November 2020 Part 3: Everyday November

 When November began, we were still in quarantine, and now that Halloween was over, I could finally rest, and it was glorious! This virus just zaps all your energy and sometimes even your breath. Literally. 

The kids stayed in quarantine for most of November. They got pretty good at getting their assignments done first thing in the morning. 

I tried to inspire the kids to do some Halloween crafts to make up for their lack of parties. Here are some, finally captured for posterity in November. 

Rachel lost another tooth and left this cute note for the tooth fairy: 

We passed this rocking chair off to a new family who is expecting their first baby. It felt good to let it go. 

Cal and Charlie came for a visit. 

I felt the need to model Michael's helmet that he made out of paper mache. Clearly quarantine was getting to me. 

We watched Stake Conference on Zoom. The broadcast was terrible, so we couldn't hear what the speakers were saying. We tried though. We really tried. 

Michael left this sweet note for Rachel. 

Before Lea and Shayne went to Hawaii, we got together for games, maybe dinner too. I don't remember. I do remember that it was a lot of fun. 

We got our first snowfall of the winter. 

This amount of snow was a big difference from Saratoga Springs, and we wondered what kind of winter we'd be in for. 

One of the good things about this whole pandemic has been the ability to watch events virtually, so we've been able to attend things we wouldn't otherwise be able to. This meant that the kids could watch one of Papa's concerts, since we normally can't take them with us when we go. 

Did you know that Rachel sleep walks? Sometimes, we can't help but laugh when she makes her nightly wandering, like this time when she put her dress on over top of her nightgown. 

She clearly is not awake, but she talks to us like she is. 

Rachel continues to have lots of creativity when it comes to writing and creating games. Here was her November masterpiece. 

I took a senior portrait mini course. 

We vacuumed our rugs and places where Harvey peed on our carpet during his visit. The rugs really needed it, so I guess it was good Harvey gave us the push to do it. 

Gracie started to question her place in our home. 

(Totally kidding. She just looks so unsure in this photo.)

Here's Gabe waiting for someone, or just watching something. 

Sweet Gabe.

My backyard neighbor has a little boy the same age as Gabe. We laugh at the shoes that are left at each other's houses, as well as the coats and mittens. They're always roaming around, often without a coat or shoes. My neighbor and I laugh at them, and she says, "They're like wild animals!" Here's the proof:

But, when you throw a suit on one of those wild boys, he is so sweet and reverent, coloring carefully while (hopefully) listening to the speakers in our Church Zoom broadcast. 

It's a blessing to still have sacrament meeting, even if it's over zoom. 

We had some beautiful sunsets in November. 

And there was some pantry raiding. 

After recovering from Covid, we felt pretty invincible, and we were ready to go out and help where others couldn't. This led me to take my first classroom sub position at the local middle school teaching classes that related to what I studied in college. This is also the school where Lea used to work, so I took this picture for her while I was there. 

By mid-November, the kids finally got to go back to school, and we finally put the puzzle together that our neighbors gave us. 

Things really started looking up around here. 

But, Rachel made these reminders for us all to stay happy. 

Morale improved. We made muddy buddies (those two thoughts might be related). 

We discovered that Rachel has the ability to ignore everything if she finds a good book, like the one she got at the book fair. 

After laughing that I couldn't get her attention, and taking multiple pictures with her in the reading zone, I finally got her to look up. 

As for this picture below, I don't know, but I was glad they were having a good time. 3 weeks is a long time to be stuck in the house! 

We got a bag of Nacho Cheese Doritos, and they were kind of missing the cheese. It was bizarre, but I suppose it made sense for the kind of year we've all been having. 

Harvey joined us for a week and a half or something like that. The kids enjoyed having another dog in the house. 

We continued having our church lessons at home. 

We kept reading together, and by the end of the month, we busted out our Christmas books. 

We started the month feeling exhausted for no reason and ended the month being exhausted from working hard on our cabinets, which was exhilarating and satisfying.  Yay for a return to health and projects!

November 2020 Part 2: Thanksgiving

 We offered to host Thanksgiving at our house. It was going to be our first party/event in our new house, and we were excited. I wanted to make cute napkin rings for the big day, and I found this idea on Pinterest for one. Brian and I picked out lots of fall-colored beads, and I recruited the kids to help me put them together. Rachel was really excited to be crafting with me. The boys didn't last long with this project. 

Ta-dah!!!

I have since forgotten how many we made, but it was this many:

I was pretty sad to find out that Lea and her crew had secret plans to go to Hawaii on Thanksgiving, so it was just our family of five and Kirt and Julie. After missing Halloween and then learning about our tiny gathering, I got upset at the pandemic again. (I'd done really well with it for months, and I thought this was understandable.) After moping for a day or so, I started looking for recipes for gluten free, sugar-free, dairy-free pies to make for Julie, since she has Hashimotos. The day before Thanksgiving, I got to work making pies--by myself. 

