Rewind: NOVEMBER IN A NUTSHELL

Time to play catch up on the month of November...

During the months of October and November, I put Hudson in a 6 week instructional basketball league.  Around here it's called "Jr. Jazz".  I feel like a total weirdo saying this but...this was his first time in any kind of organized sport or instruction outside of P.E. at school.  Thankfully my boy didn't care one bit.  He was just thrilled to learn and play basketball every Tuesday.  He's definitely taller than most kids his age, he's a touch on the lanky/gawky side and there were kids there who had obviously played ball quite a bit in the past but he had a grand time every week.  I guess his excitement and enthusiasm made up for any lack of experience.

As I do every year, I put up a "Thankful Tree" on our dining room mirror for the month of November.  In the past I had made the tree out of paper but this year I decided to give acrylic paint a try.  It was fabulously easy - took me only 15 minutes or so to brush on - and the paint cost me $1.39...heck of a lot easier and cheaper than the $10+ I spent on paper in past years!    As for the leaves, we used to cut our leaves out by hand or crank them through my small manual die cut machine one-by-one.  It took hours every year.  This time a dear friend of mine saved the day when she took my colored card stock and had her Cricut machine do all the work of cutting out the leaves.   She just pushed some buttons, stuck the paper into her little magic box and let it do the work.  Brilliant!!  We all wrote things that we're thankful for on the leaves over the course of the days leading up to (and including) Thanksgiving.  My only complaint about this year's tree is how time consuming the removal of the acrylic paint was.  However, it's not enough to stop me from doing paint every year from here on out...it was our best looking tree yet!

Thanksgiving was spent here at our home this year.  My parents flew in for the holiday and with the two of them, the four in our family, two of my brothers and their families and my dad's sister, we hosted a total of 18 people here to join in the holiday feast.  We had a huge bird with homemade stuffing (with sausage in it...the best!) , sweet potato souffle, mashed potatoes, green salad, homemade rolls, two kinds of cranberry sauce/relish and my aunt's amazing turkey gravy.  Top it all off with homemade pecan pie and pumpkin pie squares (both with fresh whipped cream, of course) or dessert and what do you have?  Way too much food!  I stopped before I felt full and I still ended up feeling sick to my stomach for a spell that evening.  I guess it wouldn't be Thanksgiving without overeating now, would it?

Lastly we have our little family excursion up on the roof for the sunset a couple of days after Thanksgiving.  I fairly comfortable once I'm up there but the steps onto the roof from the ladder and onto the ladder from the roof seriously freak me out.  I'm getting the heebie jeebies just thinking about it.  Anyway, it started with Max taking the kids up to see the sunset and before I knew it, I was coaxed into joining them.  Claire was positively petrified at first but gradually got her courage up and while sticking close to us in general, she wandered around a bit.  Hudson, on the other hand, is too comfortable (like his dad) and his strutting around and wandering too close to the edge just about gave me a heart attack.   All I could think while standing up there with my kids was that one of them was going to slip or trip, roll down the side and fall down to the concrete below.  They'd crack their head open or break their neck and we'd end up calling 911.  Then my precious little person would spend weeks (if not months) in the hospital while I spent the rest of my life feeling guilty because I shouldn't have allowed them up on the roof.  Over anxious and paranoid?  Perhaps...but it could totally happen!  Anyway, while up on top of the house I snapped a few pics of the kids, of the sunset (trying to hide in the trees) and of the views to the North (picture with the temple) and the East (Great Salt Lake...the pine tree to the left in that shot is now gone thanks to our wind storm).  It really was beautiful up there and I'm glad I took the risk and spent the time with my family.

Well, I think that's about it for November...now to kick it into gear and stay on top of December!