A Great November

We had a great month of November.  It flew by!  We have so much to be thankful for and it was evident as I looked through all that we did in November!  We have wonderful friends and family!  We have temples so close to us!  We live on such a beautiful earth!  I am truly grateful for our blessings!

We started out November with a Potato Pine Wood Derby for our youth activity.  It was tons of fun and our potato cars were successful!  I did stab an axle into my hand in an attempt to push a wheel on to it, and it took a couple of weeks to be able to use that hand normally (what a dumb story, I know! Haha!), but otherwise, it was a great night!

Even the leaders joined in the fun.

I came home one afternoon to find Jen's boys at my house after Isaac wrecked on his bike again.  Jen asked me to assess the situation... My counsel was to meet him at the hospital, which she did.  He had a concussion and a broken finger.  I thought it would be worse!  Poor Isaac!

I think he was in shock.  Good thing I took all those First Aid and Sports Medicine classes in college!  They have come in handy!

All those apples that we picked at my parents house were starting to go soft!  So, I took a day and made lots of apple pie filling, that we will be giving to neighbors for Christmas gifts.  I hated to see them go to waste!  I think I got 21 jars out of all those apples, with a few left over to eat.

We went down to Cedar City for a three day weekend.  Monica and Nicole and their families flew in and Jen and Lynnette and their families also came down and we had a fun weekend all together!  (We missed Chad's family!)

We spent Friday in Zions National Park.  It is my happy place.  Fall is the time to go!  It was beautiful weather and the leaves were gorgeous and it was less crowded than the summer months.

We really need more babies around our house.

Hiking with 30 people was like herding cats.  But we made it home with everyone, so it felt successful!

That night we did an early Thanksgiving dinner since we had all the sisters there.  So fun!  Thanksgiving is my favorite meal of the year, so I will gladly do it twice.  Jen did the beautiful decorations and the rest of us worked on food.

The next day we had an appointment to tour the newly renovated St. George temple.  It was amazing!  That is where Dustin and I were married over 22 years ago and it was fun to see it with our kids.

We ate at a park after and then went to Snow Canyon, where we played in the Sand Dunes.  When we got there, they had a huge American Flag on display for Veteran's Day, strung across two sides of the canyon.  Pretty amazing!

We always love trying to get the best mid-air jumping pictures.

This was a Sister's attempt.  You can see how well it turned out...  We are getting old.

Ryan had his Cross Country awards banquet and he lettered this year!

He kept showing up on the school's jumbotron.

The youth in our Ward went to the Draper Temple to do baptisms for the dead.  It was lovely.

Look at those colors!  We had an absolutely beautiful November and the leaves were as pretty as I remember them ever being, thanks to all our water this year!

Grant did a "Friendsgiving" with 20 friends at our house.

We decorated for Christmas.  We started on the Sunday before Thanksgiving, and finished the tree when Maren came home a couple of days later.

I had another project this month.  I really wanted to finish the Family Room before Thanksgiving.  Dustin helped me cut the wood and I stained and finished it for the bench and the mantle (after he built the mantle for me).  Ryan and Dustin worked on the tile behind the fireplace on the day before Thanksgiving and it got done just in time!  And it turned out beautiful!

Here is the beginning of our renovation, in June of 2022!  We thought it would be an easy paint and lighting job (at least, I did).  It turned out to be much bigger, with adding a bearing wall back in, covering our old fireplace, replacing the lighting and bookshelves and building the bench and mantle.  We also punched out a doorway to the space under the stairs, that is now accessed through our food pantry.  Overall, the space is much better now!

We still need to get a couch!  Haha!

Thanksgiving day!  We had 20 people, with Arie and his family, Jen and her family, plus both Dustin's parents and my friend, Kacey.  It was a full house, but so fun!

Avery celebrated in Seattle and we got to talk to her, which is always a treat!  She is happy!  She comes home in 2 months!!

The next day we went to Temple Square to see the lights and then to an early birthday dinner for me and Isabel.

That same weekend we went to a wedding reception in Utah County and since we were so close, we went to the open house of the Orem Temple with our friends, the Colemans.  Another beautiful temple!  It is so miraculous to see them popping up all over!  What a blessing!

The next day was Avery's trainer's homecoming talk!  We drove down to Bluffdale and got to meet Hermana Pearson in person!  It was such a fun thing to hear her speak and visit with her after.  She was a blessing for Avery on her mission!

And the next day was my birthday!  It was a great day.  I went to lunch with friends and then that night Dustin made dinner and we ate ice cream while watching a Christmas movie.  That is just about my favorite thing!

The cold has finally come and Grant and I could really see the inversion on a hike we took one afternoon!  Other than that pollution, we live in such a great area!

I feel so grateful for what we have!  It was a lovely month with family, friends, temples and projects completed!