November

November means Football Fever has come to our house. With so many men here, it's gets a little competitive.  When the Panthers played the 49ers, Talon (the Panther's lover) pulled me aside and wanted to play a joke on Garry (the 49er's lover).  Garry wasn't out of bed yet, so Talon grabbed me a jersey and I put it on.  We were sitting there waiting for Garry to come out and when he did, he just started laughing!  I have no idea who one the game??

Our family has been praying for over a year now that a girl Cynjyn's age would move into our ward.  She is the only girl in her Sunday School class and there are very few girls in her YW age group.  A girl her age was baptized this summer and she became a pretty good church friend, but the girl has family problems and hasn't been to church for awhile.  Last month though, a strong family moved into our ward from another ward in our stake, and they have a girls Cynjyn's age!  We were so excited.  The only bad thing is that her bday is August and C's in December, so Emma is a grade ahead of her in school and goes to a different middle school, but they good things is that they became fast friends.  We decided to facilitate the situation and have their family over for dinner one Sunday.  We were having lettuce wraps so C made these cute name cards to show where everyone should sit. 

We had a delicious dinner and then played some games afterwards.  It was a great evening and hopefully a great start to a great friendship for us all.

My two over achievers got straight A's for the first semester of school!  We are so proud of them and hope they stay over achievers!

I had my teeth cleaned in August and they did an oral cancer screening and noticed some suspicious spots on the top of my mouth.  So I ended up at a specialist who took a biopsy of the top of my mouth and had a little mouth surgery.  They wanted to knock me out with an IV but also said I could do it with just normal numbing.  The only problem with that was that it required 6 Novocain shots to the roof of my mouth.  I opted for the later.  I have a high tolerance for pain because the shots didn't bother me at all and the staff was amazed at how well I took them.  The Dr. gave me some metal thing to squeeze while they cauterized the cut and I didn't need that either.  Then they sent me home with a mouth full of gauze and big old pain pills.  I didn't need them or even Ibuprophen!  I just ate some soft foods for a week and grossed out my boys by showing them the roof of my mouth!

It's all good and no cancer was detected! The biopsy came back benign.

A lady in our ward is moving and needed to get rid of her piano for free.  I had a piano student who had just broke his keyboard and so I jumped on this and could have the piano if I had some people come pick it up.  Apparently it was super heavy, she warned.  So we enlisted Dave Hill and Braden Weaver and Talon, Taz and Garry and managed to get the beast moved and delivered to my student.

He was so happy and wrote me this nice note and brought it to his next lesson.

Taz has anxiously been awaiting his class ranking.  He's been on a mission to get straight A's in High School.  so far so good, but he did take two HS credit classes in 8th grade and got B's in them.  So, when they handed out the rankings, he was number 5!!  Yay for him.  4 kids are tied for first and he and one of his besties Paige are tied for 2'nd!  Keep it up Taz!

Our book club decided to forgo a book this month and make it a movie month.  There were three movies coming out in November that were book club books.  The first one we went to was Ender's game.  Three of us couples plus a husband went to that (his wife had to work).  We all loved that movie.  Then we went to Catching Fire.  There were 17 of us at that movie and we all managed to sit in one row together, then we all went to a BBQ place afterwards for dinner where another couple that couldn't make it to the movie joined us.  We all loved it and had a great evening together. 

Unfortunately, that same day, as we were heading out to the movie, we noticed the Suburban tire was completely flat!  So, Garry had to change that in the dark when we got home from dinner.  We ended up getting new tires for the Suburban!

We managed to make it to the temple twice this month.  We are slowly, but surely whittling away the family names mom gave us.  We tried to hand some out to other members of our ward, but they all had family names too!

Cynjyn had a movie night with friends.  They wanted to watch a scary movie, so we got Mama.  It worked, they were scared!

Taz ran his first Ragnar race.  Angie Tanner in our ward was trying to put together a 12 member team and was having a hard time finding runners.  She knew Taz did CC so she asked him and he said yes.  Her son Bryson was the other teenager on the team.  They started on Friday, where Taz had to get out of school an hour early to be at the checkin spot on time.  He ran that day about 4 pm and then he ran again at midnight then for a third time the next morning about 9am.  He ran a total of 17.2 miles.  They rent two vans and stay in them together as a team.  6 in one and 6 in the other.  Each team has to cross the finish line together and come as a theme.  They chose Duck Dynasty and have to cross with some sort of costume.  So here they are at the finish.  Together I think the whole team does 189 miles in a 24 hour period.

Anyway, he loved it and wants to do another one!

 Our friend Marilee Taylor (the one that reminds me of Krissy!!) brings pomegranates back from her moms house in St. George every fall.  She shares them with us every year because she knows how much we love them.  This year she just had a ton and wanted to make jelly.  So One Sunday she and Debbie Witt came over and we made 5 batches of jelly.  It took us 3 hours!  We had fun and the jelly is yummy.

 I decided to make a quick batch of bread so we could try them all together.  It was so good!

 Mikel and Talon took C to Starbucks one day when they picked her up after school.  She got this cute snowman cookie!

 Taz got his scholar letter. They give it out for the previous year, so this was for maintaining straight A's for his freshman year while participating in sports.  It was awarded at a breakfast and I missed it because I thought it was at 7:30pm, not am:(  But we are proud none the less.

 The third movie we went to this month was Book Thief. We went on the night before Thanksgiving and it was just us , Hills and Thatchers.  We went out for dessert afterwards and ended up at Coco's and they only had pies.  None of us felt like eating that so we all ordered the appetizer sample and had a good visit.  Afterwards there was a machine where you could win prizes by putting a key through a hole and so Jen wanted a shuffle for her school where she teaches.  Those three men analyzed that machine for a good 10 min trying to figure out how to win it.  Brian put up a dollar and Dave gave it a try.  No luck.

 So then Garry tried...no luck.  We all decided to go before we wasted any more money on that machine.  But it was fun watching them analyze and try it out.

 There is a movie called Saratov Approach about two Mormon missionaries who were kidnapped in Russia out.  It is in limited cities.  LV was lucky enough to get the movie and Garry and I went one Saturday.  It was really good and we wanted the kids to see it.  So on Black Friday, instead of shopping we spent a quiet morning in the theater.  T and C loved it too and we walked around the casino looking at their Cmas decorations after the movie got out.

 My mouth is all healed now, I just have a little hole up there.

 After the movie, we went to Olive Garden and Taz entertained us by folding napkins and having us guess what he was making.  It was as great way to start off out holiday season!