November Happenings

I can't believe it will be December 1st in two days!! That's so crazy! We've had a fun November. Here's a little bit of what we've been up to. 

Carved pumpkins a couple of days before Halloween. Just now realized I didn't take a pic of how they turned out. Oops! 

Porter was a Bears football player and Stella was a Minion. I walked around with them with a blinking skull on my head. 

Most of Stella's GOTR team this fall. She wasn't really into it this time around. She will be able to 

participate in track this coming Spring and is looking forward to that. She's in the front row, 3rd from the left. 

Mike and I celebrated 15 years of marriage! We didn't do too much, just went out for dinner and drinks since we had our Vegas trip in August to celebrate the big event. 

Home Alone debuted 25 years ago and had a special showing in the movie theater one night. Fun to see it on the big screen again!

Porter is enjoying bball more this year than last year and has really improved and his confidence while playing has improved as well! Yay!

Do you spot who was helping me rake leaves?

Discovered that Owen and P have matching Okoboji shirts during a recent sleepover. Awesome!

A gloomy day called for a trip to SkyZone to use up my Groupon before it expired. 

Rex always sits on their homework when they are trying to get it completed. And boy he looks large here!

Got our house all ready for Christmas!

Stella is looooving bball again this year. Her fav sport of all. She's #27 this year and plays through the Y again. This year her team is on the 5th and 6th team league and their last game some of the kids on the other team were as tall, if not taller, than me! Will be fun to see how they do this year!!

It's hard to tell here, but her face was SO red at the end of this game. She played 3 full rotations without a break. 

Stella as Mother Mary at the 5th grade Wax Museum. She had to memorize an entire full notebook page speech for this and did a great job!

Porters bball team earned an ice cream reward for winning 3 games so far this season. (they won zero games last season so this is a big deal!) Great group of boys!

Loved having Britt and her boys stop by for a visit a few days ago!

Stella helping me prep for Thanksgiving. She made the brownies for my Torte and the green bean casserole. It was really fun having her in the kitchen with me. :-)

Scott, Nora and the kids spent Thanksgiving weekend with us and we had so much fun! We probably won't see them again until the 4th of July so it was a treat having them here. 

I was in charge of the neighbors dog, Buster a few days and the kids came over a few times to play with him. 

Thanksgiving day morning watching movies. 

We had a small group this year for Thanksgiving. Our good friends, the Schachtners,came over at the last minute. They always go to CO to see Lucy's family but Jeff's dad was very ill they weren't able to travel this year. His dad ended up passing away yesterday. Many prayers for this wonderful family. 

Jeff helped make the mashed potatoes and I was laughing bc he had shoulder surgery a few weeks ago and has to wear a sling for 6 weeks. The injured guy was mashing my potatoes....many reason to feel Thankful this year and this was one of them. :-)

The kids: front row Eric, Grant, Porter. Back row: Berlin, Grace, EJ, Stella, Guy. 

The adult table (Grace sat with us): Scott, me, Mike, Nora, Lucy, Jeff 

Friday morning Stella, Grace and I went out for some Black Friday shopping! We gotto the mall around 7:30 AM, not crowded at all! We had a lot of fun!

Being silly in the Nike store! 

Got home and these 3 boys were still in their Jammie's at 1:30 and having pizza for lunch. 

Sorting gifts into piles a day before they even opened them. Too cute!

Mike and Scott took the kids to Climb Iowa to burn off some energy. 

I wanted to strata new Thanksgiving tradition this year and do our own 5k Turkey trot walk around our neighborhood. Unfortunately it rained all day Thursday, so yesterday we bundled up and took a walk and stopped by some parks, but the equipment was all covered in ice so it still didn't work out the wY I hoped, but it was nice to get outside for awhile. 

Got home and got out Mexican train to play and warmed up with hot cocoa. They left this morning, we were all sad to see them go, but we had a wonderful time with them and made many fun memories.