November 2011

 November was much more relaxed than the previous months. We've had beautiful weather, although we get some wind, and generally it's just a little bit cooler. We love being outside on most days.
  Our family is on our normal schedule. Tanner is loving Super Dudes. Parker is a happy little runner. Alyssa is all over the place crawling and drooling. Darryl is still busy with military life. His unit is improving all the time, and he's finally getting comfortable with his command position. I'm swamped with YW activities. This month we did a fun activity with the young men. We learned to ballroom dance. We did some very basic steps and the boys learned to lead just a little bit. It's a shame that the youth don't dance more often. That may be something I will need to work on with them.

 Veteran's Day was a lot of fun this year. In Elk Grove there is a parade that goes down the main street and we had fun watching it from our cozy spot near a middle school. We went to the parade with a couple of moms from the Mom's Club. They have boys similar in age to ours, so it was a blast to have all the little boys running around. Most of the people in the parade were from the VFW, or the scouts. There was some great patriotic music from the High School marching bands, and a few floats. Darryl took Tanner out to lunch at Texas Roadhouse. They were serving free lunch to veterans. That was great and Tanner came home ecstatic about the food and his time with dad. In the evening Darryl and I went out again as a date. Applebees was also providing free dinner to Veterans, so we enjoyed another great meal. Unfortunatel
y I broke one of my molars while I was eating my salad, so after dinner I had a big pit at the back of my mouth. Oh well, crown number 2 coming my way.
 For Thanksgiving this year, we had some of our favorite people come to visit. The Sorge family drove up from Tracy, and the Ryan family came over as an extension of our family. We had lots of fun. We went bowling with the Ryans and the Sorge family came up later. The kids were not thrilled with the bowling alley, but it was fun. None of us made top marks when it came to score. The Hartley family trophy was the real contest, and it's sad that we cannot attend the family festivities any more.

 Black Friday is one of my favorite times of the year. I never go out in the middle of the night, or go to the 4 am stuff. This year, Katie and I went at 6 am to some of the sales we were looking for. My best purchase was finding my SLR camera. I got a canon rebel T3, I'm so excited and I got it for a screaming deal. We didn't spend a fortune, but we got what we were looking for within 3 hours.  Katie is one of my favorite friends because she keeps life very real. She is not shy about sharing her opinion or talking about things like money, family relationships or politics. I can always count on her when we someone to help, or be there to talk to.
 Another fun activity this month was makeover day. The young women came over to my house and we did fancy hair and makeup. Some of the activity day girls also came along with Eva Valdez and her girls. It was a very girly day and we had so much fun hanging out. I've been trying to help the Allen girls have more friends and improve their social skills. They are wonderful and I hope will find some hope and peace at my house. My goal is to fill their lives with positive influences and hopefully they will choose the right way. At this point it is all I can do to help. I'm frustrated that their schooling is so far lacking, all I can do is help where I can.