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. 

The 5,000

My favorite track race in college was the five thousand kilometers, also known as the five thousand for short, or the 5k, or sometimes just "the five." It's 12.5 laps of speed and endurance. The fastest I ever ran the five thousand was when in college when I was 19 years old, at the 2006 Jopson Invitational at Bridgewater College. My time was 20:12. I never managed to break that large looming 20 minute barrier, and I am at peace with that. Marriage, motherhood, and real life are full and happy and good. I never expected to want to run a lifetime personal record after college. But the more Jeff and I learn about training methods, the more we see what we did wrong in college. We were always sore and fatigued from imbalanced overly intense workouts. I slowly realized that I probably never reached my true potential in my young spry days of college running.  

The District XC Meet

We attended the grand finale district cross country meet on Thursday, October 28th. The meet was held in Wenatchee, WA at Walla Walla Point Park by the Columbia River, which is about a 2.5 hour school bus ride from Sunnyside High School. It was another long haul twelve hour cross country meet day. Five of those twelve hours was spent crunched on a bouncy-jouncy school bus rocketing through curvy minor highways. Getting to Wenatchee on a school bus is no picnic. The journey is always a challenge to my tendency for motion sickness. Thankfully, I survived with bearable nausea levels.

Octoberlicious

This post is composed of miscellaneous Octoberlicious everyday journal clips from the past few weeks, since it helps me feel more organized. Random journal clips are fun peeks into daily life:

Monday, October 11th: I made a massive pot of chicken chowder for dinner tonight. It was creamy and warming and 100% dairy free! (almond cashew milk and olive oil instead of cream and butter). The kids loved it. Even Amber had a few spoonfuls: "MMMM! This is way gooder than last time!" Hah. Jeff had parent teacher conferences tonight. After dinner, the kids and I played a long game of Slamwich together for family game night/FHE. Amber ran out of cards early and was sad, so I kept donating some of my wins to her to get her back in the game. Rose ended up winning and Amber came in second. It was a good ending. It's been a long time since I spend mom time with just me and my kids, and we had fun together. Tonight reminded me of our Wedventures that we went on last fall. They were so fun. I love my kids.

Running at the Gorge

Our seventh of seven consecutive Saturday cross country meets was held in the middle of nowhere central Washington at the Columbia River Gorge Amphitheater on October 16th. It was about an 80 minute drive from Sunnyside on bus-bouncing minor state highways. This was the Moses Lake Invitational, and it was the last race of the middle school cross country season--Jay's last race in his first official cross country season! The high school team still has two more weeks in its season, but this was it for the middle schoolers!

Notes from a tired mom

It's been a tired week. I had several restless nights of minimal sleep, which led me to feeling tired, which led me to feeling cranky and trapped by the expectations placed on me-- by myself, by my family, and by others. This morning I felt down and worn thin and just kind of sad. So I called my mom and while we were talking, I realized that I am allowed to be tired. I am allowed to be tired, even if my life isn't as hectic or hard in the same ways as it has been in the past. I am allowed to be tired now, regardless of how my circumstances compare to others.