Loving Life

The weekend after Thanksgiving we loaded up all of our bikes and went down to the beach.  We've always wanted to do this, but didn't have a bike rack for our car.  Marlene had one and gave it to us and so we were so excited to finally be able to do this :) 


Everett wanted me to take a picture of him like this... lol.  He had brought a bunch of toys and placed them around this Christmas tree pretending they were presents.
Duplo creations
Everett loves donut dates... I take him every now and then after we take the kids to school.

I love creating little Christmas crafts with the kids.  Everett had chosen this little box from Hobby Lobby to paint and was so excited to do this himself.  
I always get the kids an ornament to paint and I love putting photos in them from the year. 

Matt hurt his knee while crawling around in the attic trying to work on some wiring for our speakers.  He was in pain but we thought things were getting better.  Then the following week he was bending down …

This year for Thanksgiving my mom was in London (just for fun), and Matt's family had plans.   So it was just the five of us, and my brother.  It was really nice and we enjoyed a low key day.  We made every bit of our meal ourselves and we felt quite proud.  This was the first time I put together an entire Thanksgiving meal.  It was fun to choose recipes we wanted to make.  Matt smoked our turkey the day before, so it was nice not to have to worry about that. 

Also on the menu was:
- homemade stuffing, made with mushrooms and sausage (my first time making stuffing and I really loved this recipe)
-sweet potato casserole
-mashed potatoes
-homeade rolls
-homeade cranberry sauce
-from scratch gravy
-brussels sprouts with bacon and goat cheese


Matt and the kids set and decorated the table and I thought it was so cute.  Ethan made place cards and Alayna made menus.

Time to catch up on blogging!  I finished my client work for the year... YAY!  I can finally breathe a little. It's always quite intense for me during November and the first bit of December.

The guys went on the cadet campout on Veterans Day and I had my mom watch Everett, which allowed me to have a girl's night with Alayna.  We went to the California Fish Grill for dinner, colored while we ate, went to Hobby Lobby to get a few supplies to make a craft, and ended the night at Barnes and Noble and I let her choose a book.





I let her stay up and read in bed with me :)
A little park time with my buddy.
 Veterans Day...
I got to go along on Ethan's fieldtrip to Forrest Falls.   Exactly my type of fieldtrip... exploring nature :)

Playing in the leaves in our front yard.
We enjoyed Thanksgiving break a lot.  I still had like four sessions during the week, but it was great to be able to spend some time with the kids during the day.  We went up to Oak Glen one day and enjoyed apple…