November 2018 Part 4: The Rest of the Story

We spent much of November recovering from Halloween. Some of us got to recover more--like Gabe, every time he was in the car for longer than ten minutes. Isn't it nice he had these steampunk googles to block out the sun for him? 

I like to keep candy corn in a candy dish in the fall. Rachel went straight for it after dance one day, and she was so cute on her tiptoes, nabbing some candy.

And helping her brother.

I love my tiny dancer.

Like I said, November was a lot of resting: 

And building lego battleships. 

And Brian made sure to get photographic evidence of me loving on our dog. It's still funny to me that I have this little dog.

 We played Uno.

We snuggled.

Michael lost a tooth.

 We printed our family pictures, and Brian got them put up in his office.

 I tried to be Wonder Woman.

And we rested and recovered from October.

After we dropped Brian off at the airport for his India trip, I headed up to Ogden to hang out with Chelsea, and my cousin Logan (who was living with her at the time) had a little jam session with Gabe.

While I was in Ogden, Chelsea and I had this crazy idea to go see a movie. We bought pizza and paid her daughter Heather to watch the kids--really, she just made sure nobody died and let a movie be the babysitter. We went to go see Bohemian Rhapsody. She made me change into sweats to go with her (I figured it was fair since I made her dress up to go to Afternoon Tea a few years ago). We LOVED the movie, and I LOVED spending the evening with my sister like we haven't done in years...probably since High School.

Since I hadn't planned to stay so late in Ogden, we had to borrow jammies from Chelsea. I actually had a bag of Rachel's old clothes that I brought to Ogden so Chelsea could pass them off to Taryn, and there was a pair of jammies that were Gabe's size. I had to laugh a little to see these girly jammies on Gabe. They were the least girly ones in the bag, but he didn't care.

While we were gone, I had my babysitter take Gracie for a walk and then put her back in her kennel. When we got home, Gracie wasn't in her kennel. It was late, and I didn't see any issues until the next day or so when I finally went downstairs and smelled dog poop. I noticed it smeared really badly into the carpet, and in following the trail, found my robot vacuum stuck in the playroom with dog poop all over it.

This happened in the middle of me rushing out the door to take kids somewhere, and I was so livid! I had been frustrated with my kids or kid (not sure which), and this about broke me, especially since Brian was in India. Poor man! He got to be across the country and read my angry venting texts, all the while wondering if he was going to come home to a dead dog or something. I carefully cleaned and cleaned that vacuum, but it never worked again, and I probably wouldn't have trusted it if it had.

I didn't kill the dog. That may be the big accomplishment of November.

Michael read a lot in November. He even attempted this book:

I began the process of planning a baby shower for my cousin, and I was really proud of these invitations that I made:

We did some recovering from our busy October. 

We got haircuts: 

 Which meant these kids got bouncy balls.

Michael had his piano recital:

And we loved getting to spend time with Papa at the recital.

Some of us still loved Gracie after the whole poop incident.

And Brian got me another, better Roomba to replace the one downstairs, which means we have two again (we are addicted to our Roombas. The scheduling thing has been a game-changer.)

We ate out too much...but it was amazing. 

 And I got a new phone and got to play with the new night setting.

And we set up our Christmas tree. 

(And through the entire month, I spent every spare second while both Michael and Rachel were at school to work on Christmas projects.)

November 2018 Part 3: Thanksgivin'

Ah Thanksgivin'! I love Thanksgiving. It was one of my favorite holidays. I missed my family more at Thanksgiving than Christmas when I was a missionary. We always had so many amazing traditions tied to that weekend, traditions that I always try to replicate somehow each year, but always fall short somehow. One tradition was baking pies with my grandma the day before Thanksgiving. Lea was awesome enough to come to my house and do pie-making day with me. We made lots of pie. 

 And Lea got pretty fancy with her crust. I was brain-dead or something and really struggled making pie crust--like a rookie or something. Lea still loved me even though I was temporarily incompetent.

 And it was a ton of fun making pies.

Every Thanksgiving since my mission, I find myself missing the South. This year, I tried my hand at making corn bread dressing. It was SO good, but I think everyone else was underwhelmed. I happily ate it for days following Thanksgiving. 

We had enough pie that each person could have eaten their own pie. We went just a little nuts! 

And I'm pretty sure it was Gabe in the Living Room with the dog food...

As part of our Holiday extended weekend, we went to see "Wreck It Ralph 2." We loved it, and it was fun to go with cousins. 

 And then we made a quick trip to Idaho so Brian could help finish up some electrical stuff on my parents house. I decided that I would put up my grandparents' Christmas Tree for them. That meant we needed to clean and vacuum her living room.

 And someone needs to model the Christmas Tree skirt. It's tradition. I used to do it when I was little, but it won't fit me anymore, so Rachel had to do it.

 And Gabe didn't want to be left out.

 Ta-Dah!!!

 (Grandma told me I had to come back and take it down, but I told her I couldn't make it back until mid-January at the earliest.)

I'm not sure what is going on with this picture because we generally have a strict must-wear-shirts- policy at our house. I do love that Michael is just sitting there, lost in a book while waiting for his shirt to show up.

 And my tiny dancer can't resist busting out her moves everywhere she goes.

 It was really fun to see the new addition all framed up

And still so strange to see the old part stripped to the studs, including the attic gables. This was my room growing up: 

 And here's my grandpa's naughty dog Brutus, who is crazy jealous of Gabe whenever he sits on my Grandpa's lap.

And if you want a house tour of where the house was at this point, here's a terrible video I did while we were there that weekend.