turkey trot and Thanksgiving 2016

Thanksgiving morning four out of the six of us ran our first 5k turkey trot. Of course Samuel and Ezra couldn't run and I wasn't sure if I could take a stroller so my dad watched them. Turns out strollers were allowed, but I really wanted to run my best. Prae and Natasha had agreed to stay with Noah and Evie so Terry and I could actually run. It worked out well and we all did great.

Terry really pushed himself and ran each mile faster, all of them around 6:45!! It was so cold outside that his perspiration was actually visibly evaporating through his hat!

I finished in 29 minutes with pace of 9:37, which was great for me. I was beat - lungs were a' burnin!

I forgot what the kids came in at but they did fantastic. I didn't think they'd run much but they were the ones encouraging Natasha and Prae to run more. 

Noah was quite proud of himself for cheering Natasha on, and she was actually really helped by him. Both of them were. I got the sweetest text from Prae later about how great my kids were and Natasha also posted about it on facebook. Awww.

Later we went over to my parent's house.

 I made my seemingly now traditional pecan pie. 

Terry and Evie took their now traditional turkey leg photo. :D

Samuel and Ezra are now old enough to want in on the action.

My uncle Jeff joined us for some amazing food!

Since Nathan and Ana and Stephanie were not here, mom and I prepared the whole feast by ourselves. After my 5k, I was rather tired so thankfully my dad and Terry washed the heaps of dishes. I love this picture. My sister and I spent our entire childhood doing exactly this next to each other.

Mom enjoyed her rest while the guys washed up too. 

first snow 2016

The day after we harvested our carrots, our weirdly warm fall weather finally, sadly, came to an end with the first snowfall. The kids were beyond excited. Noah had actually been worried about global warming until I showed him a video explaining the truth about it.

I much prefer the look of the brown road behind our house when it's covered in snow. It almost looks like it's not there.

We only got a few inches but that didn't stop the kids from staying out until dark.

I hiked up the hill for one last sunset. Not much of one. Ha!

Ezra is another year older and much more able out in the snow.

The following day dawned bright and clear, though windy and cold. The kids were dying to sled so we packed up to try an actual real hill - the one at Meadowbrook Elementary in the neighborhood my grandparents used to live.

Ezra

Samuel and his look of glee.

One, two, three, GO!

Even daddy enjoyed himself.

Noah went down every way he could think of.

It was a beautiful day, though very cold!

I mostly wandered around taking photos. Shadow me.

I walked over to some rocks on the edge of the hill and when I turned around I called to all the kids to wait so I could take a video of them all. I caught the moment when Terry went over a bit of a bowl and sort of dropped his weight inside of it. It compressed his back pretty bad and he yelled out in pain. You can hear the poor guy groaning! A couple chiropractor visits were necessary.

That didn't really stop him from continuing on though.

Finally when we were about to leave I took a turn.

We had to leave when the school kids came out for recess. They were drawn to us and were getting in trouble. There's no school like homeschool!!!

Our piano teacher's daughter, Amanda, had previously told us about "the best hill in Rapid City" across the street from her house. She and her mom had told us how we could come over and sled any time we wanted so that's what we did next.

Headed to the three level hill. It was huge.

Beard-cicles. Well, maybe mustache-cicles.

There wasn't enough snow we we had to sort of push ourselves along like Samuel's doing.

I don't remember why Ezra was crying but it was no big deal. Ha!

See, he was fine.

It was quite the hike to get to the top hill.

Mommy took another turn.

My pretty girl.

All done! We can't wait to go again. Just need more snow...

carrot harvesting

Halfway through November, the day before our first snow was expected, we decided to pull out a bunch of our summer carrots. Pretty impressive the tops were still green right?!

Samuel and Ezra were eager to help. Surprisingly, currently, a month later, we still have some out there. Only it's too frigid for me to try to pull them up.

"Samuel, look at the camera!" 

My boys with their carrots.  

November - sunsets, YG, Star Wars party, biking

On November 8, which was election day, we had a spectacular sunset. I used my iPhone pano mode to try to get in more of the sky.

The colors were just phenomenal. I just sat on the hill in the cold for like 15 minutes. My kids were like, "Mommy?!?"

The following night at Youth Group, Terry gave a great illustration where he loaded one kid down with old clothes which represented sin and then transferred the clothes over onto the other kid. In the same way Jesus took on our sins and freed us from them, forgiving us, and giving us His righteousness in return. 

That weekend we had been invited to a Star Wars "mystery dinner" by Jeff and Ronna (who, having a mutual love of Star Wars, gave us this Han Solo rug). I thought we'd be playing parts in a mystery murder, similar to one I attended last year but I was wrong... Also, since we were encouraged to dress up, I borrowed these pajamas from Paige and Zach. They looked great but I was roasting the whole night. Ha! 

Jeff was a Star Wars "fan," Katie was Darth Maul (obviously :D), Steve was Darth Vador, Dana was a light saber (HA!), Terry was Kylo Ren in Darth's clothes, I was Chewie, Jeff was Han Solo, Mary was...I can't remember...Qui-Gon Jinn?, and Kyle was the best - young Obi-Wan Kenobi in Mary's pants and boots, complete with a little rat tail made of yarn. Unpictured was Ronna.

Like I said there were no parts to play for this dinner. When they said mystery dinner, they meant it literally. They sat us down at a completely empty table and gave us a cryptic menu full of Star Wars references. We were told us to pick what we wanted for our five courses. We had NO idea what all these things were so keep in mind that of course I wrote in the answers afterwards. I mean, what would make of "Yoda's Swamp Gruel"?! 

I chose...poorly. The table was empty and we had to guess for our eating utensils, cups, and napkins. Thankfully they generously gave us plates I guess! As you can see, I didn't get any real food until the final course and I didn't received any utensils to go with it! For the first course Terry guessed correctly on the salad and breadsticks but didn't get a fork. He had to use his breadstick as a sort of spoon! Hilarity ensued. 

Here is Kyle just going for it - dangling fettucini into his mouth with his fingers. Jeff and Ronna felt a bit bad so were pleased that we all played along so good naturedly. It was hilarious. We rounded off the evening by taking turns acting (badly) in these made up Star Wars skits Jeff had written for the occasion. By the end of the night, my face hurt from smiling so much.

A couple days later I went mountain biking with a legit crew - Jazmin, Denise, and David. We went to Reder Road and I hoped to redeem it since the last time I had been there (with this same group) I broke my derailer hanger on my old bike. The ride before that I had been on my old bike and was completely exhausted. I knew this ride would go better due to my new bike and more experience, but I ended up feeling just about as tired since we extended the ride with a trail called Extra Credit. My legs were wiggly, wobbly, done. Probably as a result to being so tired, I had my first actual crash. My front tire got wedged on a rock and the stopped momentum carried me over my handlebars into the pine needles next to the trail. Thankfully I didn't endo onto rocks and only scratched up my shoulder a bit. 

The drive home was beautiful due to the supermoon. I yanked the Envoy onto a side road and took a bad picture with my phone. It looks like the sun here!

I didn't get scratched up because of my wreck, but I did jar my neck. After a couple visits to the chiropractor, I was all better again.

One week later, another beautiful sunset!