Other November Things

 I see a few pictures that I've taken and need to see what was going on this month.  

I had a cough and sore throat for more than a week that kept me from spending much time with the girls.

We had the Bomb Cyclone that was exciting at first, but candles and warming refrigerators soon became not such an adventure.  It all worked out fine, but those were some high winds.  We lost a couple of trees on our street, but right up the interstate from us, in Issaquah, it looked like a tornado had come through.  Whole section of trees were down as well as signs that haven't been replaced.  Grocery stores are having a hard time getting back to normal after they lost so much of their frozen and refrigerated supply.  

We're about #457 on the outage map.  Emily and Ryan never lost power, but I was without anything but my gas fireplace for 36 hours.  I had half a cup or so of leftover coffee from the day before, and I tried heating it over a candle.  It didn't work. Noreen brought me a welcome thermos of coffee from her daughter's gas stove and some ice from Safeway.  Ryan brought over a phone charger, and I was pretty comfortable.  Other than a few things to be thrown out, we survived another weather crisis.  I'm hoping for a little snow around Christmas, but we haven't even had any temps below 39.

Noreen received a new tree this year and very generously gifted me hers.  I'm struggling a little bit with what to put it on and at this point was trying a storage bin.  An end table is too high.

It's caused quite a stir for Layla, but the other cats have ignored it thank goodness.  I already love it, and once we get everything sorted out, it will be beautiful.

Since my earlier little tree was just a tabletop one, I kept the ornaments to gold and pink, but I'm going to include more colors this year.  Here I'm trying out burgundy poinsettias and red ribbon.  The red ribbon is on it's way out.  I found some pink and gold at Target.

Emily and Katherine and I took off for a quick Target visit Tuesday, and we were not serious shoppers.  I did get my ribbon, and Emily found a few things, but we sort of just had fun.

The Target cavorting reindeer or what Kate calls "booties in the air reindeer."

Will cows be taking the place of cats in Kate's heart?  I don't think so.  Cats AND cows. 

The main purpose of the trip was to register for and pick up bibs for the annual Issaquah Turkey Trot, which the family didn't end of participating in because of too much on their plates, no sleep, stress over the clinic's opening after the power outage, tiredness, etc.  It was a nice donation for donating food and meals though.

I waited in the car while Emily was in line and saw this.

Then I noticed Emily gesturing to us to look and taking pictures.

This is what she saw close-up.  He was definitely the star of the Turkey Troy line, and I bet he was in the race yesterday morning.

I think someone mentioned him being a Komondor breed, but I'm not sure where those blue eyes came from.  

The girls had strange dismissal times this week and part of last week, so I never knew who I was going to get and when. 

Gray came in one cold rainy afternoon and wanted to go straight to Minecraft.  I don't begin to understand their interests any more, but she let me know that one of her dogs died and she saw three wolves.

I had worked on my mantle, such as it is, a little, and she was glad to see stockings there.  Hers, on the right was not spaced just right, but it soon fell down, and I was able to place it better later.  

Breaking the news to Kate when she arrived about her dog dying.  

I got K to hold up her project from school.  Not a presentation as such but a poster that describes what she's like to other people.

And a cute Halloween piece of art.  She said the background was "directed art," but all the little touches, including the boarded windows and things in the air and on the ground were her own art.  You could tell she had fun doing it.

I was looking for something on Facebook to show them, and we came across a Rooster Valley post.  The header was a collage of old pictures, and Graysen was so thrilled to see that this picture of her class made the cut.  She's in the yellow raincoat "before I learned how to smile," with the school in the background.  All these kids are now 12 or nearly so.  What a good beginning two years of preschool and pre-K they had.  Most of them were separated for elementary school and now middle school, but they'll be back together in a couple of years at the high school.  Yikes.  I doubt they'll remember each other, but they won't forget Rooster Valley and the runaway gingerbread man that they had to go all over town searching for.  

Another afternoon, their friend Carly came home with them, and they got out a wooden railroad set we inherited when a friend moved.  They haven't looked at it in 2 or 3 years, but they soon had it spread out all over the floor.  Cats found it interesting too.

I found my little areas of decorations all over the place, the manger inhabitants mixed with the trees and ice-skaters, and snowmen and gingerbread men in the oddest places.  That's what I do this for though.  If something gets broken, I'm okay with it, but mainly I love to see their eyes when they see a beloved ornament that they remember from year to year.  This is what my life is all about now, and I'm so thankful for it.