Thanksgiving

 We had a couple of weeks at home to relax and catch up with life after the craziness of Halloween season and before we left for Thanksgiving. 

Brooke had a team party at her coaches business. It was a tea party, which I thought was fun, but I think Brooke was underwhelmed with it. Plus, she's not super comfortable with her teammates. 

We went to Cornbelly's as a family one more time, the last Saturday it was open and had a good time. At one point, we met up with the Freis, which the kids loved, and we kind hung out with them for a few hours. 

I signed my kids up for this homeschool fitness pilot program in Lehi. A family was trying to start a business doing fitness and p.e. programs for homeschool kids, and they offered to let some kids try it for almost nothing. The kids loved it! They played all kinds of games with the other kids and ran around and it was really great. 

The kids had their primary program the Sunday before we left, and it was so wonderful. They did such a great job. I was very emotional, it being Brooke's last primary program. I cried during it and after it. Lately, over the past several months, I've just been struggling handling my kids growing up. I love that they're growing and progressing. I love watching them become who they are, and seeing the kinds of things they are into and watching their imaginations. But I miss having little kids and babies. I miss them BEING little kids and babies. And I can't believe that Brooke is going into young women's in January! I think it'll be fun to be in there with her when she starts in young women's. But that just also means that she is growing up, that she's not little anymore, and there are only a handful of years left with her in the house. It just makes me feel sad. They're all getting big and changing, but just Brooke. Brooke is just the first one to move on to new things, so I feel it more acutely with her. 

The girls went to classic skate night with the Perkins when they went, and they had such a blast. They came home asking for roller blades for Christmas. 😂

Camille and I had a mommy date the Saturday before we left. We biked to the big park in our neighborhood to bike the track and play on all the new workout machines there. Then we biked to Cubby's for fries. It was a wonderful date (but quite cold there at the end).

We left for Medford halfway through the week before Thanksgiving. We kind of rushed to get caught up in our schoolwork before leaving, cleaning the house and packing, and all that. We drove all day on Wednesday. The drive went pretty well, I thought. The kids are pretty used to road trips at this point. They read books and played with Legos and toys, the girls had bracelet making things and other projects to work on, we listened to books and music together, and at one point closer to the end of the drive, we let the kids watch a couple of movies.

The 10 days we spent in Medford for Thanksgiving was so fun. The kids spent every day playing with their cousins. They wanted to go to Julie's house every day. She had all the cool games and toys. 😊 I feel like I hardly see my kids very much during our stay there. 😂 We all ate really good food, we played games, we watched movies and Korean shows. 

For Julie's birthday, the night before, we had a girls date to go get permanent jewelry. We all got matching bracelets, and then we each got something of our own. This lady out close to Jacksonville has this cute trailer where she does get jewelry, and she took us all in turn to put the bracelets on us. It was actually really fun (if much more expensive than I thought it would be). 

The wave is the one we all got, in commemoration of our girls trip to Hawaii. Mom gave me the idea of the "faith" bracelet, and I liked the look of the 3 together.

The next morning, on her actual birthday, we had a birthday breakfast at mom's house, with all of Julie's favorite breakfast things: orange waffles with very sauce, orange juice, sausage and bacon, etc. It was delicious! We spent most of the day at Julie's house. The kids just played together, and Julie and I hung out. 

Then that evening, we went to red Robin for burgers before going to see The Ballad of Songbirds and Snacks, the prequel to the Hunger Games. I spent the previous few months reading the book in preparation, and I had to rush to finish it the first few days in Medford. I read almost the whole drive to Medford, haha, and still had a ways to go. But I made it! And finished the book the day before our girls date. I LOVED the book!! It was so so good. And I thought the movie interpretation was excellent as well. It was a fun girls date. 

Daniel was sick with a pretty bad cold while we were there, so he spent a lot of time in our room staying away from everyone. He worked for a few of the days we were there and took the other days off to be with everyone. He took dad mountain biking one day, early on in our trip, and there was a bit of a disaster: dad rode off the trail a couple minutes into their ride and was scraped up really badly by some trees and shrubs. But they kept riding, the weirdos. When they got back, dad's ear was in really bad shape, all cut up badly, bleeding everywhere. He had to go to the ER to get it stitched up, and he was in a lot of pain and bandaged up for the rest of our stay there. 

We went to the park to play and do pickleball a couple of days, we went to play in the cultural hall of the church and pickleball one day, we had a Christmas movie night watching Klaus one night. 

Mom's birthday was on Thanksgiving this year, and she didn't want a traditional dinner on her birthday. So we had lasagna. 😋🤤 Schpuck made a delicious salad, there was jello salad, garlic bread and a yummy drink. We had a great Thanksgiving. My sisters and I bought mom a beautiful new nativity, and my brothers and I bought her a fun See's advent calendar. The kids worked the day before on a nativity drawing, each kid taking a new piece of it. It was so darling. 

We went home the Saturday after Thanksgiving, and the trip back was about the same and as uneventful as the trip there. We had a great time with our family.