Thanksgiving

Let's be honest: Thanksgiving is all about the pie. Since I was gone for five of the six days leading up to Thanksgiving, I had to make all of our pies on Wednesday, the day before Thanksgiving. Of course I decided to make 7 pies, because there needs to be enough pie for unlimited enjoyment! I made four pumpkin cheesecakes, 2 sour cream apple pies, and one raisin pecan cookie pie (the raisin content guarantees that I get that pie to myself--yum!). It took 3.5 hours to make all 7 pies. It was a lot. Rose and Amber helped. Amber helped for about 1/3 of the time, and Rose helped for about 2/3 of the time. It was fun spending time in the kitchen with my girls! Desserts are my least favorite thing to make, so having company in the kitchen makes a huge difference.

Sassy pie victory picture.

St. Louis last minute

 My dear friend from college, Laurs, turned 40 in November and decided to give both of us a joint birthday gift of a plane ticket: she flew me out to her place in St. Louis for a long weekend. It was rather last minute. I was boarding the plane barely two weeks after the ticket was purchased! It was such a random fun unexpected change of pace, and I loved seeing Laurs on her turf. I got to meet her girlfriend and other friends, and enjoy the mild Missouri autumn weather with her. We did some shopping, ate good food, visited my old Missouri stomping grounds at the Historic Daniel Boone Home, watched one of our old favorite movies (Hitch), and even participated in a trivia night at a place called Syberg's. 

A smooth driveway!

 For the past two years that we've lived in our house, our one tenth of a mile-long dirt driveway was a dust cloud in the summer and a slippery pothole-riddled mud pit in the winter. The high number of cars (from the three teams that work out in our barn) driving up and down our driveway caused it to age and erode way faster than the average single family driveway. But that's country life! We could live with it.

Rose is official!

It happened: 

NXR

The Nike Northwest Regional Cross Country meet (NXR) dominated the title of this post because more than 50% of the pictures I took this week were at that cross country meet. Before NXR, we had plenty going on at home all week long, even if there aren't that many pictures of it.

Jay lugged his bass home from school for the first time in at least a year. While he practiced, his sisters peered over his shoulder in the funniest way, like they were hoping he wouldn't notice? It made me laugh. 

State, etc.

Journal excerpts from the past week, edited for coherence as usual:

Monday, November 3rd: It's 10:12 p.m. I'm so tired. Tonight Jeff and I went to Ellensburg the district cross country coaches meeting. It was pitch dark and raining for 80% of the 80 minute drive there and back. Jeff almost ran a stop sign where there was a car crossing the intersection. That's a stop sign and I squealed, and Jeff slammed on the brakes just in time. It was scary because it was so wet dark. Thankfully we were okay, but my car anxiety was pretty high for the rest of the trip. I was dreading the gross diner food at the cafe we met at but this time I managed to get the massive plate of spaghetti that was pretty good. It wasn't $18 good but at least it didn't make me feel ill like the weird thing I ate there last year during this meeting. We left at 5:10 p.m. and got home at 9:35 p.m. It was so long and tiring.

It was cloudy and dark and wet all day today. The weather app says we got .63 inches of rain today. Our driveway is muddy mess with giant lakes of puddles. I went to the chiropractor and got my body cracked this morning, then came home and went on a 4 Mile run in the 41° drizzle. It was my longest run in almost 3 months, and I felt pretty good. It was a good farewell to age 38. 

Birthday!

Amber and I had some plans for our shared birthday this year, and we made up other birthday-ish celebrations along the way. Instead of attempting to separate the birthdays, we ended up just doing all the celebratory things we both wanted to do, whenever we could. Two days pre-birthday on Sunday night (Nov 2nd), we had Amber's extended family birthday dinner. One day pre-birthday, I made myself an experimental dairy-free pumpkin cheesecake that actually was pretty good. 

Amber's birthday interview. My favorite responses: 

Hero: Mom and Dad. 

Favorite drink: "smootie" 

(aka smoothie, written by Amber before Jeff took over writing her interview answers.)

October'd

If October were a verb, it would mean: "to expend 99% of one's energy on cross country season and then squeeze out that last 1% for all other autumnal activities." As I draped myself into a cold hard metal chair in our church gym during the ward harvest party last night, I felt in my bones (and my many sore muscles) that we have sufficiently October-ed. 

This picture sums up our mental and physical state at the end of October: Jeff brought his backpack out to the garage on Monday, but forgot to put it inside his car before he left for work. This juxtaposition of tragic and hilarious is not lost on me. I dropped Amber off at school and then dropped Jeff's backpack off at the high school.