Let's start at the very beginning, a very good place to start...
To start off the month of November, Indiana Spud decided he'd like to go for an all new adventure and tried stealing Halloween candy...
He did a pretty good job of it and since he is somewhat lacking in pockets, he decided to keep some for later in his fedora.
(Nate was really the one who decided Indiana Spud needed to try the fun that is sugar...)
On the 14th of the month, Eric decided he wanted to channel his inner Robin Hood and went shooting arrows at an archery place with his older brother.
November 15th I left the house around 8:00 PM to go to dinner and a movie with some friends. My friend, Sharla is my birthday twin (we were born the same year, even) and last year we went to see Breaking Dawn: Part 1 the midnight showing on our birthday (the 16th) and this year we decided to go see Breaking Dawn: Part 2. We got an 11:15 or so showing, so we ended up getting home at a fairly decent time in the morning. It was just like a book club night.
The next day was my birthday. YAY! It started out like any other morning, except that Shaylyn was so excited to give me my present (hand made by her) that I hadn't even gotten out of bed when she brought it to me. This was her present:
She even monogrammed it which comes in handy, because the way my brain's been acting lately, I just might forget my initials.
I had a good portion of the day to sit and think on turning 33. This was the first year my age has really gotten to me. I wasn't so much sad as I was just overwhelmed that I am over 30...Age used to be just a number, but I sure felt a change this year.
When Eric got home from work, the two of us went out to dinner at my favorite place, Olive Garden. We had a long wait because it was a Friday night, but that was okay. We weren't in any real hurry to get anywhere.
When we got home I had another gift waiting. This was one from Eric and the kids. Tanis was super excited and told Eric he needed to get this for my birthday. I think he just wanted the game. But that's okay, it just means I have someone to play with.
We spent the rest of the night playing my game and just being silly.
My children then decided to show their turkey feathers. We made our annual Thanksgiving Turkeys on Sunday the 18th. A good family activity for a slow Sunday evening. Sadly, Nate was asleep so I had to make his (and I don't think he really even realized he had one) and Ailey truly went about making her own one WITHOUT anyone's help.
Because life wasn't exciting enough, Shaylyn decided she needed a black eye. She had a cast for a good chunk of November last year and this year she needed to do something! Therefore, she decided to trip and fall over a playground spider-web climbing thing. I wasn't there, so I don't know EXACTLY what happened, I can only go by her words and know she came home looking like this:
By the next morning she looked like this:
That night we went to the BYU Basketball game with Eric's dad and our family friends, The Wildings. We arrived late (I figured we had plenty of time, but I forget that basketball games aren't very long) and so we didn't have a whole lot of time to visit with our friends or see the whole 1st half of the game. We did see the 2nd half and the Cougars killed it. It was a good game to watch.
The next day was Thanksgiving and well I don't have any pictures from that day. We went to turkey dinner at Eric's parents at 2:00 and had fun visiting with his extended family members that we haven't seen in 2 years or so and had a wonderful Thanksgiving feast.
At about 5:30 we decided to head over to my parents house where the kids went crazy with the cousins, Eric played games with my Dad and the other men, while I played easier games with Tanis, my brother Donovan and little sister, Kaeloni. When we weren't playing games we were convincing Kaeloni's baby Ryan to make his arrival...He didn't want to listen. We had a late night and got home probably around midnight, but it was all good - no one had to get up to be anywhere the next day.
The next afternoon, however, Eric and I were taking off to celebrate our anniversary. (Which is actually, today - but since it's not the weekend, well...) Some of our great friends gifted us with a hotel room for our birthdays and anniversary with some of their reward points and even volunteered to watch all of our kids. Well our friend is 8 months pregnant with baby #6 so there was no way I was gonna let her take all 5 of my kids. Luckily, Eric's mom had volunteered earlier to watch kids.
We decided that Lex and Nate would do best with our friends and Tanis, Shaylyn and Ailey would be best with Grandma. So around 1:00 we all set out. We dropped off Lex and Nate down the street and then headed to Eric's parents. We dropped the other 3 kids off and got to have turkey leftovers for lunch and then we were on our way.
We drove downtown to the hotel and got all checked in and then decided to hit the downtown malls. The hotel we stayed in (which was AWESOME by the way) was just down the street from The Gateway and we decided we'd just take Trax to City Creek.
We hit City Creek first and then decided to walk over to Temple Square because it was the night they did the lights. Well it was CRAZY crowded (which, I expected) so we didn't spend a whole lot of time there. But we made sure to take some pictures of us...
Sick of us yet. Okay, well here's a picture of me:
We then got back and Trax and headed to The Gateway. We decided to look into the Laser Light shows at the Planetarium. They had a Christmas one at 8, and a few others later. It was too close in time to hit the 8:00 show if we went to dinner first, so we opted for a 9:00 show, which was a Rock On Demand show.
We went to dinner at Tuachan and ate too much, but still tried to eat a huge brownie with ice cream. Yeah, only got halfway through. Then we had a bit of time to kill and so we stopped in a couple more stored at The Gateway.
We got to the Planetarium about 10 minutes before showtime and we were able to get awesome seats. The show was pretty cool, I just don't know a whole lot of the songs they played - but I still really enjoyed it. We really want to take the kids to the Christmas one they've got going. Hopefully we'll make that happen.
Then because we are old people now, we went back to the hotel and were in bed by about 10:30.
The next morning we took it easy. Check out wasn't until noon (Hallelujah) and I hadn't slept well that night so I tried to sleep as much as I could. We decided we should go get breakfast around 8 and it was a good thing too, a lot of it was out...However, they still had enough that I think Eric and I both had a good breakfast.
After breakfast we went back to the hotel room and finished getting ready. During this time we got a text that Kaeloni had little Ryan. Sadly, he had an issue with his blood though so he had to be put on an antibiotic IV, which means he's spent his first few days of life in the NICU. He's there until Thursday. And because only parents and grandparents are allowed in the NICU, I haven't been able to meet this cutie yet. Hopefully that time will come this weekend.
Before heading home we decided to look for a new tree or at least new lights. I was hoping for a new tree cause I don't want to try stringing lights, but after looking - we just didn't want to give up our tree and we opted for new lights. But I'm making Eric string them, I'm nice like that.
We went and got the kids from Eric's parents first and once again, were blessed to have a free lunch! The kids had already eaten, so we just finished off some of what they had. We then decided it was time to rescue our friends and grab Lex and Nate.
We were home for about 3 hours when our friends decided they all wanted to go see the new James Bond movie, Skyfall. I wasn't thrilled about it, but I'm always up for a night out with friends so we went. I did feel slightly guilty that we left our kids again when we had only been home a couple hours.
The movie was much better than I thought it'd be and I really actually liked it. That being said, I've never actually seen a James Bond movie before, so don't take my word for it. After the movie we headed over to Cafe Rio and had a wonderful time visiting with our friends and enjoying our meal. I then decided I was pooped and needed to get home to bed, so we did.
And as I was typing this, look what arrived for me:
I'm spoiled, I know. I love Eric and I am happy to have spent the last 16 years of my life with him, with 14 of them being married to him! Happy Anniversary to us!!!
And that folks is our November - with a bit more to come. And yup, every November ends up being at least slightly this crazy!
