Thanksgiving

 We kept all of our favorite traditions this Thanksgiving: pre-Thanksgiving leftovers all week, family turkey trot, pie first, A Charlie Brown Thanksgiving lunch, and Thanksgiving dinner with the White family in Grandview. Since we always go to Jeff's parents' house for Thursday Thanksgiving dinner, we like to make our own turkey, taters, etc. before Thanksgiving and enjoy the leftovers all week leading up to Thanksgiving. So that's what we did. The weekend before Thanksgiving, I cooked up a massive feast that lasted us seven days. I made three pies, baked yams and apples, bacon green beans, cranberry orange sauce, rolls, and gravy. Jeff spatchcocked the turkey and mashed the potatoes. Jeff, Jay, and Rose peeled the potatoes. Amber and Rose helped with the rolls. 

Weekly Log

Our week was relatively calm and bland, unless you count some major weather swings, from 67 degrees and 25mph steady winds at the beginning of the week to 33 degrees and thick fog by the end. Here are a few journal clips to track the passage of another week, because the everyday-ness is still worth recording, even when it seems unremarkable in the moment.

A pretty pastel sky at sunset/moonrise, with a V of birds flying across the middle. My phone wouldn't bring the moon into sharper focus, but it was a lovely view out my bedroom window.

October Books

October was on the lean side of my usual literary consumption. The busyness of cross country season already feels so far away, it's strange that just three weeks ago, we were in the thick of it. Remembering the books I read during that time is an intriguing window into busy-Shaina-brain, because I was working hard to make time for my own restful non-running pursuits, and these are the books I chose to fill that precious limited time:

Momstalgia

Momstalgia is a word found only in the New Shaina Dictionary, a few entries north of Wedventure. Momstalgia [mom-stal-ja] refers to the feeling moms get when an event, location, or activity triggers a memory from her kids' past and she realizes how big and old they are, how fast they are growing, and how little time she has left with them at home. Momstalgia hit me unexpectedly when I took Rose and Amber on a "temple walk" on Saturday afternoon after our trip to Costco and before we attended the cousins' BMX race. We weren't there for more than 15 or 20 minutes, but as I walked around the outside of the temple with my daughters, the wave of Momstalgia washed over me.

Ribbons, Relay, Ride

Weekly photo album and journal clips because it's easier than writing a summary:

Saturday, November 6th: The girls participated in the Sunn Valley Piano Teachers Association Ribbon Festival at the church this afternoon. Amber played one song, and Rose played three, and they were given one ribbon per song. They also each entered a music-themed piece of artwork to earn an extra ribbon apiece, and Amber played a rhythm game at the festival to get her third ribbon. They were both quite proud of their ribbons. I was happy to catch up with an old friend from our previous ward while we sat through the long list of hesitant young musicians.

November 4th

Amber has been counting down to her birthday for the past six months. Almost every day, she asked Alexa "how many days till fernember fourth?" and the digital assistant Alexa wouldn't understand what she said, so we'd explain how to say November again and eventually she'd get her birthday countdown out of Alexa. At last, Amber's day arrived, and she was vibrating with excitement and smiling her jack-o-lantern smile so wide with the knowledge that it was HER day.

Since I shared the November 4th birth date with both a good friend in high school and my college roomie, and now with my own daughter, it has rarely been my very own day. I like to think that as I get older, I am getting [marginally] better at sharing and at finding ways to take care of myself and make my birthday feel special. Last year I felt the need to celebrate my birthday on a completely different day than Amber, but this year that didn't feel as necessary. Actually, it just felt too tiring for me to select and stake my claim on November 3rd or 5th, decide how I wanted to celebrate, and then remind my family about it over and over. Instead, I took a sandwich approach to the day: Amber/Shaina/Amber. Amber was the bread, and I was the filling. We did Amber celebrations before and after school, and I did my own celebrations in the middle of the day. It worked, mostly.

Halloweekend

Halloweekend: we squeezed all Halloweenish activities into one afternoon this year. We did zero Halloweeny things for the first 29 days of October, then spent about 2 hours on Saturday afternoon (Oct. 30th) doing Halloweeny stuff. That's it. Being the self-proclaimed Halloween Grinch that I am, this setup was nearly perfect for me. Jeff had a fever on Saturday, so he laid low and the rest of us decided to play it safe and stay home from the ward trunk or treat activity on Saturday night. Since we live out in the country, that meant there would be zero trick or treating for our kids. So Rose and I made plans for our very own family Halloween party. We boiled it down to the essentials: pumpkins, treats, and a screening of the classic It's the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown cartoon. Costumes probably would have made the list of Halloween essentials, but the girls got to dress up in their costumes all day for school on Friday, and they seemed satisfied with that. Rose was a ninja, and Amber was a fairy. They compiled their costumes all on their own.