What We Did

November just flew by for me. Seriously. I feel like I just turned over the calendar to November yesterday. Now here I am turning it over to December. We did a lot of stuff in that short month, and I didn't blog about a single thing.

I thought about retro-actively blogging about the month. And then that thought made me want to cry. Or curl up and sleep. So I've decided to do neither and just give you a bullet-point list of what we did this month. Now you're officially caught up...

* Traveled for 1/3 of the month (10 out of the 30 days) - we went to Pensacola, FL for my Paw Paw's funeral and Mesquite, NV for Thanksgiving. All in all, we flew on 8 different flights. And surprisingly, the girls were GREAT on all 8 flights. They were seriously a breeze. I think my girls are now bonafide travelers. Shaelyn has been on a total of 26 flights in her short 3 years, and Rachelle, 13 in her 10 months of life. One of those flights was even on my Dad's Cessna 180, from UT to AZ.

* Visited the National Naval Air Museum while in Pensacola.

* Went to an indoor inflatable playground twice - once here at home and once in Mesquite. Rachelle had the most fun, I think. She would squeal about going down the slides and loved laying on the castle floors and letting the kids jump around her and bounce her in the air.

* Were all sick at one point this month. I had the worst cough (still do) and sounded like a frog for several days. Rachelle had the worst fever (103).

* Both the girls got terribly chapped skin while out in Mesquite because it was so dry out there. We also experienced static-y hair and had to have a humidifier in our room so I could breath and not cough everybody awake.

* Thanksgiving dinner was cooked by my gourmet sister. It consisted of turkey, stuffing, cranberry sauce, green bean casserole, mashed potatoes, gravy, rolls, and butternut squash soup (from the Grapefruit website). Everything was made from scratch, of course. Even the pumpkin pie and cinnamon/nutmeg/something else whipped cream to top it. What did I contribute? I snapped the green beans, peeled the potatoes, and crumbled the bread and cornbread for the stuffing.

* I made "Thankful 4's" for our Thanksgiving dinner. We wrote what we were thankful for on the back and hung them up after dinner. All of them said things like "family" and "the gospel," but mine listed things like "hot water in the winter," "Cafe Rio" (which we went to, even though we were totally stuffed with Thanksgiving food from the day before) and "when Michael does the dishes." My favorite? My BIL's simply said "The 4 F's: Food, Family, Football, and Finally - New Moon is in the theater!"

* We went on a DATE while in Mesquite and saw New Moon. LOVED IT! See my review on the sidebar.

* Bought all the girls' Christmas and birthday presents. Done. Thank goodness!

* Moved the girls into the same bedroom. Working on Day 2 right now. Since they spent a 1/3 of the month sleeping in the same room with all of our traveling, I figured the timing was right. We shall see. I do miss Rachelle at night (she had been in our room).

* Started decorating for Christmas. Shaelyn is so excited.

* Found out over Thanksgiving that my mom had experienced a stroke and didn't know it until 2 weeks later when all the test results came back. She's fine, other than some minor paralysis in her mouth that makes the corner of her mouth turn down and she (unnoticeably) slurs some words sometimes. I saved this one for the end, because I knew if I put it at the beginning, you wouldn't read the rest of the list. That and I haven't really processed this yet. I've just kind of compartmentalized it in my brain. I think if I really think about it and all it's implications, I might fall apart. So for now, I'll just state it matter-of-factly and leave it at that.