge so that we could have easier access to everyone's winter favorite. We are making lots and lots of hot chocolate these days. It's pretty fun.
6. Thanksgiving and the break. We had such a wonderful week off from school. The boys attended a futsal camp one day with all of their little church friends. Anna attended gymnastics camp which really cracked me up. She was absolutely positively determined to go to camp like the boys. At four years old she blew me a kiss and then waltzed off to a 3 hour camp with nary a look back. She is so independent and it's pretty awesome. We loved going to the movies to see the new Disney Moana movie. Again, no longer a stress and now just pure joy to take everyone out on various outings. We hiked through Annie's Canyons with friends and that was such a fun trek. The kids all adored it, except for Anna who was a little frightened during the narrowing of the path. But she made it through and we all cheered for her at the end. We took a trip down to SeaWorld for the day where the boys discovered the most awesome game ever-- soccer blow out. They each won a flag and then later traded it in for a ball. Fun day. Evelyn is teaching Dane and Anna and Grant piano lessons and it's absolutely fabulous! LOVE that they want to learn. LOVE that she's willing to teach them! This year I've noticed that more then outings, we like to invite friends over for playdates. With the big soccer area and basketball court out front-- it's just fun and the kids love having their friends over. I always let each of them invite a friend or two and it makes for a fun day:)
Thanksgiving was a special time as it always is. We loved going to the club and being with Grandma and Grandpa, Stacy, Geraldine, Betty Jean and Dick, and all of our other cousins and aunts and uncles. The kids love the food at the club and the highlight every year without a doubt is the dessert buffet at the end. Talk about a kids' dream come true! We had a special time visiting with family and stuffing ourselves silly. And this was after Grandpa's home-made chocolate chip pancakes and scrambled eggs in the morning!!!!! Wow.... it was a lot of yummy food. The day after thanksgiving was so relaxing. Blake spent a few hours doing on-line Christmas shopping from our list and then we all swam and ate lunch, made smoothies, played video games and relaxed with Grandma and Grandpa. It was a wonderful holiday. We have so much to be thankful for! The only thing missing was my own family who I wished were there as well.
You see? A wonderful and relaxing month.
