November

On the first day of November (a Sunday), the kids went searching for the Charlie Brown Thanksgiving movie.  They must have ended up finding it on YouTube because they watched it a couple of times that afternoon.

 

We got our Christmas lights up early.  Justin didn't want to wait and decided to get it done when the weather was still nice.  We didn't start turning them on this early in the game, although we have slowly become before-Thanksgiving decorators and that is fine with me. This was the first year he put them up on the higher roof.  Ivy and Brynn always help even if I am a little nervous of them being up that high.

 

When we had a bigger Amazon delivery, Stockton took the box and spent a whole day working on making a skate park with it.  He made little finger skateboards and all the different skate apparatuses (if that's what you call them) that you would find at a skate park.  He knows the names of all of them.  After this day, the skate park continued to grow and grow-it's quite large now.  I love this side of Stockton-it makes me wonder what he's going to be when he grows up.  He loves making things out of random objects and/or cardboard...he told me the other day that he wants to grow up and get paid to make things out of cardboard.

 We went to a percussion concert at the school to see Stockton do his percussion thing.  Molly would have been there as well but she had abandoned us for a week to visit the Tanner's in Atlanta.
 

 

Ivy spent a week at the beginning of the month where she got out her Easter paints every day.  She wanted a place to display them so I told her she could make an art gallery on the railing.  She even took a very cute video talking about each picture and what it was.

Have I mentioned our lawn sweeper?  I think I did.  We loved using it this year to get all of our leaves up.  We still had to do the old-fashioned raking around the edges of the lawn but this saved us so much time.  We spent the first Saturday in November getting all the leaves up-and just in time since that night, there was snow on the ground!  I love that even Brynn can drive it around and help out.  The kids are much more willing helpers with this "toy."

After our morning of work, I was wanting to do something fun.  The kids worked so hard helping that they had earned a break and a reward.  I was really wanting to go to Hobby Lobby and get decorations for our huge fake tree that we bought after Christmas last year.  I don't know if the kids and Justin were really on board with this idea, but they went with it.  We spent a hour or longer at Hobby Lobby picking out decorations that we will use for several years.  We treated them to dinner at Golden Corral afterwards.  I was a little skeptical of a buffet but they had never been to one and Justin thought they would like it.  (He's been there a few times with the Young Men.)  They did!  They thought it was amazing that they could eat whatever they wanted and as much as they wanted.  It was fun to see their excitement since we don't eat at sit-down restaurants a lot.  It ended up being a fun family night-we came home with a haul of Christmas decorations and these are the pictures I sent to Molly in Atlanta.

We were all very happy when Molly made it home.  So glad she got to go, but a week was way too long!

 

When I pulled out my Christmas piano books for my students, Stockton immediately sat down and picked a song to play.  He first picked "O Christmas Tree" but it was a simple version and he learned it quickly.  I told him he had to pick a more challenging song and he ended up picking a version of "Carol of the Bells." Justin and I were surprised and impressed with his focus on learning this song.  It was a challenging song for him but he persisted and learned it quickly-and did really well with it!  We heard that song so many times over the holiday season and it never got old.  If only he would put that much effort into piano year round!  I regret that I never took a video of him playing it on his own or of the two of us playing the duet-which sounded so cool!

 

Molly wanted to see what her hair would look like if we did curlers.  I didn't take an after photo the next morning, but I don't think she liked it.  She doesn't like this photo much either but here it is anyway.

 

Brynn and Ivy spent a whole Saturday making snowflakes.  It was a little early in the season for that but it entertained them all day.  I suggested they make a garland and hang it on the loft railing and they ended up tying each snowflake up individually.  They made great decor for the rest of November, all of December, and most of January. 

For my date with Stockton we drove up to Park City for a little shopping.  I was still needing to return some pants that we bought for school that didn't fit and then I let him pick out a new "outfit" from the Under Armour outlet.  His preference these days is just black workout pants and T-shirts and that's just what we found for him.  We also hit up the Vans outlet because he was wanting to look at T-shirts there.  He got a couple of Christmas ideas.  We had dinner at 5 Guys Burgers before going home. 

When we got home, I was happy to see that Justin had put lights around the library.  It looked so cute!  I think this was officially the day we starting turning on our Christmas lights each night.

I told Justin that with the big tree and all the Christmas houses, I was going to have to start decorating quite early.  For the past several years, I've been doing the houses the Sunday before Thanksgiving because it's nice to have that mess put away when we bring home our real tree and have to deal with that mess.  So I decided that I would do the fake tree the Sunday before the Sunday before Thanksgiving so I could have that mess over and done by the time we pulled out the houses.  Are you following me?  We take decorating for Christmas serious around here!  Justin got the tree out and got it set-up and then we spent several hours getting it decorated.  I've always wanted a "nice" tree but I was super intimidated to decorate it...but, after a few hours, I was pleased (and a little impressed, to be honest) with the final product.  It was big, yes, but we all loved it!  We enjoyed it all season-and beyond-long.  We didn't take it down until January 10th, which is longer than we've ever left a tree up!  Some of that was because of circumstances that were going on during that week, but some of it was just because we loved it so much and didn't want to take it down.

Finished!

Justin later used some barn wood we had to build a tree "collar" around the bottom which made it even better.

The funny thing is-I was planning on doing just the tree that day but Justin had other plans.  He ended up pulling out all the bins for the houses and we did those as well!  It was definitely the earliest we have ever decorated for Christmas!

Justin really went gung-ho with Christmas in the new living room.  He had found these trees on clearance a couple of years ago thinking he would put them in the flower boxes on the front porch.  They didn't fit there but we kept them anyway.  He did some of his fancy electrical work that he is so good at these days and made an outlet on the top of the bookcase.  We put the two trees up there with some lighted garland that April was getting rid of...it was very festive!  Brynn, ever the willing helper.  And Justin's bum shot-ha!

 

Justin and I spent a few hours one Saturday morning doing a project (surprise!) in the pasture.  I couldn't stop laughing because, with the sheep, this is what pasture projects look like these days.  They kept thinking we were there to give them hay or corn.  We eventually had to put up a makeshift fence to keep them from ruining the cement we were pouring. But, aren't they soooo cute?  They are getting nice and woolly.  We have an extra lamb hanging around these days-a ram that we have on loan with the hope that we will be having some baby lambs in the spring.  We didn't name him since he's not ours to keep but we have been calling him "Rambo" these couple of months that we've had him.  I thought it was fitting-and, we've actually had him for much longer than either Justin or I was thinking which is okay with me.  He is a cutie and we have plenty of hay to share with him!

Rambo

 

Stockton wanted to help with our Saturday night, breakfast-for-dinner pancake meal.  He's not one who usually volunteers to do anything in the kitchen (I swear he'll go hungry rather than make himself lunch) so I always take him up on his offer to help.  In this case, flipping pancakes.  Also, I almost always make breakfast for dinner on Saturday's and make extras so I have enough to make it through early school mornings for the following week.  I think it's pretty smart on my part, wink wink.

 

I can't remember why the ladder stayed in the house for so long after decorating the tree, but a week later it was still there.  I'm sure Justin had his reasons.  Anyway, ladders + our kids=some sort of shenanigans.  This day it was piling blankets and pillows on the couch, climbing up the ladder as far as you dared, and jumping onto the couch.  It made me a little nervous but it continued for as long as I could handle it.  Brynn's offended that I don't have a picture of her jumping.