November 2013

Welcome to November. One of my favorite months in California. We have had lovely weather and lots of time with friends outside and inside. Our leaves have finally fallen from the trees, and the kids have had loads of fun raking and jumping in them. Sometimes the wind blows the leaves so much, the kids will rake 3 times a day.
 Tanner has been a busy kid in school. He was involved in a kindness project for his class. When I asked him what he wanted to do to show kindness to others he said, "I want to serve food to people. Mom I want you to cook it and I will give it to people that are hungry." To help him with his great idea, I called several local charities and the food bank and ultimately came across a free breakfast that is served weekly at the United Methodist Church in our city. We showed up to volunteer, and met some wonderful people that serve this breakfast as part of their church ministry. Tanner and I were assigned to wash the dishes. It is a full commercial kitchen at the church, so we had a fun sprayer and a sanitizing dishwasher that Tanner got really good at running. Tanner was a little too short to do the serving, so instead he helped with the condiments and cleanup in the eating area. We had a great experience and Tanner had a great attitude. We want to come again to help out in the future.
My big project of the month has been counting Box Tops. Our school is involved in the Box Tops for education program, and we are looking to increase the funds that our school receives from the program. I'm the coordinator this year, so I did a lot of promoting and apparently it worked because we got 12,000+ box tops. The crazy part for me was counting and sorting then shipping. The best part of the whole job was delivering the raffle prizes to the kids. For each group of 10 box tops a kid would get 1 raffle ticket. We only had a dozen raffle prizes, but I guess that was enough, because the kids really brought in a lot. So far this year we have raised more than $1500 to benefit the school and our goal is $3000. We will have 1 more drive in the spring and I'm hoping to recruit a few more helpers for that.
 Darryl and I had an amazingly fun weekend. We went to Reno, NV for the So You Think You Can Dance live show. We went to dinner and the show, then stayed overnight at the Marriott and came home the next morning. Darryl gave me tickets for my birthday and the trip was lots of fun. The show was amazing and I'm such a dance junkie I can only compare it to a hard core NBA fan that gets to see a game court side. I was giddy and happy and I kept telling Darryl all about all the dancers and the upcoming dances. I loved the show this year because they added a lot of new choreography and made it into more of a cohesive performance instead of a replay of the TV version. Nothing beats seeing performers live. The energy in the room was electric. After the show, in the casino, we met a cool magician that did some fun up close magic with some cards and had Darryl and I participate. He did a good job and we had a great laugh. We also went out for ice cream and walked around to see the sights.
 Thanksgiving weekend was our next fun adventure. The kids were glad to have the entire week off of school, and it was fun to play outside, paint, play on the trampoline and generally kick back. My Thanksgiving week was not as pleasurable as the kids. I had a sore tooth that ended in me getting a root canal and crown. That didn't stop us from eating plenty of delicious food on Thanksgiving Day. The weather that morning was near perfect. We played whiffle ball with our neighbors, then board games with the Millard family while the food was cooking. Later in the afternoon the Sorge family came over to eat with us. We had all the traditional fixings and ate until we couldn't get any more inside. Thankfully Analyn brought pies from the Little Red Hen bakery and we all loved eating the apple pie and chocolate pie. It was a fun meal and the rest of the evening we played with the kids enjoyed each other's company.

After Thanksgiving, we went to Reno, NV again for the weekend. This time we took our kids and went with the Valdez family to the BYU vs. UNV football game. We stayed at Circus Circus and burned through tons of quarters playing games and winning stuffed animals. We stayed into the evening to see some of the circus performers and the kids loved the high wire show and a magical dog show. With all the fun, the kids had a hard time settling down and going to bed, so I took over the bed time settling while Darryl went to the restaurant for all you can eat sushi. At the game, it was very cold in the morning, but the kids bundled up and we went to Cougartown. It's an alumni event for BYU that they had in one of the big ballrooms on campus. We ate breakfast and the kids got crazy face paint. They also had a bounce house, cheerleaders and clips from seasons past. It was a great way to start the morning. We went to the game and sat in the very crowded BYU area of the stadium. Our kids were squirrely and had to go to the bathroom at least 4 times each. Luckily they found their happy spots under the bleachers and playing with pom pom while we all attempted to watch the game. The game was close then BYU started to dominate and make it very interesting and ended up winning. After the game our kids were done. We went to get some pizza then hit the road for home. We had a fantastic time and we are so glad we were able to go on our little adventure.