November 2020

The first picture in my photos for November is this picture of Leo. I think Emmie is his sole photographer and my phone is where she likes to take all of her Leo pictures. 

We were supposed to be celebrating Emmie's birthday in Cabo this year, but...Covid. Ironically, she was thrilled we were home instead. For some reason she really doesn't want to go to Mexico, and she was really sad that she wasn't going to be able to go to PoJo's for her birthday. And just to be clear, PoJo's is an arcade place that has been around since the 70's and is completely ghetto. Don't get me wrong, we love PoJo's, but not more than a trip to Mexico! 

So for Emmie's birthday she and Elsie did school at our house and when it was their lunch break John and I took the girls to Olive Garden. I actually can't remember what she chose for dinner, but I'm guessing it was delicious. I can't believe my youngest it 11. It's wonderful and horrible all at the same time. Emmie is still very tenderhearted, but she's getting a little of the teenage angst and anger in her to go along with it. She currently has a love/hate relationship with her siblings, which I think is pretty typical. She excels in school and hates to miss it. She loves being with friends but is also perfectly content to be home. She is addicted to Disney Plus. She is a great friend and we love having her as our caboose!

After my canning supplies all arrived, it was time to do some canning. I did and extra large batch of salsa, my pot literally could not hold another ounce.

And I tried my had at grape jelly for the first time. Our backyard neighbor has grape vines that grow over onto our side of the fence. We get so. many. grapes. They are delicious to eat, but we can't possibly eat all of them. And we even give them to the neighbors. So this year I decided to do something with all the grapes. The kids and I spent hours and hours picking the grapes of of the stems, only to then learn that you don't have to do that. I wish someone would have told me that you can throw leaves and stems and all into the juicer!

But the grape jelly was a hit nonetheless. The kids devoured it. And it was surprisingly easy! There will be lots of grape jelly in our future. 

Thanksgiving!

We spent our Thanksgiving with my family this year. My parents and Michael and Rachelle came over on Thanksgiving eve for pie night and games and John's fancy-schmancy charcuterie board. John's aunt has a tradition with her kids that they all get together for pie the night before Thanksgiving to eat pie, since usually after Thanksgiving dinner you're often too full for pie. So they have pie the night before and then they have leftover pie after their thanksgiving dinner. I liked the idea so we tried it out this year and it was a lot of fun!

My homemade triple berry pie...Delicious!

And the picture I took of the crust of my banana cream pie. Weird that I don't have a picture of the pie when it was done. But it was probably the best banana cream pie I've ever had. I'm totally making it again next year...and I'll take a proper picture.

As per tradition, we celebrated Thanksgiving day at my parents with a delicious meal.

The day after Thanksgiving we kicked off the holiday season. Before the kids were back in school we had a good start on our Christmas activities.

The lights went on the house.

We went and saw the Christmas lights at Scentsy.

Ainsley made her incredible ginger bread house.

(Emmie was an incredible sous chef.)

Gorgeous, eh?

And then we all had to wake up early on Monday morning and go back to school. Boo.