Brian joined in the fun a little later and helped me make my dairy-free, sugar-free, gluten-free triple berry pie (I figure that fruit are naturally sweet so it would be a good one to try). 

The next day, Kirt and Julie arrived and the fun began!

The kids helped make the table pretty. 

Rachel wrote the names on the place cards. 

Even though Lea and Shayne were gone, we got to host their dog, so that was fun for most of us. 

Finally, we sat down to our feast! The food was delicious! We were even able to have lots of traditional dishes that Julie could enjoy as well. I'm so grateful that there are so many gluten-free, dairy-free, and sugar-free products on the market now! 

We were so grateful to be with Kirt and Julie, that they stayed safe from the Coronavirus, that we had such amazing neighbors, that Brian has such a great job, that the kids are adjusting well to their new schools and making lots of friends. Mostly, we were grateful for our family, our faith, and the opportunity to be together. 

November 2021: Part 1: House Projects

I'm sure you've all noticed that we've kind of adopted Lowe's motto: "Never stop improving." We really loved our house how it was when we moved in, but we also found some things along the way that we wanted/needed to improve. We never realized just how awesome our storage in our last house was until we moved into this one and struggled to find a place for all of our things. For months, I felt like we were still moving in because I needed to figure out solutions for our spaces. Good thing I studied interior design in school! I kept thinking about how one of my professors would say, "Interior design is about solving problems." 

This shelf area was my biggest problem:

Mostly because it was closed storage on display in the main room of the house. I've scratched my head so many times wondering why they did this cheap shelving in this spot. For months, we brainstormed solutions of how best to use this awesome storage nook AND have it look good. In November, we finally got started on those plans. We would build a cupboard and then have open shelving above. This way, we could hide away the less pretty things and have space for displaying pretty things.  Here's Brian working on the cabinet. 

We decided on Shaker style doors to match the kitchen. 

Brian finally got to use the joiner we got him for Father's Day. 

Meanwhile, I worked on this bulletin board/dry erase board to go in my office. 

And figured out a new command center in the kitchen---on the pantry door INSIDE the pantry. Now our calendar, reward chart, and other things is easily accessible without being visually cluttering. I love it! (I cheated and picked these boards up at Hobby Lobby). 

Back to the cupboards/shelf situation.  Here's progress:

It was really exciting when the closet-style shelves came out, even if it meant we had piles of stuff everywhere. 

Once we decided it was the right size, we got to paint! 

And repair the wall/cubby so the walls were smooth again. 

And then we got to paint that. 

We had the darndest time trying to match the paint in the house. The previous owners told us the wall color was "hi-hide white" by Sherwin Williams, but apparently that's not actually a color anymore (it used to be a color but was discontinued). We didn't know this until after we had the painters downstairs paint the whole basement "hi-hide white" and used that same paint in this cubby, only to discover the basement "hi-hide white" was bluer than the "hi-hide white upstairs." After multiple trips to Sherwin Williams, we finally got the color and the sheen right and moved on. And now we know what color matches our house walls.  

The next struggle was finding a good stain color that we liked and that would fit into the house. 

We weren't really in love with any of these but decided to go with the gray one. 

Kirt (aka Papa) came to help Brian with cabinets when he had a spare day to come out here. The kids always love seeing Papa. 

It's a good thing he came to help because after Brian started on the cubby cabinet, I'd convinced him that we needed to make 4 more cabinets to go next to our mantle. This meant eight more shaker doors as well. I wanted the cabinets done by December 1 so I could put our nativity set on it, so we needed to move fast! I got to work on the stain since it would take a week to cure. The first step was sanding and filling holes after Brian put the two 2x10 pieces together. 

We found this sign on a date, and Brian thought it was a perfect sign for his workshop. 

Here are some of the door frames for the other cupboards. 

It's messy work, that's for sure. Especially using paint guns. 

Finally, after all of Kirt and Brian's hard work, it was time to paint the other cabinets. 

And all eight doors (don't they look so good?!)

The primer is the thing that takes the longest. The wood just soaks it right up and it doesn't look like you make any progress. 

Since the place that the cupboards were going to be placed went over the heat vents, Brian had to find a solution to re-route the vents from the floor to the toe kick on the cupboards. He ended up finding a kit that was made to do just that. Even though it made more piles in our living room, I was really excited to get to this phase where the carpet got cut back and this HVAC thing got installed. 

We didn't quite make our Dec. 1 deadline, but this is how far we made it by the end of November! We were so excited to finally be solving some of our storage issues in such a lovely way. (Hopefully you can see the vision in our heads taking shape too.)