November

Looking back, November seemed like one of the longest month's of the year for me. Thanksgiving felt like it took forever to get here. I love Thanksgiving and while I don't usually count down to it, I do look forward to it all year long. November was BUSY for our little family. I started watching a little girl a few days a week who is just so cute, I wish I could make her an unofficial member of our family. Then between scouts and dance and soccer for both Kendrick and the twins and helping at the school and Kendrick's calling and sickness and prepping for Kendrick's Birthday and Thanksgiving I just kind of turned into a stress case. I still enjoyed the month, but I wasn't sad when it was over.

So where to start? Well first there is cute Grace. Grace is the grand-daughter of one of the teachers at our kids' school. She is a widow and is raising Grace on her own and I just think she is an AMAZING woman. I liked her before I even officially met her simply because she always had a smile on her face and would be so friendly to Easton and I when we would go help at the school. But now I just adore her. It takes a special kind of person to raise their grandchild on their own, the way she does. Our kids love Miss Gracie Girl. Taylor thinks she is the cutest thing in the world and Easton is wrapped around her finger. The twins are entertained by her and try to teach her tricks like she's a new pet.

Then there is this cute girl. She only has 5 1/2 months left of elementary school and I am having a hard time staying calm about that. She had her maturation night last month and it was...educational for us both. Luckily she had already had "the talk", but still...wow! That maturation program pretty much validated all my fears about having a teenage daughter. Our journey with this girl has only just begun and we are in for quite the adventure... I can feel it.

Soccer! As much as I dislike this sport, the rest of my family is turning into soccer fans. These two are fun to watch play. It's fun to see their different skills (Jack is an awesome goalie and Myles never tires of running) but I still prefer watching my kids play baseball or basketball. Soccer is very chaotic to me.

Utah Football! Now there is a sport that I can get excited about. I am so glad we were in a position to get season tickets this year. We had a lot of fun at the last few Utah games, even if our team did leave us disappointed sometimes.

The twins had a Thanksgiving Pow Wow at school and since I rarely get to help in their class, I jumped at the chance to help with this "party". Easton and I had a great time helping their class make Indian Headbands and a little bead game. I had so much fun with Easton that I wanted him to skip school and just go out to lunch with me. Unfortunately, as we were leaving the school we ran into his teacher who was very excited about him coming back in 30 minutes for his class Pow Wow. Darn it! So I skipped lunch that day and went Christmas shopping instead. Which ended up being a blessing because as I sit here typing this on December 8th, I am completely done shopping for our kids and everything is wrapped and hidden. Yay for foiled lunch plans!

Dex and Oly. These two nuts keep me entertained and exhausted every Tuesday. They are a friendly reminder that, as much as I might SAY I'd like to, I probably wouldn't be able to hack it with twin boys again. I'm too old and tired to keep one step ahead of baby boys anymore.

Dr. Office selfies. Because this is MY blog and I will post 10,000 pictures of me and my cute boy at the doctor if I want to...

Thanksgiving! This year Thanksgiving and Kendrick's Birthday fell on the same day. He woke up that day and played in the Turkey Bowl at the park while I got his Birthday breakfast ready. Then we met him up at the park and I chased the boys around the playground until the game was over. After football and before breakfast, we did presents. Then we headed over to my parent's house a few hours later and had a yummy Thanksgiving feast and played a riveting game of headbands.

The minute Thanksgiving is over, like once we've finished Thanksgiving dinner, Christmastime starts! Our family watches our first Christmas movie of the season on Thanksgiving night and puts up our tree the day after Thanksgiving. I think that is the way Kendrick and I have always done it. And I LOVE it that way. This year we finally got the kids a new downstairs tree to replace the downstairs tree that broke at our old house. The kids decorated it themselves and I think it looks darling! The upstairs tree needed some "revamping" so I tried to update it without going out and buying all new ornaments, but at the end of the day that tree is just too massive for me to decorate every inch of and still have money to pay the rent afterwards. I also dug out the cute Christmas quilt that my mom made us for our old house. I had to put it away for a few years because it was painful for me to see it in a different living room than the one it was intended for. Now I am finally over the loss of our old house-and I think this quilt looks cute in our current living room. And because I am OCD I had to paint all new frames to match my Christmas pillows. If I'm being honest-it is seriously taking all the self control I have not to paint my yellow accent pieces of furniture too...

For years, the women in my family have been saying that we need new family photos. The last time we had a group family photo taken was at Richard and Tiana's wedding in 2010 and the last time we had professional pictures where we actually attempted to coordinate our outfits was before Richard's mission. Finally, cute Miss T took it upon herself to name the time, date and place and told us what colors we were allowed to wear and then she had her brother take these pictures of us with her nice camera. There are things about these pictures that bug her, because she has a photographer's eye, but I think they turned out cute and I count these as a huge success since it's the first time in years that we have had a decent photo taken of ALL of us.

There are very few "randoms" from November. Here are some pictures of our crazy boys and a cute one of Makelle reading to Easton. She comes over for a few hours every Friday morning until her bus arrives and it is a nice break for my kids since I am not a morning person. When Makelle is here everything is just a little more exciting...
And Easton loves having a playmate when the big kids leave. I think it's cute that Easton will sit and listen to Makelle read. She's a good friend for our kids.

Oh! And I need proof that this happened. Mr. Easton decided he wanted to go from playing "foot doctor" and performing sugery on my feet with his pretend tools to playing "toe painter" and giving me a pedicure. Since I haven't had a pedicure since September and no one ever sees my toes in the winter, I thought, "what the heck!" But he really didn't do a bad job. I think they turned out better than my first attempt at nail painting went.

Isn't blogging a funny thing? When I first started, it was just sort of a way for me to extend my social media profile. I wanted pictures of my cute kids to be seen by others. At one point it morphed into a hobby for the benefit of others, where I only wrote to entertain people. Now it is simply a last ditch effort to journal and document our lives. I can't imagine how boring this blog must be for anyone outside of our family who reads it. And I would like to feel sorry for that, but I don't. This blog is for our kids. It's a way to preserve memories for them. So half the time I keep it private and the other half of the time I check my blog stats and wonder why the heck some of you find our life so interesting. But thank you for reading and especially commenting (those of you who do)!

Merry Christmas!!